I was sitting in the dining
room of my friend's house waiting for his
imminent arrival home from work. He came through the
door shlepping a couple of shopping bags with him.
With great joy he called his teenage daughter to the
room and said, "Look what I brought you home from
the store today." This loving father had carefully
chosen some clothing that came into his extremely
popular and successful store and put it aside for
his daughter.
I don't claim to be any
major maven on woman's fashion, but from what I
could see the pile of clothing looked great. Any
girl would dream to be given so many new skirts,
shirts, jackets and suits.
So you could imagine my
shock when I heard this sweet little teenager's
response to her fathers loving and generous gesture.
"Abba, what?! You're
expecting me to wear this? This is probably from the
end of the season. This is the stuff you couldn't
sell. I need money so I can go out and buy something
'normal.'"
I was so affected by the
ingratitude that I saw. I was really upset for my
friend for his honor and his relationship with his
daughter.
Later that evening,
while sitting at the dinner table, one of my
children mentioned an issue they were having at
school. Being the good father, and being that my
occupation calls for me to give advice to all those
who step into my office and ask for it, I gave my
child sound advice, identical to what I would tell
anyone else in the same situation. Lo and behold, my
child said to me, "Totty, how could you even SAY
that to me. You're giving me the same advice as
everyone else. What do you think? I'm one of your
clients?"
The sense of dé·jà vu
was real and strong.
Here I sit in my office
many hours a day listening to people and giving them
advice on many different subjects - sound advice
from the comments and reactions that come back to me
- and like my friend the clothing store proprietor,
my own child kindly gave my 'merchandise' back at
me.
These two incidents,
one following on the heels of the other, opened my
eyes to the idea that many people don't appreciate
the gifts that their parents, spouses and children
have. In fact, there's an old Yiddish saying: "Der
Shister's kinder gayin un shich." "The shoemaker's
children walk around without shoes." The popular
interpretation of this saying is that the shoemaker
is so busy creating and making shoes for everyone
else he doesn't have time to sew a pair of shoes
together for his children.
I would like to offer a
different interpretation for this saying. The
shoemaker DID in fact make shoes for his children
and he did bring them home for his children to wear,
but when they saw the shoes that their father
brought home the children said, "This is what you
brought for ME? Your child? You're giving these to
me probably because you couldn't sell it. I'm not
wearing these shoes."
After opening my eyes
to this phenomenon of people not appreciating the
gifts and skills of those nearest and dearest to
them, I saw so many instances of it that my head
began to spin.
I watched the wife who hired
a plumber because she didn't trust her husband - a
highly skilled much in demand plumber. The husband
who bought the cake because he didn't think his wife
could make something nice enough for his needs - and
her cakes are sought all over the city. I heard the
parents hire an expert to give them advice on which
house to buy - when their own son was a
multi-millionaire real estate mogul. In each of
these cases the experienced person was willing to
give of themselves to their loved ones, but somehow
their expertise and advice wasn't good enough.
Which leaves
us with the question: Do we appreciate
the gifts our parents, spouse and
children have? |