Tag: parents

  • Father : A silent duty

    Father : A silent duty

    Fathers are often overlooked or forgotten, because they’re seldom in the limelight.

    Silently serving in the background, they often do what is seen as just their job, or their duty.

    Not wired with an overt nurturing instinct, but rather that of a silent sentinel, ensuring their family’s safety and comfort, they often grow accustomed to being in the background, creating the spaces needed for their family to thrive.

    When we expect fathers to behave in a similar way to mothers, we diminish their contribution and their sacrifices.

    When we expect fathers to show up like mothers, we under estimate their emotional needs, and ignore their silent pleas for gratitude.

    When we expect fathers to experience emotion and sentiment in the same way that mothers do, we assume that they were gifted with the beauty of connecting with a soul growing within them, not realising that they were always on the outside looking in.

    There is a bond between mother and child that a father will never experience because of the sanctity of childbirth. Perhaps that is why fathers will always find a different way to express their love for their family compared to mothers.

    Honour your father by recognising his struggle and efforts without finding reason to judge him compared to your mother.

    And if you find he is falling short anyway, approach him with understanding, believing that the gentleness you wish to experience with him lies beneath that seemingly impenetrable exterior that developed only because he quietly accepted his place as a provider and forgot to nurture his own emotional needs.

    And to the fathers who show up despite not knowing how it is done because they didn’t have the loving guide of a mentor in their lives, I especially salute you. Breaking cycles of toxic dysfunction is never easy, and is often excruciatingly lonely.

    So if no one else notices you today, I do. With love, appreciation, and respect.

    Happy father’s day.

    #fatherson

  • Mother’s Day – An Awkward Moment

    I’ve been tempted to ask a few people the kind of question that is often dismissed as being ridiculous or unrealistic. But it’s really a simple question that goes something like this. Apart from Anniversaries, Birthdays, and days like Mother’s Day or Father’s Day, do you believe that you acknowledge or celebrate the contribution of your parents, or other loved ones, sufficiently in your life? If yes, you don’t need to commemorate Mother’s Day, or any of those other occasions. If no, then those occasions are desperately needed reminders for you, and you’re probably a contributor towards the reasons for having a need to set aside a specific day to acknowledge these people in our lives.

    I still maintain that living life by predetermined occasions intended to celebrate the contribution of individuals, or even just to acknowledge them is a waste of life and a lie to pacify our own inefficiencies. We can speak idealistically of acknowledging and affirming significant others, but when we wait for the occasion of a birthday or similar event to express such appreciation, then we easily fall prey to the act becoming a ritual rather than a sincere effort. Worse than this, we assume that the person will live long enough for us to acknowledge them when that occasion arrives, because acknowledging them as and when we feel inclined to do so naturally seems to be too burdensome.

    I’ve previously expressed my distaste for celebrating birthdays, and similarly, I also spurn the celebration of such token occasions because it encourages the mindset of ‘take for granted now because we can always make up for it later’. Mothers, fathers, and significant others, including our children, must not be conditioned to only expect to receive affirmation or gratitude from us on specific occasions. Nor should they be conditioned to believe that it’s only expected of them to reciprocate in the same way either. Talking about the celebration of life must not just be a romantic notion or an ideal, but instead it should be something that we practice with conviction.

    There’s enough tokenism in this world which feeds the cycle of insincerity that plagues almost every human interaction these days. Find a reason to celebrate the people in your life at times when they least expect it. Don’t wait for special occasions. Life is too fragile to take it for granted by assuming that tomorrow will be another day for us to do what we should have done today. But this is not about procrastination. It’s about gratitude. True gratitude is not guided by superficial occasions that celebrate milestones that are meaningless. We’ve placed so much emphasis on the occasions, that we’ve forgotten what the true celebration is about.

    Occasions like these have only ever served to appease the conscience of those that fail to celebrate the significant others in their lives the rest of the year. This becomes ever more evident when our parents grow old, which usually coincides with the prime of our lives, at which point the sick mindset sets in that suggests that they had their turn, so now it’s ours, and they should be able to understand that.

