An eighty-year-old gentleman was sitting on the sofa at home, his forty-five-year-old highly educated son was sitting with him. Suddenly a crow came and sat near their window.
The old father asked his son: “What is it?”
The boy replied: “It is a crow.”
A few minutes later, Father asked again: “What is it?”
The son replied: “Father, I just said that it is a crow.”
After a while the father again asked for the third time: “What is it?”
The boy felt very upset now. In a rather threatening voice, he said: “It’s a crow, a crow.”
After some time, the father again asked the son the same question for the fourth time: “What is it?”
This time the son got very angry and shouted at his father. He said in a loud voice: “Why are you asking me the same question again and again? How many times I say one thing that ‘it’s a crow’.” Don’t you even understand this thing?”
A little later the father went to his room and brought out an old, tattered diary that he had carefully kept since the birth of his son. He opened a page and asked his son to read it.
When the boy read it, the following words were written there: “Today my son, who is three years old, was sitting on the couch with me when a crow came and sat by the window. The boy asked me 23 times what is that, and I told him 23 times that it is a crow. I hugged him lovingly as he asked the same question 23 times over and over again. I was not angry at all but; I felt affection for my innocent son.”
When the little boy asked for the 23rd time “What is this?” The father never felt bored answering the same question 23 times, and today when the father asked his son the same question four times, the son felt bored and angry while answering it.
Moral of the story:
When parents reach old age, don’t go away from them or burden them but talk to them lovingly, be calm, be obedient, gentle and kind to them. Show compassion to your parents. Say it out loud, “I want to see my parents happy all the time. They have taken care of me since I was a child. They have always shown me selfless love. They cross mountains and valleys, storms and heat
God cannot come and live among us. Instead, he sends someone to bless us. That blessing comes from our parents. This quick and easy narrative reminds us how our parents’ entire world is intertwined with us. The son is irritated with his father because he continues asking him the same question over and again. This demonstrates the son’s ignorance and impatience. In our childhood, our parents used to look after us and try to achieve every request we had without being irritated. Our parents get older as we grow into responsible people. It is our responsibility to look after our parents. As people age, they acquire a variety of issues. They frequently act like children. They have difficulty hearing, eating, and even moving from one location to another. We then become our parents’ parents. They put their whole trust with us. They need to be treated with the same affection that they showed us as children. This story is brief yet profound. It provides us with insight into the world’s reality.