“Hey Mom, it’s so typical of you to think like that!!” said a young child his mom.
These kind of expressions are very common in today’s parlance and what they are referred to as is Generation Gap. The referred concept is very hyped and much discussed today. Even we can feel and realise it in our daily lives.
Unfortunately, I would like to differ from that concept. To understand it better let us look at the meaning of the term “Generation Gap” objectively. It consists of two words viz. Generation and Gap. The former refers to two generations and the latter, the more important one, refers to the distance between the two. What we effectively mean by Generation Gap is the weak link in the relationship that a younger generation shares with its elder one. For example: parents with their children.
Now, if we look into basic building blocks of a long term sustainable relationship, they are love, honesty, purity and unselfishness.
1. Love we mean absolute love for someone we care for.
2. Honesty is important because it forms a foundation for the trust which is very critical for relationship building. One would never want to have relations with a person whom he/she doesn’t trust.
3. Purity refers to the purity of thought and hence that at heart. We must not have any mal-intentions disguised by our actions in any way.
4. Unselfishness means putting others before self. In a relationship it is often necessary to put our partner’s interests before our own. One must not hesitate in doing so, because “There is no rose without a thorn” and similarly no successful relation is developed unless some sacrifice goes into it.
What has happened over a period of years is that that we have taken our parents for granted and hence fail to understand their importance in our life and consequently our responsibilities towards them. This ignorance, although subconsciously, makes us negligent towards them and spoils the relationship.
We often disagree to our parents’ view because what they say might be true in their era but not so today. But the way we react often hurts their feelings. We must try and understand their perspective and then try and make them understand our reasoning. Any misunderstanding should be solved by dialogue.
We often realise that the friendship we share with others is a give-and-take kind of relation. But we fail to capitalize on this idea when it comes down to our parents. Under this idea “How can we forget what our parents have done for 20 years of our lives to bring to a position we are in?”. Of course we are in no position to compensate for those years but what we can do at least is not hurt them, respect their feelings and be their support all through out or lives.
Every time we have an unhealthy argument with our parents, it leaves a dot behind. This dot might not be visible initially but when such dots accumulate in large numbers they form a line which might become apparent in later stages when it might be too late to apologize.
Our relationship with our parents is like that of a kite and kite flyer dependence. No matter how high we fly but our success largely depends in the values inculcated within us by our parents early in our life. One can do without friends but not without parents because our parents are indeed our first friends.
So friends, lets understand the role of our parents in our lives and our responsibilities towards them before it is too late!!
Written By: Shalin Shah, IIM Indore
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