Art of Giving – Voices of our children (Part 2)
My three children have been blessed all their lives with abundance and no shortage of anything. It is precisely because of their fortunate circumstances that I knew I had to encourage them to widen their perspectives about their lives and lives of others.
So while other mothers were talking about how to get their children into Stanford, I was thinking about how to install the Art of Giving into their lives. Instead of in and out of tutoring centers, we spent weekends at a school in Kowloon helping new immigrants with their English. During festive seasons, we helped to donate rice to homes for the elderly and distributed mooncakes to the homeless people. During their high school years, they engaged at a special need center helping adults with disabilities. When they were in college, they spent their summers working for the center for the blind.
I told Xavier when he was 5 years old that there are children in this world who have no parents or family, he thought I was joking. The line of questions that followed reminds me that I must do my absolute best to instill in my children that to live an upstanding life, it takes more than a good education and doing the right thing. It takes courage to be selfless and it takes a big heart to give to those who are in needs.
