Things I Want My Daughter To Know

Image by Gabriela Camerotti via Flickr

The idea of this post comes from a comment my friend Hevel left on my previous post and I paraphrased the title of a novel by Elisabeth Noble...

Hevel said that the values, norms and traditions that I would want to teach Maya are my values and are different from the ones in the society in which I live.

Actually, the values that I want to teach my daughter are not different from the universal ones and I do hope that they all the values of the society in which I live today. Otherwise there is really no point......
I want to teach her to be, above all, a good human being. Not to harm other beings (human or not), to respect the uniqueness of each of us. I want to teach her that being different should be a good thing, that this fantastic world is like a mosaic of differentness and this is what makes us special. I want to teach her to be tolerant and to help others, to have an open heart and to love with all her being...

But I also want her to learn that we are allowed to make mistakes in life, but everything comes with a price...

I want to teach my daughter to be, above all, proud of who she is. It is not a shame to be different and when I say different, I mean not only different because you believe in one God or another, but different when you have another skin color, different because you were born physically different. There are so many shades of different in this world that, in the end, being different is a good thing. Because it teaches you a lot not about yourself, but about others. Because, in the end, we are different only in the eyes of the ones that perceive us that way.

My daugher is a great person. She is happy by nature, always with a smile on her face. And I will protect her innocence and well being with the price of my soul. I would go to Hell and back just to know she is safe. Safe from narrow minded people, ignorants and extremists.