“Mum, you don’t have to shout…” my eight-year-old daughter calmly told me the other day.
I had just realised that she hadn’t done something I had told her to do earlier and I got frustrated, so I must have shouted. At first, I was offended at the admonition, I mean, how dare this small girl who was a tiny fraction of my age correct me yet she was the one in the wrong?
And then it occurred to me that just as our children learn from us, we can learn from them. She was right, I didn’t have to shout, even though I was unconscious of raising my voice for her to hear what I was saying. I could have said what I needed to say in a calm manner and the message would have still gotten across.
Other people are able to see things about us that we might never see, children included, who I have realised are very good judges of character and are able to spot dishonesty from a mile away. I’m generally open to correction, and though there are times when being corrected stings, especially when I am sure that I have done a good job, I am mostly gracious about it.
Back to characteristics about ourselves that we are blind to, I was once invited to a colleague’s birthday at the office, a short simple affair that involved a few of us singing happy birthday, after which the birthday girl cut the cake. As we stood there chatting, a younger colleague who had joined the company a couple of months before told me that she had always thought me as snobbish because I wear a stern look that makes me seem unapproachable.
“Kumbe you’re nice?” She concluded, surprise in her voice.
I was sincerely taken aback because I have always thought myself as the friendliest person on this earth, and I told her as much, feeling a bit offended, only for other colleagues to agree with her. That is the day I learnt that I walk around wearing ‘sura ya kazi’ which many interpret as being aloof and standoffish. That assessment disturbed me a lot, because even after some honest soul-searching, I still thought I was quite amiable. But I had to agree that we can learn a lot about ourselves from others, and become better human beings if only we put our egos aside once in a while and really listened to what people say about us with an open mind.
On my daughter admonishing me, I could not help going down memory lane and picturing myself at her age – had I tried to correct my mother, I would have probably gotten a resounding slap that would have left my ears ringing for hours.
People of my generation were weaned on a diet of fear, we were obedient simply because we were afraid of the repercussions of disobedience, not because we were good children. We’re in a different era now, and a good thrashing even has a fancy name, “spanking”, which does not inspire any kind of terror.
