Forbidden ...

The fact that you are reading this blog now because the word of "Forbidden ...". You probably wondering what is this blog all about. You are not alone, even during ancient times, Eve was drawn to the forbidden fruit.

I remember when I was very young, probably when I was nine or ten years old. My grandma just passed away and according to my ancestor's tradition, the living should not look at the coffin when it was closing. Knowing me, my mother explicitly told me not to peek. Somehow those words fueled my curiosity and obviously, I must peek. I remembered that very night; I had a nightmare that my grandma was chasing me in that gown she was wearing on the day she was buried. Thinking about it now, my skin is crawling.

You would think that I must have learned my lesson somehow. Think again … I repeated the same when I was in high school. Some psychic medium, a person who could communicate with spirits, claimed that there was one lingering spirit located at the back of the house, where I stayed, nearby my high school. Here I was in the middle of the night, and I had the urge to check it out. I went and stood in front of the place and stared at it for awhile. The next day, I told all of my house-mates that there was no spirit at all since I couldn’t locate one.  (Gosh! Not sure what I was thinking back then. Go figure!)

--courtesy of stationbay.com

I was just a typical teenager who happened to have high curiosity on certain things. My father once told me that spirits are afraid of human. He said that we, human, have something that they don’t have, the light of life. I believed him totally, but at the same time, I was curious at why would others were so afraid of ghosts. I didn't see any reason why and I was out to prove them wrong. Whatever the reasons might had been, luckily, I was not interested in something dangerous. We tend to have high curiosity on certain things, the forbidden ones, of course. Just because we forbid our next generation from doing something, it still doesn’t change the fact that they are curious about that 'something.' Even worse, we may have feed their curiosity by forbidding them.

Among us, adults, sometimes, forbidden things seem a bit juicier. Just that, we have learned to control ourselves or at the very least, hide our curiosity. The challenge here is how we can assist our next generation to divert their curiosity to the less treacherous stuff. My recent blog about a book called, “The Tipping Point,” by Malcolm Gladwell, mentioned that there was an epidemic of suicide in Micronesia. Majority of the times, were done by children out of curiosity. They were experimenting with something that they should not.

Hopefully in this journey of life, we could assist our next generation to flourish their curiosity in safer ways. Perhaps by providing those with high curiosity with more information would prevent them from venture out from the safer path. Perhaps by walking side by side, we could be there with them when they are experimenting the forbidden.

Until next stop,
Journey of Life