3 Rabbit Dad
Rabbit Dad, Tiger Mom and the kids
Rabbit Dad was the philosopher, the intellectual, the learned, the new age scholar of religious studies and theology and the dreamer. He read serious books and philosophies of J. Krishnamurti, P. Yogananda, George Gurdjieff, Lu Xun, Bryon, William Wordsworth, Longfellow, Art of War, Yoga, Rene Descartes, Sri Aurobindo, Osho, Tibetan Tantra, Buddhism, Zen, Islam, Taoism, Sufism, a host of other philosophies and the whole works. In short, his knowledge was broad based, perhaps it was 3 feet by 3 feet wide but 1 inch depth or to put it in another manner of speaking, it was only scratching the surface.
Therefore within our family, Rabbit Dad was more of a thinker than doer, more talk than action and more thunder than rain. And he would always be subservient to Tiger Mom who would move heaven and earth to get the children educated, to instill in them social responsibility, to have them embrace some arcade Confucianism ideals of filial piety and to have etiquette and manners as befitting of an Imperial Mandarin Scholar.
I have heard ……….
Philosopher Rabbit was prancing about the forest on a nice summer day when he chanced upon a centipede. The centipede was just emerging from a rock and scampering across some moist dead leaves. Its hundreds of legs were moving in perfect harmony.
“Good morning Mr. Centipede” Rabbit said. “It’s a lovely day.”
“Yes, Mr. Rabbit, is a lovely day for lazing around.”
Out of curiosity, the Rabbit enquired, “I cannot help but wonder aloud that how do you move so fast so with many legs all at the same time. How would you know which leg to move first and which leg to follow? I have 4 legs and it is easy. I just hop, skip and jump.”
The Centipede replied, “I have not seriously pondered on that. Let me think about it tonight and I will give you an answer tomorrow.”
When morrow came, Rabbit came to the spot where he met Centipede the day before. To his horror the Centipede was turning around and around, at times somersaulting and at times trying hard to chase its own telson.
“Hey, what are you doing Mr. Centipede?” said the Rabbit in consternation.
“You are the idiot who put the idea in my head. Previously I can move swiftly without thinking. But the whole night your question puzzled me, so I think hard. The harder I think the harder it is for me to co-ordinate each of my legs. Now I cannot walk properly without thinking of how to move my hundred pairs of legs.
The next time please keep your philosophy and curiosity to yourself.” Retorted the Centipede.
So that is all about the Philosopher Rabbit. Analyzing, philosophizing, dreaming in dreams and in daylight, making (logical or illogical) deductions from general to the particular and/or from particular to the general, maybe going round in circles, starting from the alpha to the omega and then ended back in the alpha state. Rabbit Dad had founts of wisdom, perhaps there were derived from his voracious readings, from his years of experience living abroad, from his highly educated and beloved parents who narrated to him their whole history or from reading car bumper stickers.
The long and short of it was Rabbit Dad just loved to indulge in pondering on the whole universe and the meaning of life. He tried hard to differentiate between the intellect and the instinct, the conscious and the sub-conscious, the gross and the subtle and in the process of his inductive and deductive reasoning, the world had moved on by. He just loved to go “back in time.” He lived on in his belief that everything would come up roses eventually and even in bad times this too would come to pass.
Anyway, the kids have grown up and Rabbit Dad with his old school of thoughts and wisdom may not be so applicable in today’s world. Occasionally the kids still gave him some mercy laughter at his worn out jokes, still listened to him though Rabbit Dad was not sure whether they were hearing it or not and they never forget his birthday, though Rabbit Dad has no wish to celebrate at all.
Rabbit Dad had his own idea of bringing up children. He would rather let them learn things on their own then forced fed them with rote learning as was common with our system of education where the parents always proudly proclaimed that their children scored all As in all subjects.
The Kids in Hong Kong
Anyway, Rabbit Dad believed that they would do better in experiential learning than to memorize school text books. And the best way was to take them kids to see the world, engaged them at such times by throwing them a bone to satiate their hunger for new knowledge and made them worldly-wise and street-smart rather than to become a scholarly nerd.
So much for today.
Category: 3 Rabbit Dad
Thank you John
You have lovely kids, Arthur