IN RETROSPECT: PARENTAL VISION

Many times in the past I thought about this concept, but I seemed to just have forgotten all about it. Or it may just have been set aside often. But, this early morning after reading the issues on the rise of poverty level, I recalled the series of observations and studies I did about how people and families live better lives. Indeed why are there more and more people and families living in poverty these days when knowledge and wisdom on the utilization of nature should have been a lot better than a century ago. What are people missing or may have ovelooked in their desire to upgrade standards of living?

Sometimes, the aspirations of parents to give better education to their children completely abandons the nature of livelihood that in fact supported the family. In other words, children are allowed to go into diverse professions, away from the concepts that the family have started grooming. For example, a Chinese family who were a family friend ventured on a small eatery when they bore their first child. In a span of about 16 years, the family grew with 12 children in a row. Their eatery by this time was already a restaurant in the city. After few years, when the children were already starting with their college studies, the family added a small inn for the restaurant. In few years time, the family rented a bigger place for a small hotel and restaurant. The children were always there to assists their parents after school or even before school. The children graduated in college and got their own families. But, they are all working with their parents with what is now one of the biggest and most successful hotel in the city. Most of them lived at the highest level of their own hotel.

In contrary, a family friend neighbor who was a teacher and a tailor had also 12 children. They have sent their children to school and finished college. But, the parents allowed the children to go on their own chosen way. Some went to work overseas. They are all spread out, that only the husband and the wife were left in their old age. They died in poverty. When they got sick, it was their neighbors who lend them some helping hands around. All the children just lived within their meager means.