Wrong must first of all feel wrong

‘We all make mistakes’ goes the modern thinking, giving acceptance and justification to many things we do wrong – knowingly and consciously.

I think if something is considered wrong by you rationally, but doesn’t feel wrong, there is little hope that you could ever be stopped from doing it. Our strongest defence against doing something we consider as wrong is our intuitive feeling that it is wrong. This is the inner force that holds us back and keeps us on the right path. This feeling comes out of developing a certain sensitivity that takes years to build.

We think our ability to reason is our biggest defence, but it is not. Even the voice of reason can be suppressed by rationalisation. We can always say to our reasoning mind ‘one last time and I will give it up’ or ‘one last cigarette’ and we can create a chain of exceptions that soon become our habit and then our addiction.

That person for whom lying or stealing or breaking or hurting others or cheating doesn’t feel wrong, cannot be improved or helped or rehabilitated easily. It may take years or even a lifetime to treat and fix such a mind. Without an inner sense of right and wrong, good and bad, a person is set off on a one way journey to self destruction and destruction of lives and families dependent on such a person.

Our strongest defence is our intuition that guides us through the thick and thin of life. It acts as our inner compass while we navigate the rough seas of choices and decisions. However, intuition may not be always be right unless it is coming from a rightly cultivated mind. Einstein rightly said that (right) does not come to an unprepared mind.

This inner compass develops and takes shape during our formative years of life- childhood and teenage. I believe that good parenting plays a key role in calibrating this compass to help it point in the true north always.

The formative years of a child are crucial. If we fail to build this sensitivity in a child at a young age, it may take the person years and many hard lessons to learn. Making mistakes is the hardest way to learn life lessons. Good parenting can ease this for a child. If we can help develop an inner sensitivity in a child to the dos and don’ts of life while they are still young, we can save them from mistakes that may hurt and scar them and may take years to heal and undo.

Human beings are not rational animals but rationalising animals. We reason in the favour of our intuitions. Realising that it is intuition that is our strongest defence and compass in life is really the first step in getting parenting right. Once the intuition is rightly calibrated in children, right reasoning will automatically find its place in their thinking and reinforce their defences.

I think, at the end of the day, it is this intuition that we want our children to inherit and pass on to their next generation and it will truly be an achievement on our part as parents if we can ensure that the compass we pass on is more accurate and more finely tuned that the one we received from our parents.