Parents

A home is not made only of walls, a roof, doors, and furniture. A home is formed when someone’s effort, patience, hunger, sleeplessness, silence, and sacrifice become part of it. When a human being is born, he knows nothing. He does not know how to earn bread, how to walk, how to speak, or how to understand the differences of the world. He is completely dependent on the mercy, love, and responsibility of others. His life begins with this very weakness.

Parents are the first protectors in a person’s life. They are not perfect and they are not free from mistakes, but they are the first foundation of a child’s existence. When a child cries at night, someone stays awake. When he is ill, someone worries. When he is hungry, someone feeds him first. When he falls, someone lifts him up. When he learns to walk, someone holds his hand. When he learns to speak, someone understands even his broken language. These are not small things. This is the foundation of life.

The problem begins when children grow up and start thinking that everything they received simply came to them on its own. As if childhood walked by itself into youth. As if food cooked itself and appeared in front of them. As if clothes bought themselves. As if illness healed itself. As if school, treatment, protection, shelter, dignity, and upbringing were provided by some unseen thing. When a person forgets the effort behind him, he begins to treat kindness as an automatic right.

A right has its place. A child has the right to be raised, cared for, and protected. But having a right does not mean that a person should become empty of gratitude. Even if it was someone’s duty to raise you, fulfilling that duty still took years of his life. It took his time, his strength, and his youth. A man does not spend only money; he spends his days. A woman does not only cook food; she spends her sleep, her body, her health, and years of her life. These are not things that can be calculated, but they remain part of a person’s existence.

The tragedy is that in many homes today, parents are no longer seen as benefactors, but as old objects. As long as they earn, run the home, provide support, and remain useful to their children, they are needed. As soon as they become weak, sick, old, or dependent, their place begins to change. First they are the shade of the home, then they are called a burden. First their prayers are desired, then their medicines begin to seem expensive. First honor is taken through their name, then their presence begins to feel like a burden.

This is where the real damage begins. A person who does not see his own roots in his parents cannot teach his children the meaning of roots. The one who does not understand his father’s tiredness, how will he teach his son respect for hard work? The one who grew up eating bread from his mother’s hands and later begins to see that same mother’s weakness as a burden, where does he stand as a human being?

Old age is not a person’s defeat. Old age is the final part of a journey in which a person accepted becoming weak while lifting others again and again. The one who is young today will also become old tomorrow. The one who dislikes the slow walk of his parents today may one day find his own legs failing him. The one who is irritated by their repeated words today may himself repeat the same thing many times tomorrow. The one who is troubled today by an elderly person’s medicine, cough, weakness, and needs will one day need someone else’s patience.

The real test of a home does not appear in prosperity. The real test comes when someone in the house becomes weak. When someone stops earning. When someone needs support. When someone calls again and again. When someone cannot get up to drink water by himself. When someone forgets things while speaking. When someone’s hands begin to tremble. That is the moment when it becomes clear whether human beings live in that house or only people who take benefit from one another.

To see parents as benefactors does not mean that children must abandon their own lives. It also does not mean that every cruelty, every mistake, and every harshness must be tolerated. No. It only means that a person should not forget the foundation of his own existence. There may be disagreement, distance, one’s own life, and one’s own path. But the awareness must not die inside the heart that someone once lifted us when we could not stand on our own.

A society that does not give respect to its elderly is actually teaching its coming generations that a weak person has no value. Then children learn the same thing: when someone is no longer useful, push him aside. When someone no longer gives benefit, forget him. When someone becomes weak, there is no need to listen to his voice. This way of thinking eventually hollows relationships from within.

A relationship is not only a matter of blood. A relationship is a matter of memory. It is a matter of effort. It is that silent history which one human being carries inside himself for another. The wrinkles on the faces of mother and father are not only lines of age; they are also signs of the years spent for their children. The hardness of a father’s hands is not only the hardness of labor, but also the hardness of carrying a home. A mother’s tiredness is not only tiredness of the body, but also the burden of a lifetime of responsibility.

A big house, a big car, a high position, powerful words, or fine clothes do not make a person great. A person becomes great when he proves his greatness in the way he treats someone weaker than himself. And who stands weaker before him than his elderly parents? The same parents who once stood like a wall for him become dependent on support one day. On that day, the true face of the children is revealed.

Some people think that serving parents is only an old way of thinking. But if that service is done by force, for show, or under pressure, then it is indeed lifeless. The real thing is not the name of service, but the feeling behind it. If that feeling is alive, respect can be shown even from a distance. If that feeling has died, a person can live in the same house and still leave his parents lonely.

The most dangerous death is not the death of the body. The most dangerous death is the death of feeling. When the feeling dies in the hearts of children that their lives were built on someone’s sacrifice, then even if they are educated, they remain empty inside. They understand the world, but not the foundation of their own home. They speak of law, business, progress, and freedom, but forget the hand that once saved them from falling.

To see parents as benefactors does not make a person a slave. It makes him human. Because the one who recognizes his roots carries less pride in his own height. The one who remembers his beginning also fears his end. And the one who does not see his benefactor as a burden perhaps leaves a better example for his own children.

The real point is simply this: in a home where the value of mother and father disappears, it is not only the elderly who die. A part of humanity dies there too.

Shahid Shakil

2026-07-04