The question of right family values
   Date :18-Oct-2020

loud thinking_1 &nbs
 
 
NO MATTER what people may say, it certainly offers a happy feeling to find families in whose homes there is no television, and whose children are not given mobile phones well until their adulthood. The happy feeling gets enhanced when one realises that families attach certain sacredness to their dinners and spend time together not just enjoying food but enjoying one another’s company -- exchanging good stories, good ideas, good thoughts, good dreams, and in the short and long terms, good fortune of togetherness. All these deal with the question of right family values! It must be stated here with emphasis that the question is not about not having television set at home or not giving mobile phones to children until they reach a mature adulthood. Also, the question is not about dinner as a meal; it is about dinner-time as an opportunity of enjoying togetherness that is becoming so terribly rare in most families these days.
 
That is the actual issue. Of course, we will come across countless people who would deny a lot of things -- they will deny that they overdo watching television; they will deny that they do not have dinner together; they will deny that they have family fights ....! But let us be sure that most of such denials have little meaning. For, when the members of a family develop addiction to television or their personal mobile sets, they no longer have the family. At best, they are a bunch of people living under one roof that erroneously gets called a home. For, all of us have seen time and again that when TV-watching dominates the scene in the family, when members of the family are all the time engaged with their mobile phones, it is no longer a family in the classic definition. And that is the issue.
 
This column has discussed this issue time and again, and has earned greater numbers of followers every week -- simply because the issues related to the decline in family values are still of utmost importance to many, many people among us. Dear friends, the thought is much deeper than many of us can imagine. It deals with those values that have held our family institution together and kept it healthy for generations. The antithesis is that not following those values have caused a terrible decline in the quality of our family-life, a fact that people would hate to admit but would fail to deny as well. That makes a strong case for redefining of family and its values in the context of changing time. Yes, with advent of science and technology, gadgets are going to delve deep into our lives. But the question is about how much domination we should allow the gadgets to have over our lives. That is the issue!