Family is the best thing that can happen to someone. They are your primary support system. No matter how far you are from them, you will never feel alone if you are emotionally close to your family.
I think it is only when we become adults, we realize this. As a kid and a teenager we always feel our parents don’t understand us, our siblings are annoying and so on. But after you become an adult and start working and hardly get time to spend with them because your schedules don’t match, you realize how important they really are. And how you miss spending time with them!
Yes, I am definitely talking from experience. Currently I am at that point of life where I wish to spend as much time as possible with my parents and my younger brother. Why? Because I don’t ever want to regret missing this time. They are after all the only people who genuinely care about me and where life will take me in the future I really don’t know!
I got a glimpse of this reality today. I was working from home and my parents and brother happened to be at home too. I wasn’t feeling too well and my parents were worried about me. I realise that whenever I work from home, I end up working more than I work in office! In office I tend to get up and atleast go to the loo! Me and my colleagues tend to have discussions or simply have fun pulling each other’s leg! At home I just don’t do that. I don’t talk to anyone and keep sitting in the same place for hours together, except for having lunch and occasionally going to the loo! Seeing this worries my Mom. And today she was even more worried, because I had severe body ache and she was certain I was just going to make it worse.
She kept coming at regular intervals to remind me to get up and move around. She knew I had a tendency to get lost in my work and was determined to ensure that I don’t fall prey to it! Dad made sure I kept drinking enough water and eating on time. In fact, now that I think of it, I actually don’t do any of these things to maintain my work-life balance. I’m going to have to take mom and dad along with me to office. What would I ever do without them!
In the last one year, I have lost a few of my relatives. Every funeral I visited, I saw their families regretting how they couldn’t do enough for them and couldn’t spend enough time with them while they were there. Those are real reality checks for me! We tend to take our family members for granted. We say they are our priority but our actions don’t say so.
We keep dreaming for big things in life and miss out on these small things. Later we regret it, when there’s really nothing we can do about it.
One thing I have learned for sure and we all know, life is short. Family and money are both important, but not equally. I do want to earn a lot of money and fulfil my big dreams, but not at the expense of my family time. I might be okay regretting about not having a big house but I will definitely not be okay regretting that I didn’t spend enough time with my family and didn’t do enough for them.
Someone has rightly said, “No amount of money or success can take the place of time spent with your family”. What do you think?
So are you ready to change the way you spend time? Are you ready to increase your family part of the Work Life Balance wheel. Yes work does form an important part of Work-Life Balance, but doesn’t family too?
