Just as I was about to feel that he has finally learnt how to do it the little guy asks me, again, "What to do now? I forgot!" Nishi, the little guy, is 4 years old and I am his best friend. He's my neighbour, and sometimes I feel that my family loves him more than me! The amount of attention he gets, the way my mom takes special care of making sure he gets some delicious cookies, my dad takes him on a ride - all these make me jealous and I wonder if the same was done for me. Maybe, I don't know, I was too small to figure it out. Anyways, that's not the point here.
Nishi's mom got him a remote controlled car with a set of tracks. As in case with any of his toys, he brought it for me to see. This one was cool, very interesting. Without wasting any time, we started playing with it. The tracks had to be made up from all the pieces given so the car could be rolled over it. It was simple, I made it up for him the 1st time. The 2nd time, I showed him how to do it. Almost every other day this guy comes back and says, "What to do now? I forgot!" I looked into the cute eyes of this dumb kid and showed him how to do it. However, once when this happened again, I snapped at him! I don't know why. I was like, "Why doesn't this guy understand?" That kid just froze for some time and went home soon, as his mom was yelling out for him.
I never realized how much frustration had built up in my mind regarding this thing. I felt sorry for the lil' guy and I thought I would make up with him by getting some chocolates. No one was home, so I made some tea. While having it, I was pondering over the incident, trying to realize what happened. Somehow, I was relating it to a lot of things which had happened in my life, some of them which are happening even now.
There are times when you do a mistake, that's fine. We are always told to learn from our mistakes, and particularly, not to repeat those. Doesn't it happen that we do repeat some, if not all, of our mistakes? Honestly, it does, in my case. I've done a lot of mistakes, some big, many small. I haven't always learnt from them and have repeated some of them more than once. It is important to accept a mistake. However, it is far more important to learn from it and even more to realize never to repeat it. It doesn't happen though, thats a different story. After digging deeper into this I realized the reason for it - a conscious effort had always been missing. More often, the arrogance gets over us when we accept our mistakes. Something like, "OK dude, I accept it. It's my mistake, I am Sorry!" We do one part of the whole thing, and forget the other, more important one!
Just once, think about this with a different view. The person being affected in this case must be so frustrated with you. He/She expects you to learn from it and there you go again. A worst case scenario would be that the person would be so frustrated that he/she would loose all hope. When this happens, you have pushed away someone so far from you that it is highly impossible to get him/her back.
The tea is too strong, just the way I like it. Am I over reacting, over thinking? Maybe. I am thinking too wierd, too extreme. Maybe not! You need to be humble to accept your mistake, and particular enough to remember it, always! It does need a conscious effort and I feel, now, that it's worth it.
Later that evening, I went to Nishi's house, called him home with that car and track. He came, and was so happy to see the chocolates waiting for him. He munched up all of them, and it was fun to watch him do that. Again, I showed him how to make up the track. This time, I was observing, he was vigilant than ever. We kept on playing till the time my mom came back from office.
I fondly remember, a few days later, Nishi coming to meet me. He had the pieces of tracks with him. This time, he built it over, all by himself! :)
