An old man, a father of a young working guy was sitting alone in his room. There were times when he was always on wheels, loaded with a bagful of tasks. But, now, the busy phase of his life was over. He was all free. And today, he was passing his time by flipping through the pages of a photo album. While scrolling the pictures, all the past moments were coming in front of his eyes. The pictures of his first day in the office, party times with colleagues, photographs with his boss when he got promoted, etc. With each picture, a smile appeared on his wrinkled face. However, when he reached at the last photograph in the album, his gestures got changed altogether because, in the entire album, that was the only photograph in which he was standing with his wife and son. He closed the memorable book with a sigh of guilt and said to himself, “I wish, I had spent quality time with my family.” His heart was heavy because today he had no one with him. His wife was no more and his son was busy in his own life.
With a painful heart, he kept the album in the box in which the treasures of his past days were buried. He then took out from the box a diary of his son's childhood days. He could not remember of having seen it before. Opening its feeble, yellow pages, he looked through the short sentences which his son had written on them. His eyes twinkled as he turned the pages and his lips curved in smile. Every page was making his heart more sentimental. The sentences beautifully spoke of the innocent feelings of his son. It took him back to the time which was almost erased from his memory. He could feel the echo of some pain from those words of his son... pain of his father not spending time with him! Yes, he could also feel the huge difference between the diary of his own childhood days and that of his son's. His own childhood notebook was full of those moments that he shared with his father. But, alas! He could hardly recall any such great moments that he had spent with his son. The diary was different in one more aspect. His son had written the daily schedules of his father's office in it. But, there was specifically one date, which his son had written in big font size. He quickly stood up from his chair, opened his rack and took out the diary in which he had noted down his own schedule for that date. He placed the two side by side. He realised that in his diary, on that date, the inscription was very brief in comparison to his other hectic days.
In his own writing he had written these words– “Today's whole day was wasted. My son forced me to spend time with him fishing, playing and shopping. I could hardly do any of my important tasks, which were queued up in my to-do list. Oh! A sheer waste of time!”
With a deep sigh, he then glanced at his son's diary. It read: “The most memorable day of my life. Today I got the opportunity to spend my whole day with my father. Wow! The best day of my life! Love you Papa! Please keep gifting such lovely moments to me.”
On reading those words, his heart burst out with emotions. But, those moments were gone... gone forever! What was left in store for him was tears in his eyes and regret in his heart.
Dear parents, beware! Let not your over-indulgence in work and madness for money make you land in such a painful phase of life when you have only regret and guilt left with you, along with even a more painful factor of loneliness. Indeed, money is important, your office is important, your project is important, meeting your deadlines is important... But, spending time with your family is also very important! It's not a waste of time; in fact, if you fail to live such moments at the right time, then later on, no matter how much you may cry and crave, you will not have people to spend time with you!
As a matter of fact, the 21st century lifestyle is bringing changes in the culture and trend in families. Just throw a glance at the picture below...
Today you give an iphone to your kids for talking, but you don't have time to talk to them!
You give them an ipod for listening to the music, but you don't have time to listen to their problems!
You buy them an ipad for learning and enjoying, but you don't have time to enjoy with your children!
You build a house for them to live in, but forget to make it a home where you spend time with them.
In conclusion, today you have money for your children but not time for them! The consequences of this flaw are also clearly evident. Today most of the children love to spend time with their new family members– laptops and phones. Children are closer to their gadgets than the people in their family. That is why the moment you try to take their gadgets away, they become aggressive. Not just this. Children getting angry and attacking their friends with weapons, youngsters committing suicides, molestation by young generation, etc.– besides other factors, all these incidents also have one common reason, i.e., parents not spending time with their children. The feeling of insecurity, with no one to share their problems, makes children frustrated. A research published by the National Center for Social Research on behalf of the Relationships Foundation confirms that family life as we used to know, no longer exists today. The results of a survey conducted on 110,000 people showed that 8 out of 10 working fathers and more than half of the working mothers work at unsocial hours. Thus, the time they can spend with their children is reduced. Researchers found that children in such families spend less time in learning and gaining values from their parents. The Chartered Management Institute's 2006 Quality of Life Working survey of 10,000 managers also proved that family time is a problem and over-working hours damages relationships with partners or children.
So, give time to your family. Just as carbon gets converted into one of the strongest elements called diamond when given time, apart from other necessary conditions; likewise, the bonds of relationships also become robust when given time. Today we are spending more time in our work than with our family. But remember, the company will easily get our substitute when we will die one day. But our family will feel the loss forever!
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I got tears in my eyes