Picture courtesy
www.kamat.com
Dr. Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and
founder of the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, in his June 9 lecture at
the University of Puerto Rico, shared the following story as an example of
nonviolence in parenting:
"I was 16 years old and living with my parents at the institute my grandfather
had founded 18 miles outside of Durban, South Africa, in the middle of the sugar
plantations. We were deep in the country and had no neighbors, so my two sisters
and I would always look forward togoing to town to visit friends or go to the
movies. One day, my father asked me to drive him to town for an all-day
conference, and I jumped at the chance.
Since I was going to town, my mother gave me a list of groceries she needed and,
since I had all day in town, my father asked me to take care of several pending
chores, such as getting the car serviced. When I dropped my father off that
morning, he said, 'I will meet you here at 5:00 p.m., and we will go home
together.'
After hurriedly completing my chores, I went straight to the nearest movie
theatre. I got so engrossed in a John Wayne double-feature that I forgot the
time. It was 5:30 before I remembered. By the time I ran to the garage and got
the car and hurried to where my father was waiting for me, it was almost 6:00.
He anxiously asked me, 'Why are you late?' I was so ashamed of telling him I was
watching a John Wayne western movie that I said, 'The car wasn't ready, so I had
to wait,' not realizing that he had already called the garage.
When he caught me in the lie, he said: 'There's something wrong in the way I
brought you up that didn't give you the confidence to tell me the truth. In
order to figure out where I went wrong with you, I'm going to walk the walk home
18 miles and think about it.'
So, dressed in his suit and dress shoes, he began to walk home in the dark on
mostly unpaved, unlit roads. I couldn't leave him, so for five-and-a-half hours
I drove behind him, watching my father go through this agony for a stupid lie
that I uttered. I decided then and there that I was never going to lie again.
I often think about that episode and wonder, if he had punished me the way we
punish our children, whether I would have learned a lesson at all. I don't think
so. I would have suffered the punishment and gone on doing the same thing. But
this single nonviolent action was so powerful that it is still as if it happened
yesterday. That is the power of nonviolence.
Copyright Dr. Arun Gandhi
More information from the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence may be
found here:
http://www.gandhiinstitute.org/
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