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are saying yes to the boss, in the home they are saying yes to the wife. They have forgotten completely that the word `no' exists. And it strange that `no' defines you, gives you a clear-cut personality; `yes' dissolves you.
One should first learn to say no.
Your yes is meaningful only when you are also capable of saying no. If you are incapable of saying no, your `yes' is a robot `yes'. It is meaningless.
Children should be treated with great respect. All the societies have done just the opposite: they have been teaching children to respect the parents, respect the elders, the grandparents.
It was a continuous problem for me because in India the families are joined. In my family there were almost sixty people; everybody was an elder, and there was a continual exercise to touch their feet. Finally I said to my father, "Enough is enough. I don't see any point in it. I don't have any respect for these people; I don't see anything worth respecting in them. Why should I touch their feet?" I refused. My father said, "That is going to be a trouble."
I said, "That is your problem, that is not my problem. I have solved my problem. I will certainly touch the feet of somebody whom I feel respect for, whom I feel some deep love for. But why should I go on doing this exercise to every person for whom I don't have any feeling?"
But this is the way the children are being brought up: respect the old people. Why? Just because they are old? Has oldness something respectable?
And this is the same logic: respect the people who are dead, because they are even older. Respect the people who have been dead for thousands of years, because nobody can beat them. You are making the living respect the dead. You are making the fresh, the newly sprouting leaf respect the dead leaves which have fallen on the ground, or are just going to fall down.
In a right upbringing of children, children should be respected, because the old people are soon going to disappear, but children have a long life to live.
And respect has an alchemical effect. If children are respected, the very respect will prevent them from doing many things -- it goes
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