TEACH YOUR PARENTS WELL

By: Sylvia Davila MM

Bogotá

www.pipolmagazine.com

Copyright
September 19/2012

The only window in my studio faces the backyards of two old houses which gardens were joined to host a kindergarten playground. Two, three, four years old boys and girls show up every day. Watching them play - apart from lighting up my day- a simple and well-known truth surfaces in a visual image: children follow. Some can hardly walk and their attention wanders with every small thing - a bird, a leave falling from a tree, a sound - but soon they retake attention, look around to find a lead, and run to follow. That's children way. They follow the older person or the authority in the group. Even so more happens with their parents. By following their steps, children gently walk into the life their parents choose for them. But, as it happens, parent’s choices today will truly impact their children's lives only in the future.

When today's children reach adulthood, they will encounter a world of hard statistics: need of water, energy sources, food, shelter, and they will be accompanied by a huge population built mostly of old people and children. Today's children of the world will have in the future a hard task to bear. That is why parent's choices today will deeply impact their lives ahead. To be up to their future challenge, today's children need a world that is fair with them today.

As it is now, parents have basically two views to choose: on one hand a wild jungle where privilege is set as an aim, where success is placed upon competition on uneven grounds, where every one takes what he or she can, and where some have a strong jaws to rip the stake while the rest is left to un uncertain fate building mobs of "indignats". Or, in the other hand, a picture where children, all children, have a shot in life, education, information, knowledge, skills that regardless of their chosen path will make them able to handle situations. A picture where health exists not just for some but for all, because it is fair with them and because those that become sick will be a burden for the healthy. A world that searches today for new sources of energy that they will desperately need in the future. A place where their neighbors will help them, work with them, join them, be together, instead of discriminate them, fight against them or hate them. A world that is able to see today their future needs. Children do not have political affiliations - they are just following - and they have clear and present needs. The children of this World need their parents and grand parents now!

When a mother, a father, a grandmother or grandfather set their eyes on their beloved boys and girls, they have the power to see beyond, to look into their future. When that future comes - their parents and grand parents already gone - those boys and girls transformed into men and women handling this complex, difficult and beautiful world, will recall with gladness that their elders loved them enough to make the right choice on time. The choice is now. The United States, a leading country, is making that choice now, an historic choice. 

For more illustration see: pipolmagazine EARTH CHILDREN: http://www.pipolmagazine.com/p/earth-children_27.html

September 19/2012 - Sylvia Davila M (c)