Why receive?

It is a very difficult thing: this art of receiving. A client of mine was very upset that her daughter was not allowing her to celebrate her birthday. It was perhaps the last birthday they would have as a family, as the daughter was leaving home for higher studies. The celebration was also not something that was going to be very elaborate. Just a couple of friends over, people she would be very comfortable with, and maybe order food from outside and generally be very happy and joyful at home. But the daughter was so very vehement about not having the celebration, and this hurt the mother. Hurt her because the daughter was not able to understand how much this meant to my client. Hurt because the daughter was so much into celebrating other people’s birthdays, wishing them and making gifts for them….

She tried arguing, discussing it with her, and even went to the extent of talking to her daughter’s friend to try and convince her. Nothing worked, and she finally decided to let it be. Treat the day like any ordinary day. Treat the day like it was not a day that gave her a purpose to her life, the day this bundle of joy entered her life, and how every moment that she watched her grow, she felt fulfilled, and how being with her made all the pains bearable. It was a day when great things happened in the world: Some major discoveries were made, bombs burst, governments changed, and there were so many other incidents that would have hallmarked this year on the calendar. But for her, it was the birth of her daughter. Was it wrong on her part to allow her to rejoice the day? To make her daughter feel special?
I read somewhere a conversation between a pencil and an eraser, where the pencil feels sorry for the latter. I guess we all are like the erasers which somehow knows that one day it would be gone, and it would be replaced with a new one, but who is still happy with the job it is doing. Sometimes, along the way, they get hurt, they feel even unused at times, and when the eraser becomes too small by constant use, they are replaced. Does the pencil realize how it hurts the eraser at times, and does the pencil try and avoid making mistakes I wonder?
I have been a pencil too I guess in my life, and now it is my turn to be an eraser. Let me be the eraser and leave happy eraser shavings as memories for my children.
Mohana Narayanan
March 7,2011