1701 Two taboos
The wind outside seemed to have weakened, and the rain had eased. No one could watch the news because of the lack of electricity, so no one knew if the typhoon had passed or if it had just changed direction temporarily.
After listening to Cai meiwen’s story, everyone finally knew that she had experienced an unusual event and understood her difficulties. It could only be said that she thought further and more carefully than ordinary parents. Not only did she consider the situation when the pet was alive, but she also considered her daughter’s feelings when the pet died.
If it were a lot of big-hearted parents, they would definitely be very open-minded and say that if their pets died, then so be it. They were just children, and they would forget about it after a few days of sadness. What could happen?
But in fact, every child who had a pet when they were young, even if it was only for a short time, would not forget the sadness and pain of the pet’s death when they grew up. The better a child’s relationship with a pet, the sadder they would be when they lost their pet. No one could say for sure if this would have a long-term impact on a child’s psychology and character. After all, the human brain and mental world were very complicated, full of mysteries like the universe.
Cai meiwen’s experience reminded Zhang Zian of Stephen King’s horror novel,”pet cemetery,” which had been put on the screen twice. There were some subtle similarities between the two.
In “pet cemetery,” the mother experienced a terrible death at the age of 8. The victim was her sister. Before her death, she was tortured by an illness, which left a deep psychological shadow on her. So when the Father tried to explain the concept of life and death to his young daughter, he flew into a rage.
The young daughter had a cat and treated it as a treasure. One day, the cat was killed by a passing car when it went out to play. The Father couldn’t bear to see his daughter sad because of the loss of his beloved cat, so he made an extremely wrong decision … The rest of the story was irrelevant.
Because of the shadow of death when she was young, Cai meiwen didn’t let her daughter keep pets with short lifespans. She didn’t want to see her daughter grieve when her pets died too early. She had the shadow of the male and female characters in Stephen King’s book.
If it was just horror, starting from horror and finally horror, then it was no different from fast food online novels. However, Stephen King was the King of Horror novels, and his books were all about human nature. Take the book “pet cemetery” for example. Under the cover of a horror novel, it was actually talking about the importance of life and death.
Assuming that after the mother’s sister got an incurable disease, the elders knew that her sister would die and explained the correct view of life and death to the mother in advance, then the mother would not be left with a psychological shadow that she could not let go of when her sister died. Later, when the Father tried to explain the view of life and death to the daughter, she would not rudely interrupt the Father.
If the young daughter had the right view of life and death, she would have been more courageous to face the death of her cat lover, and the series of tragedies that followed would not have happened.
Similarly, Cai meiwen’s first encounter with death was when she brushed shoulders with a cruel murderer, and then she experienced the death of her beloved dog. Before that, her parents had never talked to her about the death.
It had to be said that many China parents were like this. It was extremely taboo to talk about embarrassment and death with their children. They thought that these two things were extremely dirty and unbearable. Parents believed that as long as they didn’t say anything, their children would not be exposed to these two things.
As for when to say it, they would probably never say it. They felt that their children would naturally understand when they grew up, so there was no need to say it.
But could they really get their wish? As long as they kept their mouths shut, the child would always remain pure and innocent?
News of junior high school girls giving birth in the toilet or junior high school boys stabbing their classmates dozens of times in a row was actually not uncommon anymore.
As children nowadays were generally precocious, the taboo of parents made children ignorant and defenseless the first time they faced sex and death. It was inevitable that they would make big mistakes, and the root of the problem was the parents.
Many schools had popularized sex education courses, but it seemed that the school and parents didn’t care about life and death.
The other reason why parents and schools avoided talking about death was probably because they felt that death was very difficult to explain. The parents ‘education level was uneven, and even they did not really understand death. How could they explain it to their children and let them understand?
Atheism occupied a dominant position in China Society, but this also made parents more at a loss when talking about the concept of life and death.
Parents in Western countries were a little less troublesome. If it was convenient, they could tell their children that their dead pets and family members had gone to heaven to accompany God. This way, their children could accept and understand it more easily. When their children grew up, they could talk about the concept of life and death on a deeper level.
What would the China parents say? Are you going to tell the child that your dog went to the heavenly court to accompany the Jade Emperor? Or did he go to the Western Heaven to accompany Buddha Tathagata? This didn’t seem to match.
Maybe the child would cry and ask,”can I see it in the next episode of Journey to the West?”
After all, the Paradise in the West only existed in people’s imagination, while the heavenly court in the East had already been deeply rooted in people’s hearts decades ago …
For difficult problems, parents usually put them on hold indefinitely.
Because of her own psychological trauma towards death, Cai meiwen’s way of preventing her daughter from repeating the same mistakes was to not let her daughter keep pets with short lifespans, instead of explaining the correct view of life and death to her daughter at the appropriate time. This was tantamount to covering her ears and stealing the bell. Just as she said, people couldn’t control their own deaths, whether it was the death of others, pets, or themselves.
No matter whether the fate of mankind was controlled by free will or fate, it was just a delusion to control death. Others might want you to die, but others couldn ‘t. Natural disasters such as earthquakes, volcanoes, typhoons, and asteroids could also kill you.
Zhang Zian couldn’t imagine how much of a shock his parents would have had if they had passed away when he was a child instead of when he was an adult. His parents had never talked about the concept of life and death with him, and in this regard, they were no different from most other parents.
Even after he became an adult, if it wasn’t for the dream world created by Zhuang Xiaodie, he couldn’t really feel relieved about the sudden death of his parents. If it was when he was a child … Whether it was the trajectory of his fate or his character, it would definitely have a huge change.
However, living in the Pet Shop and witnessing the birth, aging, illness, and death of his pets, he had subtly cultivated his simple view of life and death. So, if his parents died when he was a child … His ability to bear it might be better than other children, but who could say for sure?