Mindfully - in the Play - or Elsewhere

And you reach out and you reach out
across the frozen desert lake
And chase and chase the phantom
till your arms start to ache

So when they ask, "How is the play coming along?" your first impulse is to ask, "Which one - the one going on between us right now or the one we are rehearsing for the school production?" In all honesty, this is a question one must not ask for fear of being considered somewhat freakish. However, it is a valid question. If you were really in a mindful state, you would be able to see that you are constantly in a play, often an actor, sometimes part of the audience, quite rarely, the director. Being an actor often precludes your even enrolling as the script-writer; someone you may not even be acquainted with writes the script you play out. Compulsively, you play out the script, biting down the impulse, when someone greets you, to say, "Cathy is not here today."

And so the story of the Buddha, thus, can be further simplified, if one looks closer at the script - if you keep a young, impressionable child locked up, the first four sights he sees will have a profound effect on him - especially since they involve pain and sorrow - emotions that are alien to him. What if he had been allowed to have a "normal" childhood? Quite possibly, he would've learnt how to respond to both at a younger age, perhaps become desensitized, or most likely, would've grown up to fulful the other possibility - become a great king as he would've worked hard to help those in pain. In effect, Suddhodhana could've had him take over the throne some day.

Is there a lesson in this, perhaps, for parenting, or for educating? For no matter how much you try to wrap them up in cottonwool, they will find ways of doing exactly that which "Mother Said I Never Should". They will do it without your consent or knowledge and more often than not they will get away with it. Didn't Siddharth sweet-talk Channa the charioteer into taking him beyond the "walls"; and didn't Channa, recognizing perhaps that the boy needed to become acquainted with alternate realities, acquiesce - whatever his own motivations were, he could not have foreseen that the boy would completely lose it and walk off to look for something as elusive as "truth".

So, is it better to advise children to watch their alcohol intake at parties, and make them save your number on speed-dial 2... in case they are ever so sloshed that they are unable to get home, they can call you so that you can help them out in the situation? Or is it better to read them moral lectures on the Great Dangers of Drinking while they look at you like you have, finally, lost it? They will go right ahead and find ways to drink excessively - and really, you may find out about it only if you are very lucky or they are very unlucky. Children will take a chance with that. And what you haven't been able to provide for them is the basic information which may, some day, save their lives.

The script at their parties is written by someone called Peer Pressure. We've all been there, done that, still enslaved by it to varying degrees. Yet we are quite unable to either remember the experience of meeting that script-writer, or to be mindful of how much of our current script is being written by him. [Uh, sorry for using the masculine pronoun; the personification would've become cumbersome with the usual him/her one prefers. Also, no offence intended towards the gender.] The assistant script-writer is someone called Experimentation-Rebellion - most of us have met her too, I think. [Ah, gender-balanced now...] If anyone heard the completely hair-raising stories of some of the parties my kids have been to, they would probably go into a frenzy of protectionist/prohibitionist policies. But don't we already know that which we are so unwilling to admit? It is useless to try to confine air in a box - you only think you have managed to, but are only fooling yourself. For, most of the children who attend these parties have told their parents that they are elsewhere. In case an over-protective parent actually checks up on them, they already have their cover stories in place.
Of course one cannot share any of these stories as they were told in trustful confidence to someone they know is quite as crazy as them.

So what can a facilitator of learning do? Surprising advice came from Sara, resolving forever the one chink in the script. "Break the fourth wall," she said. "Give your number to each of them and make them save it on speed-dial 2." Ah, sure, I've always fancied the role of Supergirl, complete with flying cape! But it was good advice, and I took it.

And passed on a list of "things to remember while drinking" with my number to all those kids who have shared their stories with me:
1. Drink only with people you know and trust to a certain degree.
2. After two drinks, make sure you have a ride home (if for some reason you have a car you are driving, hand over your car keys to someone responsible) - because, really, after the third drink you will lose even the elementary mathematical ability to count.
3. Never drive if you feel you can't - call for help.
4. Never get into a car if the person at the wheel has been drinking.
5. If you're ever in a jam, and in the NCR region, call me...
6. Always remember that the only reason that one of our boys died three years ago was because he broke rule no. 4.

With the fourth wall thus broken, we are no longer following the script someone else wrote. The mute, helpless audience of adults has joined the actors on stage; not jumping in with banners that say "Don't Drink" but with a gently spoken line, "Help is available."