SLEEP ON IT: Ruminate

Meriam Webster’s meaning of ruminate is to engage in contemplation.

As life bombards us with the carousel of living, musings of the heart and of the mind break us at times from our busy goings. At most we question The Maker on how things were and are allowed to flow into our day- to-day existence or even our parents are put into blame for the status that we are embracing! Have we ever paused and dug deeper into the realm of our own makings? At a very young age though, were and are we equipped with understanding on how should the world around us should revolve?

One time, I asked my former high school adviser why there was not one who dared to round me off and have given me a long lecture on how to deal with my mischiefs? Why was I just sent out of classrooms and face some punishments for the foolishness I ventured? Actually it was too late to realize that all those irresponsible moves were to vent out family problems and the desire to fit in and be accepted or say to catch unwanted attention? Well, unlike at present when guidance offices are places where one gets the dress up for behavioral straightening to embrace and to enhance positivity, our ways before were given a brush off if things were tolerable as per teenage phase or one had to land at the Principal’s Office!

As a parent, I’d rather see through the actions of my children with an understanding that if I wore the same shoes as theirs, what could have been my manner of dealing with those episodes they were trying to comprehend!

What I promised to myself when I was growing up was that I should play fair to all the children that will be gifted to me. Since I was a product of unfairness in some aspects at home in my growing years, I have seen to it that both my boys felt the same amount of care as they had only a year and three months gap between them. More importantly when their sister was born to us after five years and 360 days later, the need to play the game of parenthood had to be impartially motivated! Perfection despite its awesomeness may not be achieved, nevertheless it was a good and a hard try!

Have we ever stopped awhile and ponder on how we treat our offsprings? Are our ways good enough for them to emulate? Do our past household monsters haunt us while we perform our own parenthood? Are the words we blast at our children heartwarming enough to fuel their growth?
– Yes, there is a belief that when the rod is spared then the child is spoiled! I will not argue with this, but if in the extreme when the rod seemed to have swallowed the unreasonability of strictness where the superiority reigns as the right one, for sure the spanking is unjust!
– No amount of the justification that the kind of punishment done to a child’s mischief is the prerogrative of a parent, the outcome may be a positive response or could be the negativity that will arise from a particular child especially in the last course of his life. The bitterness becomes a blunt streak which surfaces taunting others to wonder. How hateful it is to spend remaining days and years with a heavy heart and the endless opposing traits of what comfort and happiness should be!

Why let that rod sweep like it is the all knowing magician who will blot out the wails of the world and the child himself who had done the wrong without his understanding! Was it really the child or the adult’s frustration that hits hard?

Yes, uncontrollable impulse had hit me twice when two of my kids did not heed my advice not to do the sewing on their beds for the danger of losing the needles on their pillows! True to the warning, indeed both needles found their ways inside their pillows! The fear of having them used their pillows and having those pointed implement could have had floated on their bloodstreams! My! What a fool I was in giving them the scare of their lives!

To this day, I still cannot forgive myself for the heartbreak I have caused by spanking them! I am so sorry! My apologies go to my kids and the society for an impulse so unforgivable! The only good thing was that they were both honest to tell me of what had happened to those tools! Never again did I lay a finger nor had spared an angry growl to spite them!

Tranquillity is one trait I had to muster and master in order for peace to dwell in the shanty we lived in.

The many downfalls which tried to overthrow me, have shaken my stead, yet I have promised to keep myself rooted with self-worth and a smile as my leverage!

Life for me is comparable to peeling a boiled egg! At times, it frustrates me when the membrane or the transparent covering of the egg cannot be peeled off with grace and caused it to spoil the white part for most of it cling to the shell! Just like how we sail into the days of our lives for at most what we pray for, plan, perceive, prepare for and even wish for do not correspond to the ones we gain or receive! On the other hand, in most instances when the hard boiled egg is dipped into a bowl with water.*