I came out with this thought a couple of years back but didn't share it with many of my friends... i shared it with Carrot, Catherine, Kok Wee & Winnie recently...
It is an alternative way of viewing stages of life...
The most common way is by a chinese proverb... 生老病死; it means we born, age, sick & pass on...
1st stage: "When we are growing up, family is my everything..." When we all came to this world, small & delicate... the only ppl we know is our family... we stick closely to them. If they were to leave the house even for awhile, we couldn't hold back our tears and cry like it is the end of the world...
When young, my mother was a full time housewife and i never left her side at all... Until the age of 3+yo, my mum couldn't stand my dad, she grabbed my brother and left the house... it was in my life dat i ever cried out so hard before... my mum is an impt woman in my life and she is the only one still alive out of the top 3... the other 2 are my maternal and paternal grandmothers... the happiest moments of my childhood were time spent together with my mum and her mum... the saddest moments were to leave them and stay with my dad and his mum...
2nd stage: "When we are yet to grow up, friends are more impt that my family..." As we grow older and able to go out of the house by ourselves, we got to know friends from various places. We start to neglect our family members. We feel dat friends knows me best and we don't need to live with them at all. The best thing is... we can choose whichever friends to go out with but we are not given a choice when it comes to family. It is common for a mindset of a youth to think this way... when we see something new and fresh, we start to put what we have aside...
I lead my secondary, poly and national life life this way... sometimes i hardly communicate with my parents on a daily basis... from visiting my mum on a monthly routine, becomes once every few months... i had so much frens, joined so much activities to enrich myself and study for my exams... very often, i would talk against my dad over small issues... i was so busy dat i even forget to lift my head up to see at the night sky... i was dazzled by the beauty of the night sky and found dat i didn't appreciate it for almost 2-3years...
3rd stage: "When we have grown up, family starts to be more important than friends..." As our parents grow older and weaker, they need some1 to take care of them... as their child, we ought to take up this responsibility... we can have alot of friends on our life, but we all only can have 1 birth dad and 1 birth mum... once they are gone, they could only stay in our heart and memories...
Also we settle down, got a life partner and have offspring... our child is so small and cute... with so much commitments, we would put priority on family & career over friends... they also have their responsibilities to attend to too...
Many of us would be moving between stage 2 and stage 3 before reaching stage 4... whether when we will be able to advance to stage 3, it all depends on the encounters in our lives... some ppl might not be able to reach stage 3 at all and would jump right into stage 4...
For myself, taking care of my younger sister made me understand that parenting isn't a simple task and felt dat i might have given my parents the same set of problems too... plus my mum with stroke and my dad with cancer... all these events made me advanced to stage 3... now i would meet up my mother once or more per week for a simple dinner... I also stop talking against my dad as much as possible too... i also realise dat i am an average person like everyone else on this world... we were all very lucky ppl to be able to share this piece of wonderful land, sky and sea together... we r brought together by fate to meet and know each other better... and it is a great fortune dat we still have our family with us... there are many ppl being brought to this world, without any kin at all...
Stage 4: "When we have grown old, family or myself is my everything again." As we age, we grown weak and need some1 to take care of us... very often, it would be our family members... as ppl around us pass away 1 by 1, we would have less frens... we also lack the energy and drive to travel around so much as before, we will be bound within our neighborhood. Right by our deathbeds or funeral, only family, relatives and close frens will be there crying.
I felt it this way when some of my relatives pass away... seeing how both my grandmothers grown older and older day by day, year after year... blamed myself for not showing more love & attention to them when they were still around... it is a wake up call, dat i still can show more love to the reminding family members who are still alive... =D
we came to this world crying, with the rest of the world smiling... we left this world smiling, with the rest of the world crying...
