To all family elders, from all cultures, nations, religions, ethnicity and ancestry. Regardless of sex, age and socio - economic status, indulge me in this small article on the role of elders and our function.
Who are elders?
If you exert wisdom and influence on your family members, you are an elder. It could be through formalities like rank, status, reputation or seniority, should your ideas and voice find its reach beyond that of your lips, you are an elder. It could also be through informal interactions, being the person of significance among the young, perhaps entrusted with charisma or simply by skill of persuasion, you are an elder.
Again... who are you referring to?
Alas, I speak plainly. Mature grandfathers and grandmothers. Mature fathers and mothers. Mature young husbands and young wives. In short, anyone who is mature and in a family.
What is our singular purpose in the extended family?
Elders provide a vision for the other family members - a vision that the others believe in. Intangible but vital. "Where there is no vision, the people perish." - Proverbs 29:18
Elders leave behind a legacy to ensure the next generation does not squander their lives on worthless endeavours.
What is this vision?
For the prosperity, welfare and continual strength of the family members. In order for this to be fulfilled, the family members stay connected and huddle. By huddling, shared resources, family strengths, visions, ideals, principles, connections, skills, dreams and other unique traits are handed down through the generations.
An analogy is hamsters - they sleep together in tight groups. By doing so, they effectively reduce the surface area they have with the environment, retaining heat and energy.
By huddling, family members reduce contact with harsh conditions such as scams, bad influences, poor doctrines, lousy curricula, bad practices and dangerous attempts at inception, retaining family capacities, wealth, money, houses, cars and financial assets.
All this is lofty talk, Bryan...
Consider again. All rich families started with one leader who had the courage to dream beyond his or her own interests.
Alas, I speak plainly. Consider the following requirements and principles.
Discipline
Many local parents nowadays spend their family time together teaching their kids mathematics, english, mother - tongue, science, literature, history, geography and other core curricula subjects in the hope that the kids may obtain a high paying job.
Discipline these parents for your family's sake. It is foolish to do a teacher's job at home and hope that teachers in schools do a parent's job in imparting emotional skills, life skills, values and principles. When this happens, it is not the kid's fault - it is yours. An elder must discipline these parents - protect family time. Leave the teaching of content to teachers. Kids need values, dreams, hope, love, care and the concern of their parents.
Discipline the foolish young parent who spends too time in the career, chasing after showy things like big cars, credit cards, country club membership and condominiums. They will run your family into ruin. Discipline the tongue swaggering moron who scorns and scoffs in the home, creating discord, unrest and strife within the family members. Chase them out and disown them. For it is better to cut off a rotting leg than to have the entire body poisoned.
Capacities
Teach the young parents to focus on individual capacities. Do jobs that increases personal skills, wisdom, knowledge and generally empowerment. A high paying repetitive job does not increase the person and will only destroy the quality of life. In this mad world of materialism, young parents focus too much on money. They forget the intangibles that enabled the family to flourish in the first place. If they are doing that, then you, the elder have failed miserably. The family ruin will be your fault.
Allow each family member to have their own strengths and can be used to enrich everyone in the family. A family with a doctor will have members who knows more of medicine and tends to be more health conscious. A family with a lawyer will have members who are more aware of the law. A family with entrepreneurs will tend to know how to chase their ideas. Imagine if your family have a doctor, a lawyer, an entrepreneur, an engineer, a dentist, an artist, an athlete, a musician, a chef and all other kinds of capacities.
Keep the capacities in the home.
Stay connected
In order that so many may leverage on one another's strengths, then all members must be taught to compromise and live with differences. Diversity in the family is strength. Diversity means having differences and being able to accept one another. rather than childish, haughty and arrogant, elders must train parents to train their young to love one another, respecting diversity in order to achieve synergy.
Through emotional maturity and wisdom, a family can become a power force. Truly, a family can become more powerful that a medium - sized enterprise.
Where does all these begin?
The success of your family starts with one, you the family elder.
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