When a Child Teaches You the Gita
I was angry.
Not the kind of anger that shakes walls, but the ordinary frustration of motherhood – the kind that arises when your child has made a mistake and you want him to understand it.
I expected defensiveness. Instead, my son said calmly, “I know you’re angry because I made a mistake. I thought Mum is a little mad right now. Let Mum calm down. If I talk now, it will escalate.”
I stopped.
How many adults understand this? How many of us know that timing matters in conflict – that speaking while emotions are inflamed often worsens things, while waiting can quietly dissolve them?
Then he added, “These are emotions. Let them go.”
I have spent years reading the Bhagavad Gita and reflecting on emotional steadiness, and in that moment I wondered if my child had just offered me a living example of it.
Not Handing Others the Remote
Later, I asked him about friends being mean.
“Don’t you get angry?” I asked.
He replied, “Why let him control me? He is just a person like me.”
There was an entire philosophy in those words. Most suffering begins when we hand others the remote control to our inner world.
Someone criticizes us, and our peace disappears.
Someone ignores us, and we spiral.
Someone is rude, and we carry it for days.
But my son was asking something far more fundamental: Why give anyone that power?
Seeing the Human Behind the Behavior
One day, while driving, I became irritated with a slow driver ahead of me.
Like many people do, I muttered, “Why don’t you drive faster?”
My son looked at me and said, “Why are you mean to him? He is not saying anything to you. Maybe you don’t know how his life is. What is going on in his life?”
I fell silent. Because he had done something remarkable. He shifted from judgment to imagination.
Instead of asking, Why is this person inconveniencing me?
He asked, What burden might this person be carrying?
That is empathy. And perhaps more than empathy – it is the refusal to reduce a human being to one irritating moment.
How often do we do that? We see someone impatient, distracted, slow, or harsh and assume we know who they are.
A child reminded me:
You may not know their grief.
Their illness.
Their exhaustion.
Their unseen struggle.
This is moral imagination. And I realized how deeply it echoes something the Gita gestures toward again and again: See beyond the surface of behavior.
The Past Does Not Have to Rule the Present
Sometimes I have spoken to him about harder things.
About how his father left.
About the silences that remain.
Once I asked, “Doesn’t it make you angry that your dad doesn’t call?”
He said simply, “Mum, maybe Dad is busy with his kids. Maybe he doesn’t have time. It doesn’t affect me. That was past. Let it go.”
Again, he startled me. Not because he was excusing absence. But because he was refusing to let abandonment become identity.
He was choosing an interpretation without bitterness. And in doing so, he protected his peace.
How many adults keep old wounds alive by replaying the same painful story again and again?
He seemed to understand something much simpler: It was in the past. Why spoil the present?
Compassion Without Personal Reactivity
What strikes me most is this:
He does not react much when his own ego is touched.
But he reacts deeply when conscience is touched.
He asks:
Why cut trees if we all live in one world?
Why do wars happen?
Why do people kill?
He is calm about personal slights. Yet troubled by cruelty.
That is not indifference. That is compassion.
And perhaps this is what emotional steadiness truly looks like not becoming numb, but refusing to waste emotional energy on petty wounds while remaining awake to genuine suffering.
When Children Become Teachers
Indian philosophical traditions have long held that wisdom does not always arrive through age or authority.
Sometimes it comes unexpectedly.
Through a question.
Through a moment.
Through a child.
That day, I began as a mother trying to teach.
I ended as a student listening.
And I thought – Perhaps this is one lesson of the Bhagavad Gita we often miss:
Steadiness is not found only in scriptures. Sometimes it appears in the ordinary words of a child who says,
“Why let him control me?”
Or,
“Maybe you don’t know what is going on in his life.”
And you realize – Krishna may still be speaking.
Sometimes through younger voices.
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