Chapter - 18 -


Children (part one)

Many of us have children: Our children, our flesh and blood, our pride and joy, 
and so on. It is something special to have children, to see them grow and enjoy the 
first 15 to 20 years of their lives. It is great to be there for them, to help them growing up, 
but… what has actually been happening the past 50 years or so? We have been so 
busy with ourselves that we forgot our children!

At a certain stage in our life, we may decide to have a child. Before that, we probably 
both had jobs, a house, a car and perhaps we first wanted to do some travelling 
around the world. When the newborn arrives and the first weeks after that, we enjoy 
our first child. Proudly we show our firstborn to everyone. After some weeks, we need 
to go back to work. The child goes to childcare and the father and mother work the 
whole day. After work, one of them picks up the child, plays with him for a while and then 
takes him to bed. The parents work all the time to make money, because they believe 
money is more important than being there for their child. The first years go by quickly 
and the child grows fast too … but there is one "little" thing. He wonders who his real 
parents are. He sees people come and go the whole day and only in the evening the 
same people pick him up and take him to a different home. He wonders whom to listen 
to and who is there to ask questions. Years pass by and as the child gets bigger, 
problems also grow. At school, there are always others telling him what to do and only 
at night there are the same people: they must be the parents! He wants to talk to them 
but they are tired and don't have time to listen. Where to go with problems? The child 
has now grown into a teenager, and at school he is difficult to handle. At night, in the 
place they call "home", they do not understand him. Where to go? The child finds his 
solutions on the street, from other children who have the same problems. They live a 
street life, where they survive by fighting and later by killing each other. When the time 
comes, he will have problems with our system, standing before a judge. And then the 
parents will tell the judge that they did everything for their child and bought him the most 
expensive toys.

What went wrong was simple: The child was educated by a lot of different people and
later by other kids on the street. There was no home. There was no parent when the
first small "problems of life" presented themselves. Nobody was there, only childcare, 
a teacher, and later the kids on the street. Those were the ones the child connected with.

In this matrix of life, many people are not there for their children. Later, they will cry 
because their child has become a criminal or does not care for his parents when they 
get old and lonely. It is not strange that the world of today has so many problems. 
We only live our own life, dominated by power, wealth, money and matter. It is not 
strange that we now have children who spend hours in front of a computer believing 
that that is real life. They see all kinds of things on their screen, see wars, play games, 
and kill hundreds of people and think "that's real life". And then we are surprised when 
that child goes to a school and shoots several other students! Why should that be 
strange? This is the real world for that child; if you can't handle something, eliminate it
like in a game! Their minds are like the program "kill to survive" and there is no parent
to tell them that it's not real life but only a game. Such children are largely the products 
of parents who never had the time to listen and talk to them. Parents who were never at 
home and tried to solve all that went wrong during the day in just a few hours.

The other extreme is parents who are so naïve and so over-protective that they feel 
they have to live their child's childhood. Parents who believe they must solve all their 
children's problems.

It's time to wake up. Children are products of their parents. Parents are the ones who
make  them, who place them in third or fourth place in their life (after money and 
material things). Don't turn your head away, thinking it doesn't apply to you. Stop looking
through rose-colored glasses and see who you really are!

It's time to start making a better world, because we need children who learn from their
parents. Parents whom they can talk to and, if needed, are there for them. Parents who 
tell them that computer games are not real and films in theatres are only fiction, 
manipulation by the system in which we live. Parents who give their children hugs and 
who show their children what happens if they take the wrong path. There are fewer and 
fewer real parents in this world: Parents who care and are there for their children. 
This is what we need if we want a better world. We need strong parents, who believe in
a good world and in the power of real life. Parents who can listen and show their children 
that there is also another way to live life; a life full of surprises and full of energy, in which 
you can do things that are beyond imagination. We need children to get us out of this
deadlock, and get the world back on track. There are children and parents who are 
doing well, the pioneers who explore and try to get this world on the right path again. 
Be one of them. Do not try it, but do it! And believe in that world: It is there right in front 
of you, take it, it is free. Do it! Do it now!


(Chapter 18)


TO MY NEXT CHAPTER