Girl, Set your Standards High
Questioner: Pranam Acharya Ji, I'm the father of a high school daughter, and I have just one daughter. Probably, I have tried to raise her exactly on the lines that you have always told me.
She's very good at studies, she is a fantastic dancer—she completed her Arangetram and graduated in Bharatanatyam already. She is in her high school basketball team, she knows how to play musical instruments, and she wins poem competitions every year in her school and amongst all the regional school districts. Recently, she was selected into one of the top high schools by clearing an entrance exam. And you won't believe the pressure she has, because in the school she was selected for, there are more girls than boys, actually. Okay, so the ratio is a little skewed.
And the pressure that she feels is that some of the other girls are more better in—I'm unable to come up with the word ‘Adaaein’, that the other girls have boyfriends. But, you know, she is more focused on all of that.
How do I convince my daughter? I would say, you know, how do I raise my daughter so that she doesn't feel that pressure, even though she's doing better in all aspects of life?
And the second thing, which is related exactly to that, is how women are unable to... Think about it. At the same time that the Soccer World Cup was happening last year, everybody was glued only to the men's Argentina cricket team and how Messi was playing. Which is great—I'm not against Messi here, okay? But at the same time, the Indian women's cricket team was also doing really well, and nobody was discussing that at all.
I feel sometimes that it's not just society's fault—I feel that women themselves do not watch whether it is women's cricket or women's basketball or any of the women's sports. The day when women will start watching women's sports and supporting women's sports activities, they themselves will do well. So, you know, that's that.
So, there are two questions—one at a generic level and one at a personal example level. That's what my question was.
Acharya Prashant: You see, the standards have to be set very high. It's like when you exercise with 15 kg weights, after that, the 5 kg ones just stop mattering—the standard has been raised.
Similarly, she has to be introduced to women who really are worthy of being remembered. Then, her internal standards will rise to a point where she'll stop caring for the stylos and the hipsters.
Otherwise, if she feels that these are the only ones available in her world to compare herself against, obviously she'll feel left behind or disadvantaged. The standards have to be very, very high now.
And why must you allow your environment to dictate your standards? Let those standards come from books, documentaries, videos, and other sources—books primarily.
If she, for example, spends an entire week reading the life story of Marie Curie, how, after that, will she afford to give respect to a certain, let say, Pari, Pari in her class, who is a dimwit from here but is fantastically admired because of her body, style, dressing, and boyfriends?
After you've been with Curie, how will you respect Pari? That's the thing. That's why education is the real thing. Give her real, solid role models, and then she will become not just disregardful but disdainful of all these typical teenagers.
If I do not know what kind of highness is possible, then any kind of lowness will become the gold standard for me. That's why reading is so important. Otherwise, anybody in your environment will come and influence you and boss you from within.
And it happens a lot in school and in college—some local kind of stud just becomes the dominant hero. And who is he? A worthless chap. But he can take away a very large chunk of your mind and life.
We all know of these people from our college days, don't we? Some random worthless fellow, but he dominates the scene in the school, college, and university. And he dominates it so much that he can influence a lot of his batchmates to take wrong kinds of decisions.
Inductive effect—one wrong role model, one very wrong kind of mediocre but powerful person—mediocre but powerful, attractive, and glitzy. And this fellow becomes the impression creator, the goal setter, and he induces a lot of batchmates into the wrong kinds of attitudes, lifestyle, and ultimately, wrong life decisions. And that can be taken care of very easily—just give your daughter the right role models.
Right role models. Give her great books. See what her preferred mode of assimilation is. If it's visual, take her to the right documentaries, the right movies. See how she likes to absorb information and give that to her.
And there are so, so many names—so many names. We've talked about them frequently, even on AP Circle—women worth respecting, women worth even worshiping. And they exist. They have existed in history.
Why must we not take note of them? Why must we not introduce those glorious women to our daughters? But that's not being done. Mainstream education is not doing that. All right, let fathers and mothers do that.
Otherwise, the danger is very real. Some Pari will become her idol—"I want to be like Pari." And then, she'll drop her dancing, her sports, her recitation, her poems, her elocution, her passion. Everything, she'll drop it all and just start chasing boyfriends so that she can stand up to somebody like Pari.
I call these nodes of evil. There are not too many, but they are highly influential. They set the bar. They have to be fought against. And they can be very young. Typically, we don't want to associate the word "evil" with a teenager, but the reality is yes—even teenagers can be evil. A 15-year-old can be evil. That does not mean that the 15-year-old has to be killed. That means that he has to be corrected.
Maybe, as parents, you and her mother need to sit together and, first of all, figure out who are the names you must introduce your daughter to.
Is she reading something from Sarojini Naidu? If she's interested in Hindi, has she been brought to Mahashweta Devi or Mahadevi Verma? The names are comparatively fewer when it comes to women—fewer, but they still exist, don't they?
What—10 male poets? You will have four female poets as well. And four is sufficient. You introduce her to these four. You have freedom fighters, you have scientists, you have politicians, you have sportspersons. In all walks of human activity, you do have women role models, and young girls must be introduced to them.
Otherwise, they will simply chase boyfriends, just as boys chase girlfriends. And they'll dress up, try to act adult, and get into all kinds of nonsense.
