The Sorrow of Treating Aged Parents as a Burden to Divide

answered by The Book of Rites, "Ji Yi" (The Meaning of Sacrifices)

기원전 편찬(유가 예법 모음)

🎬 TODAY'S FILM — IT ASKS THIS

Make Way for Tomorrow (1937)

dir. Leo McCarey · USA

When grown children, each citing their circumstances, divide up an old couple who have lost their home, the two who shared a lifetime are made to live apart. The children are not villains, yet when love turns into a matter of scheduling and convenience, the aged parents lose any place to go. What collapses when care becomes arithmetic?

THE QUESTION THE FILM ASKS

Do I reckon my parents not as objects of love but as a burden to be divided among siblings?

THE CLASSIC'S ANSWER · ORIGINAL

孝子之有深愛者必有和氣

孝子之有深愛者必有和氣有和氣者必有愉色

📜 THE CLASSIC'S ANSWER

A child of deep love for a parent surely has a gentle air; one with a gentle air surely has a glad countenance.

💡 TL;DR

The Book of Rites says deep love shows as a gentle air, and again as a glad face.

📝The Classic Answers

The Book of Rites says deep love shows as a gentle air, and again as a glad face. Turned around: the moment we reckon a parent as a burden, the warmth drains from our faces. When siblings begin to divide aged parents by "who takes them for how many months," love turns to accounting and the parent is reduced to an object. I know the pull of this arithmetic. Yet the one who raised me did not parcel me out by months. When we forget that care is a bond lasting to the very end, not a burden, the closest of kin grows the loneliest. I choose to meet my parents not as a problem to solve but as people.

— ONGO · Curator

🌱Apply It Today

When the word "burden" flickers across your feeling toward an aging parent or elder, look at them again as a person.

📖 Classic Source: The Book of Rites, "Ji Yi" (The Meaning of Sacrifices). Ancient text in the public domain; rendered and interpreted independently by ONGO.
The film is honored as an equal questioner; its plot is rendered only as a universal dilemma. The classic source is an ancient text (Public Domain), and the reflection is 100% original ONGO content.