Everything Begins at Home
Like charity, everything else begins at home. It is where your foundation for every kind of learning sprout wings. Home is where you first learn to talk, to sing, to respect, to behave, to work hard, to lie or to tell the truth, to do good or evil, to be kind or to be cruel; it is the first learning place for everybody irrespective of colour, race, or culture.
Home gives you the basic foundation for every kind of virtue that you can later on, choose to develop or discard. It is where you get an idea or the basic understanding of life and things, social, religious, economical or political. Literally everything is based at home because this is where you begin to evolve as a human being, as a citizen of a certain village or town and essentially, a global citizen of the world.
What we learn as a child goes a long way in molding our dreams and aspirations. And not only is it important because our childhood education, in whatever form it may be, stays with us for a very long time, but because a lot of what we become in life can also be traced back to the background that we are all so familiar with. If you and I, today, are known to be kind or generous, then it probably has something to do with our upbringing. Or if we are known to be selfish, mean and arrogant, then, it also still has something to do with our own respective home environment as children.
Much more than academic institutions can teach us, the virtues and values we pick from growing up continue to have a greater impact in the roles we play as students, as professionals or as young people. One may have excellent academic records but that one aspect does not entirely define a person. It is only when that excellence is combined with the right attitude and personality, that a particular person becomes somebody worth looking up to.
It is easy to undermine the value of a good character in this growing world of materialism, but it is important to do a recheck on ourselves every once in a while, to ensure that we have not yet lost, along with time, the rich virtues that make us whole. Because at the end of the day, we are not more or not less than human beings, and at the core of it, lies the human need for good feelings.
They say that learning is a lifelong process, but we, most certainly develop our character from the place and environment that we grow up in. While we must all strive to keep learning, we must also remember to stay grounded and connected to our roots, to our good childhood values, because they form the basis of who we are and what we are. And because, as children (unless we are born to unfortunate parents), we are always taught to be kind and good, to abstain from telling lies, to be respectful, to be well-behaved, to share and to be thankful for what we have. And these virtues, are sure worth keeping for a lifetime.