The traveller!

She is aged about 65.

She lives in a small town in Maharashtra called Miraj.
She has been living a healthy life full of family and life around.
She has enjoyed her life like any other middle class Indian family member.

Except, may be she is the shortest distance traveller ever!
Her world is limited to a circle with radius of may be 40 kilometers from her home.
That's the maximum she has travelled across all her life so far!!

And that's because, she walks, only walks!

She has not taken any bus, auto rickshaw, van, car, cycle or any other type of vehicle.

Just walks!

And the main cause is she suffers from "motion sickness". When she was young, as she remembers at around age of 4 or 5, she had trouble travelling on any vehicle. She used to fell sick every time she took any kind of transportation. And eventually, it so happened that she and her family/parents gave up on her taking any transportation.

As she grew up older, she had this fear all the time, and never ever tried any other ways again. She had all her schooling near her house. She kept her friend circle only to the friends who lived within walking distance. Marriages, naming ceremonies, birthdays - all those functions that could not be reached by walk, she skipped them!

Her life has been tagged by this invisible border that she has never been able to cross!

While the world has moved far away for others, she has created her own small world - and I literally mean small!

Well as the wiki says, there are three types of motion sickness.

1. Motion sickness caused by motion that is felt but not seen
2. Motion sickness caused by motion that is seen but not felt
3. Motion sickness caused when both systems detect motion but they do not correspond.

Now I doubt whether the motion sickeness is the real problem here! Motion sickness could be cured over time and with growing age. So my guess is, she and her entire family has been suffering from assumed constraints!

Ken Blanchard, the author of well known series One Minute Manager coined this term assumed constraints. He defines an assumed constraint as

A belief, based on past experience, that limits current and future experiences. An assumed constraint may be holding you hostage of negative internal dialogue, excuses, and blaming statements.

May be somebody could have explained all this to her family. 

May be she had come out of her assumed constraints. 

Then may be her world would be been much bigger than what it is now!

The funniest thing part of her story is she does not even regret about her situation! She loves her life, just like this elephant does, without knowing that he can actually break the chain and go out free. 

What could be better concluding remark than this one...

 Freedom is of the mind, not of the body.

Learning to unlearn!

It's been just over two weeks we got Arnav his second tricycle!

The first one was a gift to him on his first b'day, which is called a Push-On trike - tricycle (or something like that). It doesn't have pedals

Arnav has been happily riding that one for a year! And we thought he needed an upgrade, he needed a bike with pedals. So he got the new bike around this Deepavali.

What an upgrade it was!

But then it did not take us long to realize that he was not using the pedals!

No he wasn't, we confirmed. 

These days were not without motivation for Arnav to use the pedals. But nothing has turned into success. 

So my agenda for today was to make Arnav use the pedals on the new trike. 

And so as soon as Arnav got ready after his first chocolate drink of the day, we both were set for the ride. Little had I known, it would turn a mini-adventure for me!

It started with me running with him and pushing the trike for him. His feet nicely rested on pedals when I was pushing the trike. But as soon as it stopped, he went back to pushing it regular way.

"Okay", I said, "I should teach him to pedal one at a time". And then, I was showing him how to pedal, with hands, with my feet and even making him stand on the trike!

He enjoyed every bit of it. And everytime I put him back on road he would just not use the pedals.

It's as if he was in complete denial to learn to use pedals.

For a moment, I felt like "We should have trained him on trike with pedals in the first place."

And on second thought, I just need to teach him to forget the old way of pushing the trike, only then he will learn the other ways.

Hmmmm.. that's quite a realization! Don't we all people have same problem? Don't I have the same problem? Unlearning something that's been practices for years, is not an easy task. In-fact we all get trapped into our practices.

The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn. - Gloria Steinem, Journalist.

But then seems like there is another challenge too. 

Not to unlearn what you have learned is the most necessary kind of learning. - Antisthenes, Philosopher. 

Back to Arnav.

He and I both did not make to ride the trike with pedals. The agenda for the days remains incomplete. May be someday we together will succeed in unlearning things for good.

But for now, the life moves on, and so did Arnav. He gathered his friends and engaged into something interesting and leaving for me some thoughts behind.