    The lethargy of society in giving back is a constant source of disillusionment. We’ve taken consumerism and made it an inherent part of our personal relationships as well. I pray that it changes. More than this, I pray that the majority of people that read this post will disagree with me about showing affection, appreciation, or affirmation to their loved ones on predetermined occasions only.

  • Dua for parents and for pious children

  • A Few Random Thoughts…and a rant!

    I think celebrating birthdays breeds a sense of entitlement within us. Celebrating an event over which you had absolutely no influence whatsoever is superficial beyond belief. Automatically we entrench the idea that the manner in which you’re acknowledged or showered with gifts on the ‘occasion of your birth’ is supposedly a barometer to determine your worth to your significant others. What rubbish!

    The way I am treated when I give of myself to those around me, how I’m appreciated in that process, and how much I’m remembered in a good way by others when I’m not present seem to me to be much more relevant markers against which to determine how others appreciate me relative to how I would like to be appreciated. 

    The date of your birth is nothing to celebrate. It’s how you’ve chosen to live your life in between all those birthdays that counts. Focus on occasions and I swear you will miss life itself. Wait for a specific time to do something special and your life will become routine before you know it. There’s something to celebrate every single day of our lives, but we’re impervious to it all because we’ve been conditioned to look for events worth celebrating based on predefined bullshit criteria set out by society established on pagan rituals that 99% of us are completely oblivious to. 

    But, it’s my bloody birthday and you will acknowledge how special I am, even if you don’t bloody mean it, right? Damn! How pathetic. Today is not my birthday. Today is my daughter’s birthday, and she turns 7. And I had the displeasure of having to explain to her why it is that just because it’s her birthday, she shouldn’t suddenly expect her cousins and family to want to gather around to acknowledge and appreciate her, when they pretty much have no time for her the moment she’s out of sight. 

    I think we often forget that we’re raising kids to be adults. In fact, I’m certain that we do. Look around at the irresponsible idiots that pretend to be adults these days, and you’ll immediately know what I’m talking about. How many times have you read horror stories in the news where children were involved and thought that the adult in question should never be allowed to breed? I do this often. And I constantly remind myself these days that I am raising an adult, not a child, and if I raise her to understand that fun and good times and having a carefree but responsible spirit is not limited to childhood but something to be treasured throughout her life, then I reckon I would have achieved more than most parents these days.

    Too many parents are liberal apologists. They’re so afraid of being disliked by their children that they forget that they’re supposed to be providing guidance to the next generation of adults, rather than trying to expand their social circles within their offspring. But I guess at least they’re present and trying, which is more than we can say for the self-absorbed personifications of Barbie and Ken who think that children are just a necessary prop to enhance their social standing! 

    Blah!

  • brain clutter

    The most important gifts parents can give their children has to be a healthy self-esteem, a moral grounding and an appreciation for principles. Parents that are liberal sicken me. Those that leave their children to develop their own views about life under the guise of not wanting to impose their own views of spirituality, religion and politics on them are idiots. 

    If kids were born with the maturity, logic and reasoning abilities to figure that out on their own, then why do we keep them under parental guidance until they’re 18? I have personally witnessed how kids and adults fall apart later in life because they lack the resilience to deal with a value system not of their own making, or one they do not subscribe to. And when it happens, we’re quick to apply labels to their state of mind so that we can compartmentalise and commercialise their ‘illness’. And the afflicted ones hold on to these labels because they need it to cope with their lack of control…they need it to feel alright about their weakened state without thinking they’re to blame, because the burden of responsibility is too great.

    So we focus on the symptoms, ignore the nonsensical selfish behaviour of the parents, and hope that the next generation will do a better job of figuring things out because wholesome traditional values are too oppressive or repressive or uncool to impose on our children…lest we forget that they make healthier choices if they have an informed base off of which to decide. 

    The noise…the fucking noise in my head…it makes even a bird’s beautiful chirp sound like a nagging shriek until I stop for long enough to realise it’s just the beautiful chirp of a beautiful bird…