Scripture, Society & sometime family encourage us to fall in line. They encourage us accept popular meaning. Recently I asked some of my friends how would they explain Ganpati Visarjan to a kid. Most answers I got were having element of spirituality or philosophy in it.
These answers may be correct and they may be wrong, but they definitely made me think that, am I the only one who is thinking “I do not know!”, can be an answer. Yet I strongly believe thats the only honest answer.
It seems like Every one knows from where Ganpati comes , why we do visarjan , where he goes and why he comes back . It seems its almost like every one tracking ganpati like we track flights!
I have no problem with people having beliefs. By all means believe in what you think is correct. But why to make it “easy” for kids in the way we made it easy for our self?
Religion is a personal concept, and we should not just “pass it on”. Why not just say to her/him something which trigger inquiry? Which encourage a kids to seek their own answers, their own version of truth.
Next time if a kid ask you “what happens to Ganpati after visarjan?”, consider following answers -
“I wonder, what do you think?”
or
“I really dont know, what do you think?”
or
“I have some thoughts, but I would love to know what you think?”
or simply
“I dont know, go figure out yourself”.
