THE TWO-INCOME FAMILY, provided the marriage is functioning, is a reality that will stay. In a situation where both parents work, unless they are profoundly aware of what their actions are and how their energies are spent in relation to their children, they (the children) will feel squeezed-out. At that point they will turn to television and the rest of the media, and absorb their values as a sponge does water. The ethical, emotional and moral positives that can only come from loving individuals will be replaced by the luminous, pulsating negatives of electronics. It is that simple: a malignancy will appear at some unknown time, and then spread and corrode.
It is an irony that there are more home-operated businesses than ever. The supposed aim of working at home, aside from obtaining economic independence, is spending more time with one’s family. Additionally, inceasing numbers of employers are receptive to altering work patterns for the benefit of productive employees, accepting a shorter work week and fewer hours. In a word, there are growing opportunities to abate the mad, senseless sacrifice for money.
The man and wife, father and mother, must reaffirm one another every day and more often than once. The time we have to spend on this earth is our most precious gift. We should bestow as much of it as possible on our children. Society’s problems are beyond reckoning for us as individuals, and indeed one will go mad attempting to address them. It is the mirror at home that marks the beginning path; and once begun, constructive activity on the local level can take any number of directions. Look at all the good that could be done with the time and energy that lie misspent on television!
NOTHING SEEMS OUTWARDLY DIFFERENT. In recent
days, I’ve seen customers smiling at the stores I've visited, and college
students joking, as has always been the case, about approaching final exams.
If anything, I hear fewer blaring horns while driving in traffic. Yet tragedies
such as Colorado, coming atop an unrelenting number of other murders and
horrors involving young and old alike are undermining our once-great spirit.
The lunacy has spread with warnings of copycats, inserted carefully before
commercial breaks. What else to expect but that, beneath the surface, people
are charged, nervous and strung wire-tight.
If we waste our gift of life and the gift we have to give life in a frenzy for gain and insipid entertainment, our children will become angered strangers off on their own. What then but that the media will, like turning gold into straw, transform the USA into the NRA; a gun for every car, with miniature ads along the barrel.
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