How much is enough?

How much is enough? How far should I try to impose my will on someone: on my pupil, my employee, my spouse, my under-age son or daughter, my friend, or even my friend's dog?

I watch parents insisting that their offspring do this or that, things that sometimes seem unreasonable to me, and then either recapitulating or metering harsh punishment when the child does not or cannot comply and has got into such a tizzy. Not that I didn't make plenty of mistakes when I had young children.

I grant that, to maintain any semblance of order, there do need to be accepted lines of authority but none of us like to be forced to do something that is unreasonable.  In the Le Petit Prince the king's "rule was not only absolute: it was also universal."

"For what the king fundamentally insisted upon was that his authority should be respected. He tolerated no disobedience. He was an absolute monarch. But, because he was a very good man, he made his orders reasonable.

" 'If I ordered a general,' he would say, by way of example, 'if I ordered a general to change himself into a sea bird, and if the general did not obey me, that would not be the fault of the general. It would be my fault.' "

I find this hyperbole to be a useful premise in my dealings with other folk, although it does rather tend towards the lowest denominator. In contrast was our new music teacher at secondary school who galvanised me (and others) from musical indifference to singing in the school choir (once I even sang a solo in a school concert, can you imagine?) and playing flute in the school orchestra. For this I honour him, and others like him who can believe and instil the unbelievable in others. For the general to be able to fly like Jonathan Livingston Seagull would have been a wonderful thing.

The point I am trying to make (maybe not very well) is summed up in the term "human dignity". Martin Luther King declares it in his "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.' ". That I should aim to honour and respect equally every person regardless of their age, station, nationality, health, cleanliness or creed.

I know that I should be impartial, that I should love those that hurt me. I would love to be the sort of teacher who imparts life and not just knowledge. One who lives by and upholds Godly standards. I have these things as my aim, but I am sorry to say that I have yet a ways to go.