Kids Play 17 - Belief

Vic (12 years old) believes that he will be super rich. He believes that it is already happening and the path ahead of him is already laid. He shows enthusiasm for everything and therefore always get what he wants. As to why he thinks like this, it surely beats me. He is just a natural optimist. He told me he is going to make money and love people.

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The other day, he told me he is going to be rich selling oxygen to space going vessels, as fuel. He will make CO2-O2 converter machines, and they will have to buy from him because rockets need oxygen, as fuel. Though I know rockets run on hydrogen rather than oxygen and also that he will have to face the tedium of commercialising such technologies, among many other problems, I encouraged him with his dream.

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I know that with a strong belief, he will overcome all associated problems and also will sort out the technicalities and find out that he needs hydrogen instead, or may be he will discover a technology that uses oxygen. We don't know what may come in the house that the children of today will live in, in their future. We can't even see this house in our dreams now. So what we can do is only to encourage them to do their best and believe in what they want to do.

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Actually, if you look into it, it is not very far off from the way religious people place their absolute trust in God, in whatever they do. Replace the word 'God' with 'Self' and the concept is identical.

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This is very different from how I was brought up. For some reason, Chinese parents love to discourage their children and make them feel small. Subconsciously, they are transfering their fears to their children. May be to them, it is also a way of protecting their children - that just in case they do not make it, it won't be so hard on the kids, since they have been 'forewarned'. So, unless such parents have very strong minded kids, they would succeed in cowing the children's dreams into oblivion.

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That's probably one reason why I had such a bad temper. I had many ideas and things that I love to do as a kid, but was always discouraged. Even after I had my driver's licence, I was consistently spoken into fear about the dangers of driving. And eventually, they succeeded, and I almost got into a serious accident, which becomes a self-fulfiling prophecy that proved that driving a motor vehicle was dangerous.

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We must always be careful with what we burn into the minds of people, especially young minds. Once burned in, they will be conditioned to be fearful instead of feeling the omnipresent and mighty glory to succeed, which is our true nature. So nowadays, I choose my words carefully when I speak. I would always ask, "Does this encourage Love or Fear?"