Selfish Acts: A parent’s default.

To leave an everlasting legacy is a critical thing in this world – what you aspire to be in your daily interactions should reflect in your actions and how you as a person would want to be remembered and celebrated by your loved ones and the greater community at large. Paternal and maternal love is what drives an individual’s placidity and contentment in life – ultimately leading to your success. What happens when that love fails to protect or render a safe cushion to its offspring?

A parent’s love can at times turn to hurt instead of healing – failing love fails to inspire or fails to build ones character. A parent that has not achieved everything that they wished to have achieved in their youth, due to their irresponsibility, can times be restrictive to the children’s progress in life. Such restrictions come in the form of over-protectiveness which in its ripe state it’s total envy. Being over-protective as a parent puts boundaries to your child’s growth as an individual thus hampers their future prospects - be it career paths, business liaisons or love relations.

It is important that parents pursue their own ambitions, before or after having children. Why? Because, not doing so leaves an individual envies and angry at the world. Life has a way of throwing carve-balls at us as individuals, so much as we do not choose the time, place and why we are having children. Certain individuals have children for the wrong reasons, at the wrong time, or in unbefitting conditions; therefore leaves an individual to deduce or ascertain their unforeseen gift as a ‘mistake’- which is why numerous households in our population are in actual fact managed by single mothers. An unexpected pregnancy has a huge effect on why a man absconds and absentia in his children’s life; or a woman’s anger at having to cope with the fetus that will be child.

Parents, who become parents when they are not ready or without the assistance from their elders, draw negatively on their shortcoming, consequently become angry at themselves or the world thus applies their selfish acts upon on others. This anger does filter through to their children - constituting to some form of abuse or limitation to their children.

We as individuals grow-up in different households under variable conditions – some children are fortunate to have both their parents living with them in a loving relationship as life partners and are able to understand the power to love unconditionally with a purpose; hence they are able to show acting-love daily to their children and build their self-worth. Some children don’t have such loving parents; they are constantly bombarded with violent acts and abusive language which essentially expunge their self-love, self-worth and their life’s legacy.

However, it must be noted that parents with acting-love toward their children are and can be disappointed by their children in many unrequited ways – in a form of rebellion against what is expected of them. Children do flow against the ebb tide and are at times taken by the world and its debilitating formations or demoralizing structures (i.e. substance or alcohol abuse).

The biggest selfish act that a parent will ever administer verbally towards their children is to compare them with a person or individual that their children have never met, or an individual that they themselves know nothing of the circumstance. Your child/children are your child/children; they need inspiration from you as a parent through selfless love, acting-love and transcending love.

To leave an everlasting legacy needs a committing salvaging parenting love. Selfish love looks at what others have and try to replicate that without considering what it has right in front of them. What you aspire to be in your daily interactions should reflect in your actions and how you as a person would want to be remembered and celebrated by your loved ones. Self-love, through loving yourself and transcending love equals your self-worth which will ultimately inspire you to live your life with a purpose, leading to a valuable legacy – for you and your loved ones. It all starts with loving yourself as an individual, expunging resentment or your past inhibitions, which will make you a loving parent to your off-springs.

WORD TO A NEW PARENTING REVOLUTION

By Linda Sakazi Thwala