I had a note on my iPhone about the last few minutes of this episode when Malcolm Gladwell talks about his father, who had recently passed away. I hadn’t written down exactly what he said so I listened to it again and was reminded why it resonated with me in the first place.
Just before the following quote, Gladwell says that the more he listened to Robert Frantz, the more he realised he was talking about things that he had been thinking about as well. This seemed inescapable to him. This is exactly how I felt.
31 mins. 28 secs. – What is a child’s obligation to his parent? I took my father’s presence for granted for as long as he was alive and when he died, the first shocking realisation was that I had to find a way to keep him alive in my heart. To honour his memory.
How do we do that? Not by honouring our parents beliefs. We are different people than they are. Born in different eras, shaped by different forces. What we are obliged to honour in our parents is their principles. The rules by which they lived their lives.
My father passed away on 30th October 2012. He was, not forgetting my mother, the greatest inspiration in my life. I too will continue to uphold and live by the foundation of his thinking, his principles.
My Excerpts 