Manners

These days I often wonder as to when is the right time to start teaching my son some "good manners". Then again, with globalisation and all that jazz, what manners do you essentially teach? Or are manners more fundamental than etiquettes? As in, maybe the underlying ideas of compassion,love,kindness,honesty etc remain the same , but their manifestations differ from place to place. So maybe what I need to teach is not actually manners, but a sensitivity and appreciation of these ideas, so that he is flexible enough to model his behaviour to reflect these feelings to the recipient.

Afterall, I strongly believe that in most situations in life, you need to be honest only to yourselves. For all the rest, its perceptions that matter, not truth !