Daivik took a bubble blower with him to the kindergarten. It was about 30 cm long and filled with soap water. To use it one has to remove the handle that is dipped in the soap solution and either blow into it wave it around. Large bubbles slowly emerge and follow the contours of the motion for a while before taking their own course.
Daivik was pretty excited about it and was showing it eagerly to Frank, who happened to be the first person he met, and started giving an animated description of its intricate mechanisms. Frank was beginning to get interested in it and was on the point of embarking on a deeper inspection. Quite suddenly, Daivik, catching another friend approaching, snatched it from Frank and ran to the new friend and started describing the details again.
What Daivik did was - by adult conventions - a rather rude thing. Now, imagine if you are Frank, observing and getting interested in an object - something, anything - and it is abruptly, forcibly snatched away. Frank didn't twitch his face, his smile did not vanish. He simply turned around, and in the space of that simple movement found another thing to transfer his interest to. Daivik's grin remained intact throughout this show-snatch-show again procedure.
It took less time to happen than a single heart beat of either Frank or Daivik. Perhaps it is nothing much to write about, but it did keep me rooted in thoughts for a long time afterward. I think what struck me most was the sheer nonchalance of it, a sense of non-happening. In the snatching away act, no offense was meant and certainly none taken. A simple act was performed, it is over, and therefore doesn't exist anymore. In that singularly beautiful act of not acknowledging it, Frank liberated the moment from its potential weights. The weights of, say, an unreturned call or an unsent email. In the process, he easily, effortlessly extricated himself - and Daivik - from its tyrrany.
Hold on to it kids, hold on !
Daivik was pretty excited about it and was showing it eagerly to Frank, who happened to be the first person he met, and started giving an animated description of its intricate mechanisms. Frank was beginning to get interested in it and was on the point of embarking on a deeper inspection. Quite suddenly, Daivik, catching another friend approaching, snatched it from Frank and ran to the new friend and started describing the details again.
What Daivik did was - by adult conventions - a rather rude thing. Now, imagine if you are Frank, observing and getting interested in an object - something, anything - and it is abruptly, forcibly snatched away. Frank didn't twitch his face, his smile did not vanish. He simply turned around, and in the space of that simple movement found another thing to transfer his interest to. Daivik's grin remained intact throughout this show-snatch-show again procedure.
It took less time to happen than a single heart beat of either Frank or Daivik. Perhaps it is nothing much to write about, but it did keep me rooted in thoughts for a long time afterward. I think what struck me most was the sheer nonchalance of it, a sense of non-happening. In the snatching away act, no offense was meant and certainly none taken. A simple act was performed, it is over, and therefore doesn't exist anymore. In that singularly beautiful act of not acknowledging it, Frank liberated the moment from its potential weights. The weights of, say, an unreturned call or an unsent email. In the process, he easily, effortlessly extricated himself - and Daivik - from its tyrrany.
Hold on to it kids, hold on !
Excellent! And a moment very worthy of being noticed. It's only the accumulation of hurts that make it necessary for adults to expect courtesy. In a better world devoid of intentions of offending, courtesy becomes redundant.
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