Page 40 - Spirit of Islam-May'17

LEARNING ABOUT LIFE
FROM THE FAMILY

Continuous Experience

HE family is a unit of larger humanity. The conditions found at
the macro-level in mankind are also found, on a smaller scale,
Twithin each family. In this sense, for every person, the family
serves as a training school. Within our own families, we can learn all
the many things that are necessary in order to lead a successful life
in this world. But there is one condition for this—you must not idolize
your family. You should view your family in just the same way as you
view other people.

It sounds strange, but it’s true: you can find all the many different types
of characters that exist in the world among members of your own
family! For everyone, one’s family is like the
legendary cup of the Persian king Jamshid.
Most people fall prey If you looked into this cup, so the story
to a one-sided way went, you could see every single thing in the
of thinking about universe! In the mirror of your family you can
members of their see models of all sorts of moral standards,
families. This is due high and low. In this way, by interactions with
to lack of objective, one’s family members, one can gain valuable
unbiased thinking. experience. The wisdom gained from these
experiences will be of immense help in the
course of planning realistically.
Very few of us, however, take proper advantage of these potential
learning experiences afforded to us by our families. Why does one
miss out on such a learning opportunity? There is just one reason for
this—it is lack of objective, unbiased thinking. Most people fall prey to
a very one-sided way of thinking about members of their families. They
ignore or seek to ignore the faults of their near and dear ones. They
view people outside their families critically, but they generally don’t
think in the same way when it comes to their family members. Because
of this, they fail to draw the lessons they could from both members of
their families as well as others. o

38 Spirit of Islam Issue 53 May 2017