How do you acknowledge your parent’s value in life?

I hate to use words I and me. These are not great words to use frequently in any place. But forgive me here. Almost one year ago, I was in a job interview as a scientist in a biotech company. I gave my presentation, and, in the end, I had a slide of acknowledgement, as we all show our respect to the people and organizations who are involved in the project. On the top of the slide, I had my parent’s passport size picture followed by my mentors, supervisors and colleagues. One of the interviewers asked me, are your dad and mom scientists?
I said “no”.
The hidden motive of the question, though he didn’t say anything, was reflected as why did I put my parent’s picture in the slide?
This incidence inspired me to write this content.
I guess I am trying to give the answer as well as how we should develop the relationship with our parents and acknowledge them in life.

My belief is our parents are neither professional nor personal in our life. They are our soul, heart, and mind.
We are biological gifts to this world by our parents. The chance we are born and alive now on the planet is one out of four hundred trillion. Think about this chance for few seconds.
I have seen few people around me always complain about their parents. First of all, we must forgive our parents in any circumstances even if they did some serious mistakes, small or big, while bringing us up on this planet.
We are alive now in this moment due to our parents. No anger, no blame, no complain. Forgive your parents unconditionally, if you have to. Period.
If we cannot forgive our parents, we would remain in a prison of victimhood throughout our life, forever.
They brought us here and devoted for us whatever they could.

When they become old, it’s our turn to invest on them. It’s not only money, they need our time, care, respect, and attention in their lives. And they deserve it.

As we grow older, we also realize that our parents are also getting older faster than before and know this, they will not be in this world after certain time. It is sad but hard truth.
Spend your time with them before you realize it’s too late. Otherwise, you end up with only remorse throughout your life.

Building healthy, inspiring, and supportive relationship with parents is key to our success.
Our life is built through the leverage of relationship, mostly familial relationship.
Our parents can be lonely and sad even if we have five siblings who are very successful in five different walks of life. The eighty year’s Harvard study of adult development has already showed that good life is built on good quality relationship. As Robert Waldinger, director of the study, a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School said, “Loneliness kills us same as smoking or alcoholism.”

Our relationship to our parents is the fuel to happiness.
The most significant attribute in any person’s life is to have parent’s blessing.
We take this relationship for granted but it’s important to understand that our parents should feel that they are our highest priority in life.

How we spend our time with our parents is more important than what we have done for them.

When did you hug and say I love you dad, and I love you mom in person last time?
When did you have long conversation with them in person last time?
When did you visit in their anniversary last time?
When did you wish happy birthday to them in person last time?

Don’t make excuses that you cannot visit them frequently because you are busy doing your stuffs. Believe me your project and work can wait but your dad and mom’s time in this world cannot.
If your parents are still alive, feel a very lucky person, and buy a ticket today and fly, don’t postpone.
Give them a surprise visit.
I am sure you will not be able to buy the happiness you see in their face when you reach home. Seeing you in front of them is a visceral reaction. You can see in their eyes how much they love you. This emotional response and our instinctive empathic connections to it makes us why we are here. We can fake anything in this world, but not this moment.

We always invest on things which bring value in our life so don’t wait to invest on this connection before it would be too late to make correction.
Spend a quality time with them. Drink a glass of wine with your dad.
Go shopping with your mom.
These seem like very small moments, but these will be the real moments to cherish and remember and this will make up the remaining part of their lives.
Talk to them and mostly listen, encourage them to share their experiences of life. Ask them what they learnt from life and any worth remembering incidences while bringing you up in this world.
Care them and serve them as much you can.

Experience in life is bigger than our formal education.
Discuss your goals and ambitions with your dad and mom. They may not know the whole details of your craft but can see your vision through their eyes, they see it and feel it.
The experiences of life they had, and your education start to connect the dots you never saw before. After your intimate conversation with your dad and mom, you see a connection between seemingly unrelated dots and making sense in your life. That could be the biggest motivation for you.

If you really can’t visit them often, though it’s rare, mail them a hand-drawing picture which you used to draw when you were kid, to their address. In your absence, your parent would laugh and scroll their fingers through your drawing and bring your childhood memory into their eyes.
This drawing on a sheet of paper has an immense power than any other existing technology.

Don’t just call or write birthday wishes on facebook wall all the time. Facebook words are processed on the screen when they read, but not on their mind. Facebook is not real; it evaporates way faster in a click.
That’s why facebook is facebook, not a feelbook.
When you hug them or visit them or make an eye contact with them, they produce serotonin and oxytocin in their body that make them really happy. Seeing the real is more powerful and it elicits emotions. Emotions move and drive them. It can soothe, reduce and destress the pain in their body and mind.

Our relationship with our parents is our strength to fight a cause in this life.
Parents are creator for our passion. Passion is that work for which we happily suffer and sacrifice. The one thing on which we spend countless hours but still we feel happy, energetic and not an ounce of tiredness. Parents ingrained this passion on us in our childhood because we had a lot of free time back then and not much responsibility. They provided a roof over us, food on the table and clothes to wear.
This passion seed became a full-grown plant, turned into a more profitable venture later in our life. But remember, that small seed of passion were sown to us by our parents in the early stage of our life.
Don’t dilute your relationship with your parents only thinking about your million-dollar idea project.
We can not become pilot just by reading how to fly airplane books, we become pilot by sitting inside the cockpit and doing practice with control panel.
If we don’t make an investment to go inside the cockpit of this relationship, then we will know the importance of this relationship only when we become parent ourself and wait to see our children next to our bedside.

Build up your weak parental bondage until it becomes strong. Sometimes, it takes a little bit thought and gratitude rather than over-thinking on our time and busyness, but in the end, it’s worth every minute you spend on with your parent. Success becomes best when we get moments to share.

There are only two ways we can make our aging parent feel proud, and happy.
Do activities that pay off the suffering they endured throughout their life while they were bringing us up in this world.
And, spend the quality time with them as often as we can.
They want us to be in their bedside more often than any other things in life.
Our connection with them is not a luxury, it is a necessity for rewarding, fulfilling, and wonderful life for us, and for them.
That’s it.
-Yam Timsina