A reader in The STAR newspaper today drew attention to the fact that more and more young people are abandoning their aged parents and opined if it is a good idea at all to have legislation compelling the younger folks to take care of their elders, just like what Singapore has done.

Many of us are still conservative enough not to wash dirty linen in public. Again it is a matter of “face”. The thought of the shame of having to take your children to court to force them to look after you is enough to make you want to crawl into a hole and hide.

There have also been cases where the old folks are milked of their money and possessions and then abandoned to fend for themselves.

Someone also joked that parents have to be very good to their children as they will determine the kind of old folks’ homes they will end up in.

Another said that it is prudent not to give your all to your children once you have given them a sound education but to keep your money and possessions for your own use until your demise.


This brings to mind Shakespeare’s King Lear who abdicated and gave his kingdom to his two older daughters because they flattered him. After getting what they wanted, they drove him out into the wild storm and he was left to wander about in madness.

It is usually during the festive seasons when visits are made to the old folks’ homes that stories of inmates emerge whose offspring have left them there and forgotten all about them.

What is it that makes these young people abandon the parents who had cherished and nurtured them into adulthood? Abandonment means denying their existence completely.
Have the elderly parents become an inconvenience, a burden?

It is often the sick and elderly that are cast aside like expired goods. Grandparents who have outlived their usefulness, perhaps, and now sickly, have become a liability.

This is why maintaining one’s health is paramount so that in your golden years, you can still fend for yourself and enjoy your retirement with the nest egg that you still have. You can still live with dignity and command some respect.

Isn’t it a tragedy that without the wherewithal, a parent, once loved and looked up to, is now considered a nuisance and a burden to be discarded? Of what use is all the education when one can deny one’s parents? The long departed older generation used to say that the way you treat your parents will be the way your children will treat you.

I wonder how true that is. Do you?

Tweet

Traumatic Experiences can Ruin your Life

Life is like being in a school where one goes through experiences and either learns from them or are destroyed by them.

Traumatic experiences often destroy one’s life and aspirations for the future. Being slashed in a robbery and taken in your own car to the bank to withdraw money from the ATM after which you are dumped in a secluded area in the dead of night can be so traumatic that you never really recover from the fear.

This happened to my friend who stopped going out because he was afraid. He didn’t want to encounter another such episode.

His life was destroyed by the two parang-wielding thieves who had slashed him and robbed him without any compunctions, leaving him bleeding and helpless.

Another kind of trauma is when you experience the horror of a fire that took away the lives of your four college mates in the dead of winter. Within minutes, the whole house was razed to the ground and those of us in nearby houses were rudely awakened and told to assemble immediately in an open area. Fear of the fire spreading was very real with the wind blowing as the houses were close to one another and made of hardboard.

In the cold and windy, wintry night, we were only clad in our nightclothes, without any overcoats as speed was of the essence. I had grabbed my violin case and my needlework box. My best friend snatched up her umbrella and teddy bear. Long after the tragedy we would laugh over this. Why hadn’t we taken our important documents? Why a teddy bear and a violin case?

In the aftermath, most of us wandered around in a daze as panicked parents, 8000 miles away in our homeland, tried to ring us to make sure that we were safe, as news of the fire had reached Kuala Lumpur. There were no cell phones in the early 60s. We didn’t have credit cards then. The phones in the college were still the round dial type and I believe there were only 2 lines while there were about 300 of us in the college.

We reacted in different ways; some were able to deal with the trauma after counselling, others had a harder time. I belonged to the latter group. Unable to cope ( being seventeen years old then ) I did a foolish thing which ruined not only my dreams but also those of my loved one. There was no turning back once you took the wrong fork.

It has always been drummed into us that we must think before we act but sometimes shock and emotions cloud your mind and that’s it. Perhaps that’s why people kill. A moment of madness and the whole future is lost. A life is taken, another is hanging in the balance and the lives of many others are affected in different ways.

Tweet

Learn and Grow OR Stop and Die

Whatever happens, good or bad, life still goes on. Whatever fears there are, we either conquer them or remain hostage to them.

Towards the end of last month I was dreading the thought of attending a bootcamp. I would have to spend more than 12 hours each day out of the apartment, lugging my computer, my packed lunch, water bottle, jacket and writing materials on the MRT to the venue, more than an hour’s ride away with three changes along the way. Some of the stations where you need to get onto another line were quite a distance away and walking in a large crowd of people hurrying to work is totally different from what I’m used to, back home. And, I would have to do it alone!

Apart from this was the nagging fear of whether I would be able to cope, since I’m a techno dummy. I’m no good with gadgets, hopeless at anything technical and aging grey matter doesn’t help at all. Would I be able to keep up with people who are tech savvy and much younger, so much faster to grasp and learn things? I was comforted by the promise of the trainers that no one gets left behind.

So I gingerly eased my toe into the beguiling waters of IT, learning how to do stuff that I did read about but never quite understood how it worked. Thanks to my partner, a lovely young lady from Thailand who sat next to me, I was able to follow most of the stuff that was taught. It was only the frame though and we will have to delve more into the nitty gritty on our own to flesh it out.

Before I knew it the week passed! I had survived the camp and I made new friends! Long toilet queues are a thing of the past. Yaay!

Returning home was good and it was easy to slip into the usual routine except that there are loads to do now. The frame has to be filled out and the learning is a big challenge. It’s all up to me, quite a frightening thought. If I choose to do nothing, then I would have wasted the experiences of that week.

So here’s to more learning. “If you’re not learning, you’re not growing. If you’re not growing, you’re dying.” This is one of the things that I learned. Learning is a beautiful experience, when you get that “Aha!” moment. Frustration is part of learning but patience and perseverance will help propel us to success. I think it’s wonderful to write and then have people whom you don’t know, comment on what you’ve written. The world wide web is a wonderful place, mysterious and exciting for those ready and eager to explore.

Please click on the title of this post and take a look. If you like what you see, please leave a comment. Cheers!

Tweet