Gene Gu

In the journey of parenthood, few stories offer as much wisdom as Jesus's parable of the prodigal son. This ancient tale reveals profound truths about unconditional love, patience, and the delicate balance between guidance and freedom that every parent must navigate. As a father myself, I've found myself reflecting deeply on what this story teaches us about raising children in today's complex world.   The Parable Revisited Many of us have probably heard the ancient story about the prodigal son. There was a rich man who had two sons. One day the younger son asked his father to give him his share of the inheritance now. The father divided up his possessions and gave his younger son his share. Once the younger son received it, he gathered all his possessions and set off for a distant country. There he squandered all the wealth he was given in wild living. A severe famine came to the country where the younger son resided. Having lost everything, he found himself feeding pigs ju...

Not all parenting are the same. There are levels to parenting. The lowest level of parenting is not being a parent at all and abandoning the child from the outset of their birth. The next level up is bare minimum parenting where parents only care to ensure their child has their basic needs met to survive. After that is higher parenting where parents place importance on their child's grades and what they pursue as a career in the future. The highest level of parenting is caring not just for the child's education and their future career, but caring about building the child up emotionally, mentally and spiritually. Abandoning a child can't even be called parenting. It creates the worst sort of connection between two biologically related individuals. The negative emotional and psychological effect abandonment has on a child more often than not affects them for a life time. Children that are abandoned grow up insecure, untrusting of others and with very low self esteem. This oft...

Parenting is failing these days. A lot of the kids you meet these days are inconsiderate, arrogant, rude, self-righteous and entitled. There's a saying "Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times." Compared to most of modern history we have been in a period of relatively good times for a very long time, so much so that now we have a lot of immature adults breeding even weaker minded and emotional children. Here are some of the ways parents today are failing their kids. Number 1, not teaching kids how to protect themselves physically, mentally and emotionally. The greatest threat to kids these days aren't from physical threats, but from online threats. The use of social media has proliferated and children interactions with other people through them is ever increasing. The increasing use of social media has been linked to increase in mental health issues and emotional manipulation. Most parents ...

We humans celebrate and obsess over people who are the best at what they do. We celebrate the best players in a sport, the best students in the school, the best actors etc. We even celebrate the best criminals, whether they are considered the best con-artist, best thieves, best smuggler, or best drug dealer in history.   Celebrating the best in our society is equivalent to celebrating the extreme. As a result many people chase the extreme in order to seek the attention and the adoration of the masses. What many eventually find is that chasing the extreme comes with a huge price, whether that be deterioration in health,  close relationships or financially. Most people aren't built for the extreme in the long haul, therefore when they chase it far enough it ruins much of their lives.  Real overarching success and happiness is being able to move in and out from the extreme, ultimately centering yourself at the middle. It is being able to push yourself as hard as you can...