Sunday, July 06, 2008 Lim: The children By Melanie T. Lim Wide Awake
WHEN I think about the future, I inevitably think about the children.
In our family, we are not blessed with many. In fact, we are only blessed with two. Of course, we can hardly lay the blame on God as we did not help ourselves. We did not cooperate with the creator to bring more children into the world. So, really, we have to take full responsibility for our dwindling size.
Still, I think that God must laugh out loud in the heavens all the time about how naïve and silly human beings can be to think they are in complete control of their destinies. God gave us free will—-to chart the course of our lives, to get married, to stay single, to have kids or to have none but in the end, we will find there is reason why we are single, married, childless or parents of six.
When I think about the children in our family, I think about what I can leave them. You see, God made it a little bit more challenging for me to leave a legacy to the next generation—-He did not give me loads of money so I could simply write a check. Oh no. You are not doing it the easy way, God whispered to me.
When it’s time for me to leave, I hope I will have passed on to my nieces the values which I believe are essential to living a good life—discipline, forbearance, diligence, integrity, passion, sincerity, forgiveness, magnanimity and most of all, a hunger to help others who are not as fortunate as they are.
I pray that greed and envy will not overtake their lives and that anger and bitterness will not make them incapable of finding the joy and significance they will inevitably seek. I hope they will live productive lives in the service of others and that whatever path they take, they will always be guided by the goal of making the world a better place to live in than when they entered it.
In my lifetime, I hope to teach my nieces life skills—skills that might come in handy not only when marooned in a deserted island but also in everyday life.
We are a generation of parents who want the best for our children and we should not be punished for that. But we should recognize that we are raising a generation of children pampered to perfection by nannies they can wrap around their fingers. Our children need to learn to survive without servants at their beck and call.
Our children need to know how to make a sandwich, open a tin can, cook a simple meal and feed themselves should they find themselves home alone or in the jungle fighting to survive. They need to know how to fold their clothes, clean up their rooms, do the laundry, be on their own. I know it’s a daunting task—-but we have to teach our children to survive—without us.
Most of all, I hope to make my nieces understand that a good education is the best gift we can leave them. Values, skills, education. Everything else we give them can be taken away from them but the values, skills and education we leave them will be theirs forever.
Well, my nieces will probably prefer a fat check. But hey, while I live, I have to keep trying—-to change their minds. This is one of life’s more daunting tasks.
