"
Filial piety is the root of virtue and the source of civilisation." - Confucius
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/2119747
Taking a break from "Black and White", I've decided to post something that had caught my attention yesterday.
Filial Piety is something that had been instilled into my sis and I when we were really young. It's a given for us to respect our parents, to love them as well as to not cause any worries for them. Of course, there are times when we as children disobey our parents or cause them to worry. However, we are never ever allowed to talk back and needless to say, we should never ever shout or even hit our parents.
Sometimes, I think that I'm really naive to have the impression that all the people in the world do follow the same values as us. The world is not so ideal after all. Society is always really ugly once you observe long enough. What had triggered me to make this post, you might wonder. Well, I'll tell you if you're interested to know.
However, before that, I have to side track for a while.
I have a neighbour who lives a floor above us with her daughter. She's really old and it seems that old age is catching up with her. Sometimes, my family and I will hear knocks on the ceiling, coming from the floor above, early in the morning. Sometimes, I will hear weird noises in the middle of the night. These noises do get on our nerves but my parents see no need to complain since she's old. "You can't blame an old lady for doing these sort of stuffs, she does not even know what she is doing at times." My wise mother will always say. It's understandable actually. I have a grandma who is suffering from the advanced Alzheimer so we recognize that our poor neighbour is showing symptoms of early Alzheimer. It's really sad for them, my heart aches whenever I look at my frail grandma who sits on her wheelchair sucking her thumb and just looking around. It has been years since she last spoke but I'm just glad that she's still around. Okay, I'm digressing.
Anyway, let's just say that not all children are as filial as my aunt and my dad. (I'm not referring to you.)When an elderly is suffering from early Alzheimer, he/she will start to have strange behaviours. They will be demanded to be let out of the house. They will be knocking things here and there etc. My grandma used to knock her wheelchair against the gate of my house(we had to get it repainted after a while cause the paint was peeling off the gate) because she wanted to get out. We couldn't have the gate opened all the time for fear that my old grandma would leave the house without us knowing and get lost. However, whenever she started banging on the gate, we would be there to open it for her and just follow her to whenever she wanted to go. I realised yesterday that it was not a taken-for-granted thing to do.
My neighbour was knocking on the gate yesterday morning and it was so loud that it caught the neighbours' attention. My mum went up to take a look and found out that the old lady was using a knife as she tried to cut the lock of her gate. Her daughter had hidden the keys and poor old lady could not get out. Instead doing what my mother would have done, the daughter shouted at her poor mother. I winced at how badly the old lady was being treated. The poor elderly then retreated to her balcony and her actions afterwards shocked us, who are living a floor below.
She threw her trolley down.
Not to the first floor, she threw it to the floor below and it landed right outside my house. The structure of my flat is such that the balcony of the floor above is still within the flat so if one climbs down from the balcony successfully, he/she will land outside my house. (Ah, she's knocking again.) Yup.
If anyone was standing there at the point in time, that person might have died. Since no one was hurt by it, the next thing to do was to watch out for my neighbour who might have thought that it was safe to climb from her balcony. It was really really frightening, I must say. Thank goodness everything ended well with her daughter (stupid unfilial woman) letting her out of the house. My old neighbour then took her trolley and happily went to the market.
This whole incident caused me to reflect a lot. The treatment my grandma has been receiving and the treatment the poor old lady has been receiving are so different. It's well-known to people that once you hit a certain age, you'll start to suffer from Alzheimer and there's no turning back. It'll be really hard for those who are looking after you. However, you do not wish to be poorly treated, right? Well, at least I don't. This applies to my parents and your parents as well. So do give them the care, love and respect they deserve and be a filial child.
Yay for filial piety. I'm hungry so I'm logging off. Goodbye.
A child who is allowed to be disrespectful to his parents will not have true respect for anyone.
Billy Graham
