One Step at a Time
Through this activity, I learned that time doesn’t stop for anybody. As I grow older, so do my brother and my parents. And it’s daunting to think how quickly times are changing, from the way my brother and I used to hang-out on the way back from school to the way that he’s about to leave and live on his own. But as I realize just how much has changed since I was a little kid and have begun to establish my own identity, I figured it must be much harder on our parents to see their children growing before their very own eyes. The children they spent more than half their lives feeding, teaching, loving are now being their own person and setting up for their own lives and, shortly, families.
I’ve been watching this show called “Gilmore Girls” lately, and there was this tension between Lorelai Gilmore and her mother, Emily Gilmore, because of their differences in raising Rory, Lorelai’s daughter. And it is evident how difficult it is to develop adult-to-adult relationships and accept the shifting generational roles once parents’ children grow up. As I’ve mentioned, it is very much terrifying to grow old, but it’s even scarier to witness how everyone is as well. Given these realizations, I now plan to be more mindful of how my parents try their best to raise me, given that it can be challenging to adjust to new generational roles. With that, I also plan to be more compassionate, especially with the way I treat my parents; not only because it is my sole purpose to respect them and treat them well, but also because I understand how difficult it must be for them to enter a new stage of their life without their children whom they dedicated most their life to. Now, I plan to give back to them by studying hard and then working hard so I could provide them with the life that they tried so hard to give me.
