Art of Giving – Voices of our children (Part 3)
Twenty-five years later, I am more than proud of my adult children for their decision to quit their full-time jobs and dedicate six months of their lives to work as volunteers in Asia, to help children without families nor education. Neither of them graduated from Ivy League schools, nor do they engaged in any high paying job but what they do have (more important than anything else) is a big heart, a caring, and empathetic heart. All the updates of how they were doing in Cambodia, (there for 2 months and then to Burma for 2 months, ending in Vietnam in May 2018) tells me that I had planted the seeds well. (visit their campaign page: The Huibonhoa Help)
Ultimately, the actions I admire and encourage from my children resides in the simple but powerful act of positive action. It is the act of “action over words“ that differentiates. I am reminded of the philosopher, Edmund Burke, who famously coined the deceptively profound quote of “All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing“. Because inaction in the face of injustice is almost as bad as actively participating in its inequity. We cannot sit back and claim indifference because the issue at hand is dislocated from our daily circumstances. As the poet Dylan Thomas wrote -” We must rage against the dying of the light“. When we see social injustice hence avoid turning a blind eye, just because we do not see the immediate relevance to our lives.
