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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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