They walked behind her and loudly commented on her T-shirt from “Pepco”, sneakers that no one wears anymore and the fact that she is “poor”. They couldn’t be more than 10, 11 years old. I looked at them and then at her. I didn’t see any difference. She was neat and clean. Nicely dressed, clean hair, tied in a high ponytail. And beautiful big, blue eyes. I heard her enthusiastically talking to her friends about her pets. She had an intoxicating smile.
I turned to the two of them again. I don’t know what “brand” of clothes they wore, but they were no more attractive and harmoniously dressed than her. They giggled still and didn’t take their eyes off the big, blue-eyed girl. Maybe because of that mocking finger pointing, I didn’t remember their facial features, or the color of their eyes. I just remembered that cynical smile and the wicked giggle.
Upbringing begins at home
I wanted to tell them a lot. A lot, which they obviously didn’t hear from their parents, and they should have. I wanted to, but such conversations are conducted for years and continuously, otherwise they have no effect.
Values are instilled in children from an early age. And they keep repeating. It depends on us whether we choose our friends according to the brand of sneakers or our common interests and human qualities. And about what we talk about and how we behave.
When she is ten years old, she thinks she is better than someone else, just because she is more expensively dressed, her parent has gone astray somewhere.
Consciously or unconsciously. It doesn’t matter. We draw ourselves on them.
Our need for everyone to admire us, to compliment us, to tell us that we are beautiful, smart, wise, good, our frustrations, stubbornness, trauma, conceit, arrogance, prejudice, arrogance, our quarrels with relatives, neighbors, our unfulfilled dreams, sadness , failed ambitions, values, our dissatisfaction with ourselves, the environment or the life we lead, our irresponsibility, belittling, ridiculing, insulting… children grow up with them. They absorb them and pass them on. Just as they absorb love, empathy, contentment, happiness, gratitude.
Whether it will make them happy, that they have taught their pet not to wander out of the yard, or whether they will enjoy the ridicule and mockery of others, is our “success”.
Children are our mirror
Our task is to make people out of them. Good people! And we can’t do that until we face our own flaws, flaws, and shortcomings. Until we become aware of them and ready to change the shortcomings. To change ourselves. Let’s learn. Let’s grow. To never stop.
Because the more of us there are, ready for change, for growth, the greater the chances that the world will become a place where sneakers will be used for running and exercising, instead of being a criterion for choosing friends.
It is up to us to strive, to make the world better than it is.
Let them laugh at us. Let them say we are utopians. Romantics. To live in delusion. That we are a minority. Let them say what they want.
It is up to us to try to dissuade such. Let’s try to prove that they are wrong and that it is possible.
It is up to us to never stop trying!
Because of a girl with big, blue eyes. Because of our children. Because of us!
Mischievous Words by Marta 