Discipline
By
Romil Ong
When I was a young
boy, age 5, I lived with my Grandmother’s house together with my elder sister.
At young age I was trained to do things differently; to elaborate further, I
was trained to do; household chores, cooking, table manner and even slaughtering
chickens, washing clothes with my bare hands, trained to determine what’s right
from wrong, proper manner, right conduct and good deeds, these are as far as I
remember.
We are trained
differently including the animals that we had, such as dogs, cats, chicken.
I remember and I will
never put out on my mind of what discipline my grandmother imparted us; each of
us including animals has its own discipline in regards to calling, feeding and
etc.
Each of us had a code
for calling through a sound of bell, if the bell rang, all of us will stop for
whatever work we had just to pay attention to the bell, even the animals, whatever
they were doing, and they will stop just to wait attentively to the bell
ringing. Nobody and no one ignore the bell or else you’ll be in trouble and
punished.
If you have a single
mistake committed, you’ll be in trouble; you will be punished accordingly
identical to errors you’ve been through.
Years and years had
passed, my grandmother teaches me how to cook sweet & sour fish dishes, I
admit I made a mistake while frying the fish, I took her towel to use as hand
gloves to a very hot frying pan due to sudden fear that the fish might be
destroyed by fire. I was nervous and my mind collapse, don’t know what to do; I
didn’t even thought instead of hand gloves I took her face towel, and that was
my biggest mistake and indeed I was in trouble.
I had very hard
punishment but worthy of having it, she will going to put hot chili on my eyes
because I am blind and not careful to things I had seen. But I run away because
of too much fear raging in my very soul and that was the first rebellion I made
and never came back to my grandmother’s house until and even to her death.
I am now 36 years of
age and happily married, blessed with handsome son and beautiful daughter, for
many years had passed; I’d realized the beauty and important the discipline was
taught for me. She educated me on how to be responsible and being responsible
to the things I will manifest in the future, she taught me to be more
discipline than what other person had, she taught me to accept great personal
responsibility but I ignore it and that was my immense mistake. If I could
rewind back the past I would prefer to stay at my grandmother’s house and
continue to gain and acquire knowledge from her but it’s too late, past had
passed and I don’t have recourse to reel back.
One thing I remember
when feeding; dogs will not draw closer if they will hear the bell which is not
intended for them and so as the cat and chicken. What a beauty of discipline I
can imagine- but too late.
All
I have to do now is to be more discipline, Perhaps the most important personal choice I should make is to accept complete responsibility
for everything I
am and everything I will ever be. This is the great turning
point in my
life.
