Sant Rajinder Singh Ji
To honor our parents requires humility. Often, the ego gets the better of us, and we start to think we have achieved our own success and greatness by ourselves. We fail to acknowledge that a good portion of who we are today is due to our parents. Not only did our parents bring us into the world, but they were there to teach us, guide us, and support us. Many forget about the role their parents played in their lives and forget to honor them.
In this connection, there is a story about a married couple who had a young son. The husband’s father was a widower and had lived by himself for a number of years, but with age his health began to decline and one day, the couple invited the father to move in. The grandson was delighted.
The couple could see that the health of the father was not what it used to be. With time, he started losing his vision , his hands began to tremble so that he had trouble holding his spoon and would often spill food.
Annoyed at his behavior at the dinner table, the couple decided to set up a small table in the corner of the kitchen. They gave their elderly father a wooden bowl and wooden spoon, and they sat him at that table where he ate all alone.
The grandfather looked with sadness at his children and grandchild, wishing they would let him sit with them. The man began to sob each time he spilled his food and felt helpless and alone.
One day, when the young father returned from work he saw his son sitting on the floor carving two blocks of wood into two separate shapes.
“Son, what are you making?”
The boy replied, “I am making two wooden bowls for you and Mom, so that you will have something to eat from when you come to live with me when you grow old.”
The couple realized that the young boy was observing how they were treating the grandfather. The couple wept in shame, realizing how they were not honoring and respecting their father. They decided to move their father out of the corner and return him to the family table to eat with them.
This story serves as an example how our children model themselves on what we do. Just as the couple mistreated the grandfather, the young boy instead of learning how to be kind and caring was learning from their cruel and callous behavior. The parents also learned how they could reverse their actions and instead treat their father with love and kindness. Whatever we want our children to become, we need to model ourselves. If we want our children to be ethical, we need to be ethical, too.
We need to develop humility and realize how much our parents have done for us. We need to recognize the hand they have played in our lives. When we do so, we begin to develop the noble quality of gratitude in which we honor those who helped to shape us.
The way we treat our parents is a microcosm of how we reflect on God. Just as we need to be grateful for what our fathers and mothers did for us, we also need to acknowledge our spiritual Parent, God, for gifts given to us. While our parents are the vehicle by which we came into this physical world, God created our parents, our physical body, our mind, and our soul. We were created in the image of God, so let us show gratitude by developing love for our fellow human beings and service to all creation. Such qualities make us true children of our eternal Parent.s
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