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We know about parents loving their children
with all of their hearts... that we want nothing less but everything
good and best for them.... that we would go through the 'highest
mountains and the seven seas' (a friend loves saying this) for them ---
meaning, sacrifice. And that we think we are doing just that. Of course
we are but also we are doing something which we may not even be aware of
.... until Mitch Albom wrote this...............
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“All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely
into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.” ------- Mitch Albom,
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Sent by Mr. Quote Man (as usual) this morning as the sky begins to
shift from white to gray. Gee, now I see thick clouds hiding the blue
skies that I love. But as all things in life do.... this too shall pass.
Now back to the quote.
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Have you come across similar quotes
before or heard somebody say something like it? I think we did and do at
some time or another.. but we take no heed nor pay attention because we
are so darn set on our children... rather than on how we directly or
indirectly influence them in not so pleasant ways, to say the least.
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It made me think tho..........
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Life has its good and bad. Everything comes in pairs, as another friend
would say jokingly..... opposites, particularly. In the same way as
there is day and night, joy and sorrow, beautiful and ugly, tall and
short, fat and think, sunrise and sunset, smiles and tears, man and
woman, young and old, sweet and bitter ... etc.
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A person
has his own store or pairs of opposites, too. Both joy and sadness...
strength and weakness... bravery and cowardice... intelligence and
stupidity... compassion and callousness etc... as situations or
circumstances roll out in everyday life. In one instance he is one and
in the next moment he is the other according to what would trigger such
responses in that particular moment.
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These same things come into play at work, play, career, profession, business, family, and particularly in raising children.
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Although we try as best as we can to raise them up in/with good
character values, admittedly we cannot, under the same breath, be just
as confident and assured that they will not also catch the negatives of
who we are. Because they certainly will, no doubt. They, just as Mitch
Albom says, will absorb the person that we are or what we show to
them.... both the positives and the negatives of who we are. In short,
they will catch our DNA.
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Remember these remarks.....
"Manang-mana sa tatay yan..." "Eh ganun din ang nanay eh..." "Like
father, like son.....or like mother, like daughter" --- and that could
mean either good or bad or sometimes both.
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Can it be helped? avoided? I have no answers to that.
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What I do know is............. teach your children that simple fact as
mentioned in the quote ----- 'Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the
prints of its handlers.' Help them understand also much of what life
is all about....... that it all boils down to making the right choices
or decisions for the self and for the people we love. This works for
them as it had worked for our mothers before us and their mothers before
them. It's all about responsibility, accountability, focus,
priority, selfless sacrifice, and love.
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Mothers need not be
hindered nor should be hindered by the bad within or by the bad without.
Instead set her eyes on the better good that must be served, by God's
design. We, as mothers, do just like what we do with the rest of
life...... give it our best shot! We try to teach them what they should
be learning......... and hope to God they catch it really well.
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Then when our work is done.... we can sit back and watch as our
children make something of what they have learned by also serving the
bigger and better good in their own lives and in the world as well.
Still by God's design.
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Blessings, everyone! May God bless all the mothers and fathers in the world.
