Generation Gap Generation Gap | Page 51

42 Generation Gap There was a little boy who was very difficult and he refused to swallow some cough syrup that his mother was giving him. He resisted his mother as she held out the spoon, so she pinched his nostrils and shoved the syrup into his mouth so that it gurgled down his throat. The next time she ventured do this he spit the medicine in her face! This is the quality of a child; nine months in the mother’s womb without paying rent and this is how she is repaid! (P.221) A man complained to me that while two of his three sons were brilliant and hardworking, one of them was a failure. He admitted that he had no complaints about two of his sons but the third one would come home drunk every night and was a constant source of misery for him. If the son saw that his father was still awake, he would yell abuse at him, so the father would spy on his son from behind a window. As soon as the son came home he would collapse on his bed and doze off to sleep, while his father would lay awake half the night worrying about him. I told the father that the fault was his own because he was the one was suffering. I went on to tell the father that he was responsible for his son’s drinking problem and that in his past life he pushed this addiction onto his son and then abandoned him. So now in this life he was paying for this debt that he created in his past life. Now he will have to endure it. The fault is of the sufferer! While the son doses off to sleep soundly; the father lies awake all night tormented by worries. (P. 222) A daughter-in-law thinking that her father-in-law is in another room and cannot hear her, tells her friend, ‘My father-in- law is not very intelligent’. Now he just happens to overhear her comment and it becomes a source of ailment for him. How should he tackle this situation? He should just consider that had he been elsewhere in the house, he would not have heard her and her