Who is really holding us back in life?
A little boy sat all alone inside a the small metal dinghy. As he drifted aimlessly along the Indonesian Sea, he stared sorrowfully into the water. Tears streamed down his black beady eyes.
“Dad… I wish you didn’t have to leave us… I wish you never helped those other fishermen from our village.” mumbled the boy to himself. He clutched the small circular nylon net tightly in his hands. The lead weights that dangled at the ends of the net rattled quietly against the hull of the boat.
“Even though you showed me how to catch bait with this net, it’s not enough! You promised me that you would come back and show me how to also catch bigger fish with a rod. But now you are not here anymore! I am all by myself. I wish the storm didn’t have to take you away forever…” whimpered the little boy as he angrily dashed the fishing net over the side of the boat.
“Dad! It’s all your fault that all I can catch is bait. It’s not enough to feed our family! We will never be able to make enough money to move out of our crummy shack! Why did you have to leave us!? Who is supposed to teach me how to fish for our family when you are never coming back?!” wailed the heart-broken boy to the open sea.
As he sat back down and stared over the side of the boat, he kept angrily mumbling the same question, “Who is supposed to teach me now?” But he couldn’t see that the answer was staring right back at him from the surface of the water; his reflection.
In life, it’s often easy for us to blame our parents for areas in our lives where we feel disadvantaged in. Maybe they didn’t teach us all the critical skill that we now need in our workplaces and relationships. Maybe our upbringing leaves us with emotional scars or social anxiety. But instead of putting all the blame and responsibility on them, we also need to recognize that these gaps in our lives aren’t always meant to be filled in by them. Sometimes some lessons in life must be learned by ourselves.
