Gift Wrap

What pleases you more: a gift or the gift wrap? Presentation matters at every stage of life. We value the present first by its appearance and then by who presented it and last comes the present. This is human nature. What pleases our eye reaches our mind first. That is why we take lot of effort to gift wrap any present. How is this gift wrap placed in our life?

We believe kids are gift of God. Current trend of photo shoots of newborns makes us fall in love with the way these gifts are presented to us. When I say baby is a gift, then where is the gift wrap? This gift doesn’t come to us with a gift wrap but during the journey of life we as parents start wrapping our gift in various ways and means which include love, care, protection, concern, possessiveness, authority, fear, anxiety, anxiousness and lot of other emotional and materialistic aspects. We gift wrap this young life so they feel safe and protected. But in that process, we ignore one important aspect. This gift wrap looks beautiful but it also blindfolds our kids to see the reality.

We all have seen gift wrappers, they are beautiful inside out but are never transparent or even translucent. They look different from both sides so some of them can be used inside out and it will give you an impression of a different wrapper altogether. Then why we parents lean towards wrapping that little gift of ours every time we see there is a problem around and make it look beautiful but not enrich the value of it by letting it thrive for its worth of existence? Our protection and possessiveness towards our kids is just like these gift wrappers – they can be used inside out, and it can make the situation look different every time it is wrapped around a problem. When I try to protect my daughter from a problem, she might feel safe initially but later until that blindfold is out, she is ignorant and remains out of track of her own life. I am not here to solve her problems; I am here in her life to show her how she can deal with her problems. We always focus on making life easy, simple and beautiful for our kids which ideally is a fantasy. When I was in school, I always thought it is so nice for adults who are working, they can just come back home and do whatever they want – no homework. Being a student, work never ends. Study in school, then come back home and again study, during exams, study more and that seemed like never ending. But few days back I heard my husband saying this to our daughter: what stress do you have, you just have to go to school and do your work. As adults we feel childhood is beautiful and stress free and as kids they feel its so good to be adults. This shows us that life can never be like what we show our kids. So, why gift wrap every unpleasant moment and only show them good things and present them with a rosy picture of life? Who will show them the reality of roses having thorns?

As parents its natural to always wish for a simple, happy and problem free life for our kids but in reality, life has its own ways of presenting problems, failures, disappointments and complications. So, if we don’t expose our kids to face difficulties, how will they learn to handle them? Problems don’t come to us when we are prepared to face it, but we have to learn to deal with it as and when they reach us. When in school, I never had any friends. My dad’s job made us shift places every 2years, so no school had a long association in my life. I remember my teachers from these schools but not my classmates. One reason I can think of is when I was failing to make friends of my age my mother always told me, “its okay, I am there for you. You don’t have to go and play with them and fight or be upset. You can always be with me.” I accepted her advise and stayed with her with no friends until my college days. Here I was no longer a kid but did step into the shoes of an adult so,I was able to make friends now. My problem of making friends as a kid was gift wrapped to me and I was made to see what my mother showed me i.e., “I am your friend. You don’t need anyone who will unnecessarily hurt you.” Her intension was to protect me from the pain which did make me sad and her too. But what I missed as a child was the experience of sharing like minded thoughts of kids, the learnings we learn from peers, the experience of varied perspective of the same age. As an adult I have no problem mingling with others because now I have ample experience to deal with them which I gained from my childhood days. When I did benefit from one aspect, I did lose on the other. We sometimes fail to see what we are denying our kids while we focus on protecting them from every little pain. Life does look beautiful while it is gift wrapped but these wrappers are temporary. One point of time we have to rip them off the gift to actually enjoy the gift-Life.

We gift life to our kids. Once gifted, it becomes theirs and no longer remains as ours even from day 1. No matter how many times you wrap that gift, the life within that gift wrap, opens the wrapper and comes out. We may be successful in protecting our kids from one problem or pain but while doing so are we able to teach them what they are bound to learn from that pain? Pain is not a problem and problems are not always painful. It is the viewpoint we develop to see that makes us what we are.

Gift is wrapped only once when it is first gifted. It is valued only then. If the same gift is wrapped again and again just to beautify the gift, neither the gift nor the wrapper attains its true value. Don’t gift wrap your child’s life. Your duty is to show them what gift they have received from you – their life. Teach them to value that, make them the individual who will respect the gift you gave them and not value the wrapper which only beautifies and blindfolds the reality. Once unwrapped even the most expensive and beautiful wrapper should be discarded. Value of life is valued for what it is and how we value it. Enjoy the gift wrapper before the gift reveals itself. Once revealed life is more valuable than what blindfolds it.

Value the gift wrap while the gift needs it.
Value the gift while the wrap unfolds it.

Everything in life does have its value. As an infant even that tiny life has to be wrapped, but as life grows, the wrapper shrinks, and life expands. As parents we should learn when to unwrap the gift and hand it over to its worthy owner. Once done we have to be confident enough not to blindfold the gift but to handhold the gift when in need.