This post is not going to be long as I've sat through half of my Bangalore-Pune flight doing nothing. Writing is such a boring activity at times and it's impossible to feel motivated to do it. Thinking happens on its own, but expressing it is a lot of work, and not so exciting at times. Anyway, now that I've started it, let's see where this goes.
I was part of an interesting discussion today with two of my colleagues. One was an American devout Catholic. The other was an Indian devout Hindu. And I was an agnostic mostly non-practicing someone. The American colleague is a much older man with kids and grandkids. And the Indian guy is my age and has a kid. And my kids are not born yet.
The topic of discussion was freedom of religion - whether our kids have it. And I found people had quite interesting views, some of them surprised me quite a bit. That someone our generation thinks that kids have no right to choose their faith, particularly one that's different from his/her parents', and that someone at an age like 17 is not wise enough to make a choice of religious faith surprised me. It also surprised me, though not as much, that it was deeply hurting for an American person to see his kids choose a different faith than his. But then, over the years, he has come to terms with it, and has realized that one has a right to choose his/her religion, and any religion is good as long as it teaches the right values of life.
The argument of the Indian guy, my generation, was two fold - one, that kids have no right to cause pain to their parents by their actions like these; and two, that kids of 17 years and even (older) grown ups are not qualified enough to make choices of faith. They must basically follow what their parents tell them, and not use their minds and make other choices coz what those minds tell them is nonsense.
I agree one mustn't hurt anyone, more so the parents, but if the parents are not thinking right and are hurting themselves for wrong reasons, should the kid pay the price for it by continuing to live a fake life that's not his true self? Of course not. Fixing it once might fix it for all future generations, and would be a great service to a lot of people born and unborn.
And on not being capable of making the right choices... It's the right to choose that makes life more meaningful, rather than choosing right, which nobody knows for sure anyway. And remember, the kid also has only one life which he/she wants to live happily. He should not be denied his right to experiment and search for truth, meaning and realities of the world by making him feel guilty about it.
