Is learning limited to classroom?

All it takes is a perspective to learn from what comes your way. It required dedication and an eye to hunt for things which help us learn. As always, the recent Sunday too I decided to visit an old age home and an orphanage. Everything seemed usual, except for my understanding about life. I might be too young to speak about life, but the understanding I got is older and wiser than most visitors there.

All thoughts popped in, after meeting ‘Chunnu Didi’, an 89 yr old who stays in the old age home. ‘She says she is fortunate to be blind’. She need not see the atrocities happening around her. Though she had a family of her own, she is all alone in the home. Chunnu says, ‘I am happy, I have experienced a lot in my life and now there is lot more to go, though I am 89, I have the spirit to live more and enjoy more’.

Chunnu is fragile but beautiful and lovely, accepting everything with a smile. She says, she is now backing to her childhood, as a caretaker was constantly needed. After spending a few minutes with Chunnu didi, I was left with a medley of thoughts.... mature thoughts quite different from an ordinary youngster's thoughts; way beyond the understanding of many of my friends or many of my age group people. My dilemma was all my questions were unanswered.

The next day, I visited an orphanage, and spent my day with the children there. Slowly all unanswered questions popped up and yes, there was a hope of finding answers. There was some kind of energy driving me towards my answers, I could just sense and feel the nature.

I could make out that, there were a lot of similarities in Chunnu didi and the children around me in the orphanage. At that very moment, I was drowning in my thoughts again, but this time, I had enough experience to come out of those thoughts with satisfaction and peace of mind.

I thought, aha this is the ‘Life- Cycle’.  We all know about the life -cycle of a butterfly; not many know about the human life- cycle, which is very interesting. My understanding towards this life -cycle is totally based on my experiences in general and those two unforgettably amazing days at the old age home and the orphanage.

All of us were once children, and will become old as time goes by. Life from childhood to old-age is a cycle, which is circular in situations and understanding. The behavior of a child is similar to that of any Chunnu didi.
Children need someone to take care of, they always have something to talk, they keep asking questions, they murmur, they piss in their pants, they laugh, they smile, they cry, sometimes there will be a reason in what they do, and at other times there won’t be any, they try to learn things, they crawl, they walk, they sleep, they wake up, they eat, they play, and most importantly ‘they observe’.

I felt that life after becoming old is also exactly the same; this is what fascinated me about the 'Life -Cycle'. Old people do need someone to take care, they do have something to talk, they do piss in their pants, etc just like small children and the common aspect is ‘they observe’.

Nowadays, we see many parents leaving their children unwanted and unattended, and this is true of old people too. When there is real need for a person, we don’t find them. All the children in the world and all those old people...let's say 'senior citizens' out there play a major role in our lives. Let the youngsters of today not forget that old age is a phase in everyone's life that is born, it’s a natural process and that process is termed 'life'.

Repetition of situations is life; therefore 'care' is the most important medicine in one’s life which would heal anything and everything.  ‘Life starts being born a child, being a child and ends being a child....an old child’.

BY Kalyan Raygalla