Story Of Appreciation (for parents and childrens....pls read it......don't miss.............it )

Story Of Appreciation (for parents and children)

One young academically excellent person went to apply for a managerial position in a big company.

He passed the first interview; the director did the last interview, made the last decision.

The director discovered from the CV, that the youth's academic result is excellent all the way, from the secondary school until the postgraduate research, never was a year he did not score.

The director asked, "Did you obtain any scholarship in school?" and the youth answered "none".

The director asked, " Is it your father who paid for your school fees?"

The youth answered, my father passed away when I was one year old, it is my mother who paid for my school fees.

The director asked, " Where did your mother work?"

The youth answered, my mother worked as a cloth cleaner.

The director requested the youth to show his hand, the youth showed a pair of hand that were smooth and perfect to the director.

The director asked, " Did you ever help your mother wash the clothes before?"

The youth answered, never, my mother always wanted me to study and read more books, furthermore, my mother can wash clothes faster than me.

The director said, I have a request, when you go back today, go and help to clean your mother's hand, and then see me tomorrow morning.

The youth felt that as the chance of landing the job is high, when he went back, he happily wanted to clean his mother's hand, his mother felt strange, happy but mixed with fear, she showed her hands to the kid.

The youth cleaned his mother's hand slowly, his tears dropped down as he did that. It is the first time he found his mother's hands so wrinkled, and there are so many bruises in her hand. Some bruises incite pains so strong that shiver his mother's body when cleaned with water.

This is the first time the youth realized and experienced that it is this pair of hand that washed the cloth everyday to earn him the school fees, the bruises in the mother's hand is the price that the mother paid for his graduation and academic excellence and probably his future.

After cleaning his mothers hand, the youth quietly cleaned all remaining clothes for his mother.

That night, both mother and son talked for a very long time.


Next morning, the youth went to the director's office.

The director noticed the tear in the youth's eye, asked:
"Can you tell what have you done and learned yesterday in your house?"

The youth answered, " I cleaned my mother's hand, and also cleaned all the remaining clothes'

The director asked, "please tell me your feeling."

The youth said :

Number 1, I learnt what is appreciation. Without my mother, I would not be successful today.

Number 2, I learnt how to work together with my mother and realized how difficult and tough it is to get something done.

Number 3, I learnt the importance and value of family relationship.

The director said, " This is what I am asking, I want to recruit a person that can appreciate the help of others, a person who knows the suffering of others to get things done, and a person that would not put money as his only goal in life to be my Manager. You are hired.

Later on, this young person worked very hard, and received the respect of his subordinates, every employees worked diligently and in a team, the company's result improved tremendously.

A child who has been protected and habitually given whatever he did would develop "entitlement mentality" and always put himself first. He would become ignorant of his parent's effort. When he begins work, he assumes that all must listen to him, and when he becomes a Manager, he would never know the sufferings of his employees and always blame others. Such Managers can have good results, may be successful for a while, but eventually would not feel the sense of achievement, he would then grumble and be full of hatred and fight for more.

If we are this kind of protective parent, did we love the kid or destroy the kid?

You can let your kid live in a huge house, eat a good meal, learn piano, watch a large TV screen etc.

But when you are cutting grass, please let them experience it.

After a meal, let them wash their plate and bowl together with their brothers and sisters.

It is not because you do not have money to hire a maid, but it is because you want to love them in a right way.

You want them to understand, no matter how rich their parents are, one day their hair will turn grey, same as the mother of that young person.

The most important thing is your kids learn how to appreciate the effort and experience the difficulty and learn the ability to work with others to get things done.

ENJOY LIFE NOW - IT HAS AN EXPIRATION DATE!

