One often has to be cruel to be kind. In parenting often disciplining the child requires tough love, which means that although on the surface you are being very strict but it is for a higher cause, namely to teach the child selfcontrol or self matery as the case may be.
What matters ultimately is what is your aim and intention. If you have the welfare of the other person in mind than that is tough love, although your action may seem harsh. A doctor who gives bitter medicine, injections or even operates on the patient only does all these unpleasant, painful procedures to enhance the health of the patient.
So also if a toddler is crawling towards the window or into a gas stove oblivious to his own safety, the mother may pull and whack the child, it however saves the child’s life.
Birds often after devoted care and days of provinding, may be seen pecking their fledgings out of the saftey of the nests into learning to fly and be self sufficient, as their survival depends on that. If one is short sighted and sees it as an act of cruelty one is missing an important lesson in tough love. If one intervenes to protect the little bird to saftey it is for sure he will be handicapped for life.
So also the life cycle of a butterfly, in which he moves from a crawling caterpillar, to a confined pupa which struggles to break its walls and get out its wings. If once again one thinks ‘lemme help the poor guy by breaking opening the shell, and free him to fly. It will be so much easier for him and I will earn my good karmas too.’ Once again in doing so you would cripple the butterfly forever as it is the struggle inside the pupa that gives its wings the necessary strength to fly.
What a sad sight it would make , a butterfly which cannot fly.
Struggling is necessary in life, it fortifies us, strenghtens our mental apparatus as we rise to the occasion to meet challenges. Let us embrace hardships and also not make things too easy for our children, let us act on tough love if we want them to fly.
