Parenting
How to know whether you’re ready to become a parent? Humanity is struggling with excess population, which is taking its toll around the globe. Sadhguru puts things into perspective when it comes to children and child bearing:
Sadhguru:
Reproduction is not just about you and your mate; you are producing the next generation of people. Is it not a tremendous responsibility? How the world will be in the next 25 years is determined by what kind of children you are producing today, isn’t it? So they should not happen accidentally, they should not happen un-lovingly, they should happen consciously. They must happen in utmost pleasantness.
if you want to bring a child you must understand that this is a 20 year project
In today’s world, unlike what it was a few decades ago, you are able to choose when to have a child. It was not so in the past. Children just happened; people did not choose most of the time. So now when there is such a choice, it is very important that parents look at this – whatever their aspirations, whatever their goals – if you want to bring a child you must understand that this is a 20 year project. If your child does well it is a 20 year project. If he does not do well, it is a lifelong project. When you start on a 20 year project, you must have at least a 20 year commitment. Our emotions, our thoughts, our ideas may change as we are moving on. Many discords, disagreements and struggles happen. When two human beings are in a certain level of proximity, certain level of sharing, many things happen, but because we have a 20 year project we must be committed at least for 20 years.
This much maturity and commitment one must have before they decide to bear a child, otherwise it is not needed for you. You are still a child; you can fight and go away today. You can disagree with somebody and leave the house today. If you are in that condition, you are still a child, you don’t need another child. Asking a child to bear another child is not fair, so you don’t have to do it. You will be doing a great service to the world because right now our only problem is excessive human population.
Q: Sadhguru, what is your view on friendship?
Sadhguru: What to say? [Laughs] Maybe I have a very childlike or childish expectation about friendships because when I make a friendship, I always think it’s for good and it’s absolute. Generally I have been wrong – [laughs] this has happened to me at every level, whenever I formed any friendship or relationship. I made my first friend at age 3 ½ or 4, after they sent me to school. I built such a bond with him; he’s more than anything. I still remember his name; I am sure he doesn’t. [Laughs] I am sure the moment he or I moved out of the school, for him it was over; for me it was never over. Maybe somewhere it’s still not over for me. [Laughs]
I had a wide variety of friends; hundreds of friends all over the place – that’s different. I am talking about the bonds that I built with real friends – I always thought it’s absolute. But over a period of time, with experience of life, I realized there are very, very few people who see friendship like that. Most people see friendship as context-oriented. When you are in school, you have one kind of friends. When school is over, you just drop them and pick college friends. When college is over, professional friends, whatever else… That’s how people look at friendship. But somewhere, I’ve not been able to look at it like that. I am not disappointed or disgruntled, but it’s been a very learning experience about human nature. [Laughs]
Personally, my need for friendship is not too much, but the moment I formed a friendship, I always thought it was for good and in every way absolute, trustful and all that. I’ve found good friends here and there, but even for them, as life situations change, their need of and their focus on the friendship changes. For me it never changes.
I wouldn’t say it’s heartbreaking, but definitely it’s disappointing that most people can’t form deep relationships in their lives. They all can form relationships according to their needs; they cannot form relationships beyond their needs. A relationship just for the sake of relationship, that is not there in most people. They form a relationship when they need it; when they don’t need it, they break it. So in that way, I’ve been a little bit not-society-savvy. [Laughs] I am a little bit of a fool in those things. Even now, if I meet an old school friend, I still approach him the way I knew him at that time; but they are somewhere else. [Laughs] I am still the same way I was with that aspect of life; but they are no more the way they were. Probably they move on with life; I don’t move on with life – I always stayed a little outside of it. Somewhere I valued life that way, so I always kept it that way. I think it continues to be so even today.
One moment of trust, sharing, something that happens with me – which is happening with thousands and thousands of people these days – and I tend to believe this is for good; but people don’t think so. Actually, their need for me is much bigger, or rather, their need for me is the prime thing that is moving the relationship. I have no need for them. In spite of that, the way I hold them, they don’t hold me. I am not complaining; I am just looking at that lack of bonding in them which denies them so many things. They are denying themselves the very beauty of life because they can’t absolutely bind with anything.
I think life has been phenomenally generous to me about everything. When I say ‘generous,’ I am not talking about material things but the way life treats me wherever I go, the way it opens up for me without any effort. The life process is willing to open up all its secrets to me probably because of the bonding that I form with whatever I sit with. Even if it’s a simple inanimate thing I am in touch with, I form a certain relationship with it. For example if I look at what Mysore means to me, I have a very deep bonding with that place simply because I spent a large part of my growing-up period there. But I am not looking at it emotionally or sentimentally as normally people would look at their place of birth and growth. It is just the level of involvement I had with the land, the trees, the mountain, with everything around. Lots of things have changed in the last 30 years, but still I can see so many places that I walked upon, how deeply I looked at things, and the billion questions that I asked at a billion different places in Mysore. It forms a very different kind of bond which brought me to a certain level of quest within myself.
Mysore means for me a billion questions and at the same time an incredible answer too. For me, friendships also meant the same thing. Those few moments that I shared with someone, not just necessarily in terms of emotion – I was really not emotional about anybody in that sense – but somehow knowingly or unknowingly, moments of sharing were moments of uniting and becoming one in some way. I never saw sharing as giving and taking; I always saw sharing as two lives overlapping each other. I did not see friendship as an advantageous or useful thing, something that will help you to live better, or whatever else.
Even now when I travel around the world and meet all the top-level people, I don’t network with them, I don’t keep their phone numbers, I don’t try to make contact with them, but I share something very deep with them those few moments of being together, and many of them do share that with me too. But my sense of that sharing is a permanent process while I see that for most people, it’s a passing process.
Probably my idea of friendship is too old-fashioned, or I don’t know if it was ever in fashion. [Laughs] Maybe it’s a little silly, maybe it’s not socially savvy, but in terms of life, I think my ability to bond with anything or anybody deeply – whether it’s a tree, a place that I sat on, a piece of land or a rock or people – has in many ways been the key which has opened up many dimensions of life and nature to me.
So for me friendship is not an advantageous transaction or give-and-take; for me friendship is a certain overlapping of life.
– Excerpted from a Talk by Sadhguru
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