Acharya Prashant recounts a personal story from his childhood to illustrate a feeling of helplessness. When he was six and his sister was three, their mother was away in the hospital. During this time, while playing, he unintentionally broke his sister's arm. He felt very guilty, a feeling compounded by a previous incident where she was accidentally burned by hot curry while he was chasing her. These events gave him a shock to his consciousness. Following the fracture, his sister had a plaster cast on her arm which would itch. Being a small child, she would try to scratch the itch by putting pens or pencils inside the cast, which started to dismantle it. The speaker, feeling responsible and having been warned by the doctor that fiddling with the arm could lead to permanent damage, felt it was his duty to watch her constantly. He was very concerned, but all day long, she would continue to do something with her arm. The speaker identifies this as his first memory of great powerlessness. He desperately wanted her to recover, but she was engaging in self-destructive behavior. He felt trapped; he couldn't scold her due to his own guilt, he couldn't give up on her, he couldn't get angry, and he couldn't stop what was happening. He concludes that this is how a teacher feels: knowing something is not right for the other person, yet being unable to stop them from doing it.