7th May 08

Every child dreams for an ideal family. There can be no perfect definition for an ideal family but generally, an ideal family is a family with a father and mother and children. In an ideal family, a parent becomes the breadwinner while the other either stays at home to manage the family or goes out to work so that there is enough for the family’s expenses. In an ideal family, every member plays their part, parents will play their parental roles whilst children will carry their responsibilities as children like to study and perhaps help their parents in some household chores.

To have a family is a joy, because you are loved and cared for by your family members in accordance to their abilities. For example, a child may show his love towards his parents by doing his best in his studies and helping in household chores while parents on the other hand might show their love towards their child by spending time with their child and caring for their child’s needs and well being. Ideally, the family should be the place where one finds comfort and refuge, a place where one will find confidence in themselves and is brave to face the world because they know that no matter how badly they fall, their family will always be there to pick them up.

The unfortunate thing is that the concept of this ideal family cannot be experienced by many these days. Many people have become individualistic so much so that they forget to care for others, not even the people they call as a family. Husbands or wives who forget about their spouse and children in the midst of achieving their career aspirations, children who seek for fun and entertainment to the extend of forgetting home. Often people put themselves above others and is unwilling to sacrifice even a little bit of their personal joy for the sake of others.

I write this today because I feel sad. Since coming back home, I’ve been hearing of stories of broken families, stories of selfish people who are willing to destroy their own family because of their own pride. I hear of parents who refuse to let go of their unprofitable business because they don’t want others to see that their business has failed. They’d rather borrow their money from loan sharks to sustain the failing business. In pursued of their business, they neglect their children’s well being, there’s no family meals at home because everyone is expected to sustain on their own, when the loan shark seeks for payment, the parents loan from other loan sharks in order to settle their earlier debts. And so the debts of the family increases and everyone becomes stressed. The child knows that the family is poor and she studies hard to become a qualified accountant, hoping to ease the parent’s financial crisis. The parent’s jubilates when they discover her income, they expect her to settle their debts but their habits never stop, they continue to borrow from the loan sharks and the debt never decreases, the daughter finds no fulfillment in life, she works night and day but is never able to enjoy the fruits of her labor, she begins to see her family as an obstacle to her ideal life, she looks forward to the day she marries and moves out of the family.

A story like this is real, it’s a story of someone I know and my heart aches to read her smses. She is no different from any of us but she has to carry this burden, I ask myself how can I help her. How can I ease her stress and heartache. I cannot understand why are her parents so stubborn, why are they doing this again and again. Often, my friend wants to just move away and not worry about all these troubles but she can’t because, they are her family and she is a big sister to her three brothers.