"Loving our parents unconditionally"

By: Rina Galang

                They say parents love their children unconditionally. The question is - do we, as their children love them back unconditionally?

                Parents? They are the ones who bore us. The reason why are we here. They are like trees, and we are their fruits.

                Do you remember when you were still little? When your mama gave birth to you? The joy in their faces when they see you after your mama successfully delivers you. Their happiness that day, it's incomparable. Your mama or your papa stays awake late at night to get you in your crib and make you stop from crying. They make milk for you, they are the one whose cheering you up and even clean your wounds that you got while playing, they read bedtime stories for you, reward you with your favourite toys when you did well in school, teach you how to write and read and of course loving you unconditionally despite being hard-headed sometimes.

                And we start to grow up. Here comes the adolescence. The teenage life. So many changes happening physically, emotionally and mentally. Many issues starting to arise between you and your parents because you start to disobey their commands. You start to form your circle of friends. You're spending so much time with them that you tend to forget to remind your parents where you are and who you are with. As a result, your parents will get mad at you. But in the end, it is still them who will approach you and say sorry to you. That's them, they love us so much and we sometimes just take them for granted. Sometimes we're asking too much from them "Buy me this, buy me that." That we forget they worked so hard just to earn money and we don't even think twice before asking something pricey from them and even get mad when they don't give us what we want. Right?

                Have you asked yourselves, if they get old in their wheelchairs or bed-ridden and don't have the money to buy you all your wants, are you going to take care of them like how they cared and loved us since we were little? Or we are just like any other, who completely forgot their parents when they already have their own families?

                I hope this would serve as a wake-up call for us not to take our parents' love for granted. Cherish and give them the importance they deserve. Love and care for them as much we can.