Leaving Behind a Precious Legacy

"Each morning when I get up, Sister has my meal ready, and  each evening I have a nice warm place to sleep, it brings me back to the time I was a child. It's  wonderful." The religious sister in her column gives us the words of a young woman who ran away from an  entertainment place, and is now in the care of the sisters.

Another woman mentions how her mother taught her how to play the  piano and compose even after a divorce.  "Do  you know why I  kept practicing the piano during all the hard times? My mother is in the piano. When I am at the piano I can feel the love of my mother."  

The common element of these young women is they overcame the difficulties of life by the remembrance of the love they received as a child. Where is the mother that doesn't provide meals for her child?  It is not the meals provided, but the mother's loving presence she remembers. Let us suppose that the mother was busy with a thousand different things, and the child was busy with her smartphone, do you think she would remember those days with such a loving memory, and be satisfied with her ordinary life? If they had both been in their own world, do you think they would remember what happened in childhood?

In today's world it is difficult to be focused on one object. There are too many things that are vying for our interest, we are busy hearing, seeing, thinking  and being moved: connected to everybody and everything. We have become proficient in being disconnected from time and place. We are losing contact with our present. Happiness comes from the way we relate to our now.

The digital equipment we have in our hands dissociates ourselves from the here and now. The more information in our hands the busier we are, and the more we enjoy it, the more time we invest.

In our society the parents are doing much for their children but being with their children is not that prevalent. When we are not present to the here and now we can be lost in our dream world. When we are with the family we can be lost in this world with our digital equipment, and be satisfied with the pleasant feeling it brings. When we are not relating with those we love we are not developing our interior life.

She concludes the column asking us to remember that the memories children receive, give them the strength to face the world they will meet as adults. Parents have to give the children these warm experiences that will continue: the times they spent praying together as a family, the time they spent at table harmoniously talking to each other, the time they enjoyed each others company. These memories are  the most important treasures you can pass on to your children, a legacy that can't be lost.