Thursday, February 24, 2011

Conversation: EKATVA Into Our Daily Lives

Today, Rakeshbhai, from Travel Center, a local travel agency came by to visit us after dance practice. He manages the acquisition of clients’ passports and we were kindly connected to him through Darpana. I called him over because the actual passport process is very intricate and becomes much more complex when the people we are seeking passports for are children that don’t have typical addresses, proofs of residence, birth certificates, etc.
Here is a typical home address of one of our kids:
“Hanuman Na Mandhir Same, Nadi Kinare, Ram-Rehim Nagar Tekra, Beherampura, Jamalpur, Ahmedabad”
“In front of the Hanuman Temple, by the River, in the Ram-Rehim slum area, Jamalpur town, Ahmedabad”.
With the amount of challenges we may go through along this journey, we gathered the kids around so that the kids can understand the challenges of this entire experiment just a tad bit more. The amount of energy, sacrifice and love that so many people are putting into this experiment of ‘love and potential’ is enormous. The conversation led to a variety of topics, but most importantly the meaning of EKATVA moving forward.
So far this EKATVA journey has been one of us experimenting with truth and love as a group within the context of when we get together. What we pushed further on in this conversation with the kids, was that if this experiment was going to continue moving forward, we all need to grasp the meaning of EKATVA not only in this project, but push it strongly into all aspects of our personal lives. Then and only then will this project’s meaning start taking shape. If not, its not worth the trouble.
This conversation was important because I really want the kids to start examining and experimenting with the values and ideas that they are learning through Ekatva, into their personal lives: at home, at school, with their friends and family, etc.
Keeping the world clean, doesn’t only mean doing so when we are in a group and we are doing daily cleaning activities. No. It means, understanding the good behind why we want to keep the world clean and doing so at home, in our neighborhood, wherever  we may be walking, whenever people may not be looking.
Being kind or doing acts of kindness, doesn’t only mean doing so when we are in a group and we are doing kindness activities. No. It means understanding the feeling and the reason why we should be kind and serving others outside of our project, because our heart says it’s the right thing to do.
This conversation to me is a big step with the kids. Because I want this to be a primary focus moving forward: bringing EKATVA into our personal lives, outside of our project.
It’s tough to expect this out of children of this age. But I wouldn’t doubt their abilities either. The kids are brilliant and resilient and have ripe seeds inside of them. We just need to keep walking on the path and let nature take its course. The conversation we had today was extremely important, but was just a tiny dot on the journey.
Love.

1 comment:

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