Let your children be what they want to be

Recovered somewhat from the computer crash and enjoying the holiday season with family visiting.

I was told the story of the farmer, his wife and their son…their son who wanted to be a hunter to the parents dismay. Then I was asked what the moral of the story was and before I had a chance to think about it, I was told “let your children be what they want to be”.

As I write this, there are three noisy kids running circles around me. I can’t help thinking that “I don’t want them to be what they want to be”. I want them to be quiet, well behaved, quiet and unheard. But then I guess they wouldn’t be children.

Back to our story, perhaps the moral we see in it now is a modern interpretation. Perhaps the story simply highlighted the relationship that may have existed between hunters and farmers. Perhaps farmers thought themselves to be superior to hunters. Hunting may have been the old, unpredictable and dangerous way of life but farming was the new, safe and sensible occupation. And the moral of the story may be “do not look down on hunting as a profession”. Maybe some hunters concocted this story to drive home their point of view but I think they could have done better, after all, the hunter in this story met riches through pure luck, luck that the farmer had as much chance of meeting on his farm as the hunter had of meeting in the forest. Oh well, it’s still a good story.