The greatest thing you'll ever learn

[pegkerr]

As I was making my breakfast this morning I had the KSJN Morning Show on, and the song "Nature Boy" started playing.

After listening for a moment, I stepped out into living room, where Fiona was playing a computer game and Rob was talking to Delia, who was sitting on his lap.

"May I have your attention for a moment?" I said. My family looked up at me expectantly. "I just wanted to say that I think that this song has it right. The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." I went over and kissed Delia on the top of her head. "If you take anything from what your parents teach you, remember that."

"That's a pretty good rule," said Rob.

If you had to boil down what you want to pass on to your children to one sentence, what would it be?

Comments

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

Virtue will always be harder than vice.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

That reminds me of what J.K. Rowling says the Harry Potter books are about: learning to choose what it right rather than what is easy.

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

Ah... I knew there was another reason to like Harry Potter just lurking around here somewhere. :)

I chose this one because it's the only thing that saved me from so many of the mistakes my peers were making as we grew up. I stuck to it because my mother's enduring lesson to me was, "If everyone's going to jump off the Mississippi River bridge, are you going to do it too?"

Her general message was to fight against the crowd, and fortunately I decided that meant fighting the crowd when they said being cool involved doing stupid things. But I think the moral context needs to be there.

So: virtue is hard, but be virtuous anyway.