Sunday 10 / May / 2026
Many times we don’t realise until the great moments have passed to know what they were and then it may be too late. Precious moments go to waste while we have been looking the other way.
I was looking at the old photographs of my parents with my siblings. Suddenly, good memories flashed back. They never seemed that way those days. It was just a routine that needed to be gotten over. Later, I picked the photos of my children. I watched their faces and the bright smiles they had. The mischievous looks and the funny pauses. At that time it did not mean much to us. Years later, we now know they should have meant a lot.
I wish now I savored those moments. Photographs cannot capture the essence of great times. They just remind of you about the lost moments. Now, looking at my grown up children, I wonder where the years have gone. I can make many excuses that I was busy making a living for them to have three decent meals a day and a comfortable home. What I forgot was that time never stands still. It marches on like a soldier in the war. It was really a battle with the time that made me blind to the splendid moments. Busy with my schedules, I never really put priority to what was really important to me.
But as I look at the present, I ask myself now if I have learned anything at all. The time still rushes on. It is still the old me and my old routine has never abandoned me. Priorities have perhaps changed but the urgency to sail past the routine in a hurry is still overwhelming. Why should it be like that? I guess it is all about thoughts and the hyperactivity of the mind. When I put back the old pictures, I thought I needed to change. I needed perhaps to slow down. The question I asked myself if weather it was worth to do things the right way. But then what is the right way? Putting work first before anything else? Let the flow of cash detect the terms of my life or just get busy for the sake of getting busy?
I thought of giving myself a little test. For one hour, I would not put myself and my priorities first. So I started knocking the bedroom doors of my children. I started discussing topics they liked. For that hour, I got myself absorbed by being with them and listen to their “stories’ rather than asking them to listen to my “stories” like it usually is. When the hour was up, I went back to my bedroom and assessed it all up. It was quiet satisfying. I felt good about it. Then I thought to extend the “hour of grace” and asked my wife to go with me for a quiet meal. Before I went to bed that night, I asked myself this question, “ it was not bad, was it?”
The next morning, I felt the challenge was to keep it up without turning it into a routine. So I decided to do it randomly when my family least expected it. Whether that would do the trick or not, I don’t know. But I am confident it would make us, as a family, better communicate with each other. Family togetherness cannot be measured by the hours in a day but by the chosen moments that are carefully designed to bring delights between every member. There are many blessings behind it. The most important is that you feel good about it that you are taking the time. And one day, when the times comes for my children to pick up the old photographs when I am gone, they would not be too many regrets for them.