This is a wonderful piece by Michael Gartner, editor of newspapers large and small and president of NBC News.  In 1997, he won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing.  It is well worth reading, and a few good chuckles are guaranteed.  Here goes....   ENJOY LIFE NOW - IT HAS AN EXPIRATION DATE! My father never drove a car..  Well, that's not quite right.  I should say I never saw him drive a car. He quit driving in 1927, when he was 25 years old, and the last car he drove was a 1926 Whippet. "In those days," he told me when he was in his 90s, "to drive a car you had to do things with your hands, and do things with your feet, and look every which way, and I decided you could walk through life and enjoy it or drive through life and miss it." At which point my mother, a sometimes salty Irishwoman, chimed in: "Oh, bull----! she said.  "He hit a horse." "Well," my father said, "there was that, too." So my brother and I grew up in a household without a car.  The neighbors all had cars -- the Kollingses next door had a green 1941Dodge, the VanLaninghams across the street a gray 1936 Plymouth, the Hopsons two doors down a black 1941 Ford -- but we had none. My father, a newspaperman in Des Moines , would take the streetcar to work and, often as not, walk the 3 miles home.  If he took the streetcar home, my mother and brother and I would walk the three blocks to the streetcar stop, meet him and walk home together. My brother, David, was born in 1935, and I was born in 1938, and sometimes, at dinner, we'd ask how come all the neighbors had cars but we had none.  "No one in the family drives," my mother would explain, and that was that. But, sometimes, my father would say, "But as soon as one of you boys turns 16, we'll get one."  It was as if he wasn't sure which one of us would turn 16 first. But, sure enough, my brother turned 16 before I did, so in 1951 my parents bought a used 1950 Chevrolet from a friend who ran the parts department at a Chevy dealership downtown. It was a four-door, white model, stick shift, fender skirts, loaded with everything, and, since my parents didn't drive, it more or less became my brother's car.  Having a car but not being able to drive didn't bother my father, but it didn't make sense to my mother. So in 1952, when she was 43 years old, she asked a friend to teach her to drive.  She learned in a nearby cemetery, the place where I learned to drive the following year and where, a generation later, I took my two sons to practice driving.  The cemetery probably was my father's idea.  "Who can your mother hurt in the cemetery?" I remember him saying more than once. For the next 45 years or so, until she was 90, my mother was the driver in the family.  Neither she nor my father had any sense of direction, but he loaded up on maps -- though they seldom left the city limits -- and appointed himself navigator.  It seemed to work. Still, they both continued to walk a lot.  My mother was a devout Catholic, and my father an equally devout agnostic, an arrangement that didn't seem to bother either of them through their 75 years of marriage. (Yes, 75 years, and they were deeply in love the entire time.) He retired when he was 70, and nearly every morning for the next 20 years or so, he would walk with her the mile to St. Augustin's Church.  She would walk down and sit in the front pew, and he would wait in the back until he saw which of the parish's two priests was on duty that morning.  If it was the pastor, my father then would go out and take a 2-mile walk, meeting my mother at the end of the service and walking her home. If it was the assistant pastor, he'd take just a 1-mile walk and then head back to the church.  He called the priests "Father Fast" and "Father Slow." After he retired, my father almost always accompanied my mother whenever she drove anywhere, even if he had no reason to go along.  If she were going to the beauty parlor, he'd sit in the car and read, or go take a stroll or, if it was summer, have her keep the engine running so he could listen to the Cubs game on the radio.  In the evening, then, when I'd stop by, he'd explain: "The Cubs lost again.  The millionaire on second base made a bad throw to the millionaire on first base, so the multimillionaire on third base scored." If she were going to the grocery store, he would go along to carry the bags out -- and to make sure she loaded up on ice cream.  As I said, he was always the navigator, and once, when he was 95 and she was 88 and still driving, he said to me, "Do you want to know the secret of a long life?" "I guess so," I said, knowing it probably would be something bizarre. "No left turns," he said. "What?" I asked. "No left turns," he repeated.  "Several years ago, your mother and I read an article that said most accidents that old people are in happen when they turn left in front of oncoming traffic. As you get older, your eyesight worsens, and you can lose your depth perception, it said.  So your mother and I decided never again to make a left turn." "What?" I said again. "No left turns," he said.  "Think about it.  Three rights are the same as a left, and that's a lot safer.  So we always make three rights." "You're kidding!" I said, and I turned to my mother for support.  "No," she said, "your father is right.  We make three rights.  It works."  But then she added: "Except when your father loses count." I was driving at the time, and I almost drove off the road as I started laughing. "Loses count?" I asked.  "Yes," my father admitted, "that sometimes happens.  But it's not a problem.  You just make seven rights, and you're okay again." I couldn't resist.  "Do you ever go for 11?" I asked. "No," he said " If we miss it at seven, we just come home and call it a bad day.  Besides, nothing in life is so important it can't be put off another day or another week."   My mother was never in an accident, but one evening she handed me her car keys and said she had decided to quit driving. That was in 1999, when she was 90.. She lived four more years, until 2003.  My father died the next year, at 102. They both died in the bungalow they had moved into in 1937 and bought a few years later for $3,000.  (Sixty years later, my brother and I paid $8,000 to have a shower put in the tiny bathroom -- the house had never had one.  My father would have died then and there if he knew the shower cost nearly three times what he paid for the house.) He continued to walk daily -- he had me get him a treadmill when he was 101 because he was afraid he'd fall on the icy sidewalks but wanted to keep exercising -- and he was of sound mind and sound body until the moment he died. One September afternoon in 2004, he and my son went with me when I had to give a talk in a neighboring town, and it was clear to all three of us that he was wearing out, though we had the usual wide-ranging conversation about politics and newspapers and things in the news. A few weeks earlier, he had told my son, "You know, Mike, the first hundred years are a lot easier than the second hundred."  At one point in our drive that Saturday, he said, "You know, I'm probably not going to live much longer." "You're probably right," I said. "Why would you say that?"  He countered, somewhat irritated. "Because you're 102 years old," I said.. "Yes," he said, "you're right."  He stayed in bed all the next day.. That night, I suggested to my son and daughter that we sit up with him through the night. He appreciated it, he said, though at one point, apparently seeing us look gloomy, he said: "I would like to make an announcement.  No one in this room is dead yet" An hour or so later, he spoke his last words: "I want you to know," he said, clearly and lucidly, "that I am in no pain.  I am very comfortable.  And I have had as happy a life as anyone on this earth could ever have." A short time later, he died.. I miss him a lot, and I think about him a lot.  I've wondered now and then how it was that my family and I were so lucky that he lived so long. I can't figure out if it was because he walked through life, or because he quit taking left turns." Life is too short to wake up with regrets.

So love the people who treat you right.  Forget about the ones who don't. Believe everything happens for a reason.  If you get a chance, take it & if it changes your life, let it. Nobody said life would be easy, they just promised it would most likely be worth it."

ENJOY LIFE NOW - IT HAS AN EXPIRATION DATE!