Positive Story: Real Life Example of Non Violence
Dr. Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and founder of the Gandhi Institute for Non-violence, in his June 9 lecture at the University of Puerto Rico, shared the following story as an example of non-violence in parenting: …….
One day, my father asked me to drive him to town for an all-day
conference, and I jumped at the chance. …….
When I dropped my father off that morning, he said, ‘I will meet you
here at 5:00 p.m., and we will go home together.’ After hurriedly
completing my chores, I went straight to the nearest movie theatre. I
got so engrossed in a John Wayne double feature that I forgot the time. It was 5:30 before I remembered. By the time I ran to the garage and got the car and hurried to where my father was waiting for me, it was almost 6:00.
“He anxiously asked me, ‘Why were you late?’ I was so ashamed of
telling him I was watching a John Wayne western movie that I said, ‘The car wasn’t ready, so I had to wait,’ not realising that he had already called the garage.
When he caught me in the lie, he said: ‘There’s something wrong in the
way I brought you up that didn’t give you the confidence to tell me the
truth. In order to figure out where I went wrong with you, I’m going to walk home 18 miles and think about it.’ So, dressed in his suit and dress shoes, he began to walk home in the dark on mostly unpaved, unlit roads. I couldn’t leave him, so for five-and-a-half hours I drove behind him, watching my father go through this agony for a stupid lie that I uttered. I decided then and there that I was never going to lie again.
I often think about that episode and wonder if he had punished me, the
way we punish our children, whether I would have learned a lesson at
all. I don’t think so. I would have suffered the punishment and gone on
doing the same thing. But this single non-violent action was so
powerful that it is still as if it happened yesterday. That is the power of
non-violence.”
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