Reconnect with your family and reconsider what they’ve done for you to get you to where you are today, says Nisha Jamvwal
Parents today want children to grow up in an environment where their individuality blooms and is not stifled. The new wave of parents want to give their offspring the very best in education, in values, in facilities and in all that they may have missed out on in their more constricted times; from dance attendance, dropping their kids to school, to elocution class, from planning pyjama parties and birthdays, to beach outings. Sometimes, in their love, they may tend to over-compensate with meeting most of their desires within their abilities.
There have been drastic changes over the generations in this primordial relationship, in the past two or three generations. So, cut to the present. The apples-of-their-eyes have grown up into fine-looking young people. Many have become young achievers, settled into good jobs and married. But here’s the oxymoron. Where one would expect the culmination of it all in a happy storybook mamma-papa-offspring story, nowadays one comes across bewildered parents, who feel side-lined and over-looked by those very offspring on whom they showered love, time, support, finances and attention in bringing them to where they are today. A mother tearfully confided to me recently, “It’s not as if I’m leaning on my son for any needs, financial,
emotional or even social. What’s choking my heart is his total neglect! I’m an unnecessary claimant in his pre-occupations, a constant irritant when I want to speak or converse, or just share some of his time”. Fathers don’t fare better either. Many times their experience, wisdom or well-intended suggestions are derided by pompously opinionated sons or daughters.
Regard, respect, and sensitivity for elders are becoming scant. The new, seemingly very logical theory floating about is that respect has to be earned, or that they must deserve the respect if they want it! There are surely good stories, where good sons and loving daughters redeem the picture, but there are horror stories that shroud it all. It’s best depicted in the film ‘Baghbaan’, where a hard-working father helps his sons to reach their various statuses until he retires, after which he and his mother are seen as a liability. It is increasingly not so far from reality!
This seems to be an age of evanescent values. Families fight over money, inheritances and harbour resentments over the upkeep of elders. Stories of sons abandoning parents after duping them of their money are common, and it is no wonder that oldage homes are proliferating. Let us just expand our hearts and experience the enveloping warmth of sharing, caring and love. How heart-warming it would be to see large families crossing a generation or two, bonding in laughter, bonhomie and plain old-fashioned family love and respect and concern for elders! Extend some thought and inclusion to the elders. You are as much rewarded as them as you see the heart-warming joy unfold. There are indeed some things money can’t buy.
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Volume 4 Issue 11
