At the End of The Day

By Asma Shums
ll of us try to have a good life, we work hard and try to keep that momentum going as much as we can. We try our best to be successful; we get a good education, we prioritize our career, get a good-paying job and make sure we limit our distractions to focus on the important things in life. But we forget to ask ourselves: what actually matters at the end of the day?
All of us need a home to come back to at the end of the day surrounded by our families. All, if not most, should be excited to return home to our families and loved ones. Whether we are parents or children, we should want to return home to see our family. However, most of us treat our home as a guest house. We come home because we have to and our belongings are stored there.
Family is like a string of pearls. Each glistening white beautiful is attached to another by a delicate piece of thread and together a priceless and intricate piece of art is created resulting in a unique masterpiece. The thread that holds it all together is the parents to each member. Our parents cultivate the bond between our aunts and uncles, our grandparents, and force us to spend time with our cousins. It is the hardest, lowest-paying, challenging, and thankless job in the entire construction of an intricate and beautiful tree of relationships.
Now that we know our responsibility for fostering relations in our family, it is important to understand the qualities needed to be successful in this prestigious role. We need to be strong mentally first and foremost as our children look up to us to guide them in their lives and build a foundation to reflect during difficult and blissful moments in life. A day has 24 hours for everyone; whether a CEO of a multi-billion dollar company or a farmer in an improvised nation. We have to utilize this time to align with our goals and happiness as that is the true definition of success for an individual, not monetary value or material goods or a glamorous position at work.
What does this mean? We have to prioritize. It includes giving attention to our home, our family members, our careers, and most importantly to ourselves. It includes delegating tasks, taking difficult decisions, and sometimes being the bad person so things get done and our family members learn responsibility to be a successful independent individual. We need to find the strength and personal reflection to understand in these situations to not be hard on ourselves to make the required difficult decisions.
This situation also teaches us to appreciate the work of other members our family is playing. Let your mother have a day off and not criticize her, let your children have a ‘fun’ day where they don’t get scolded for doing something they aren’t allowed to, or shouldering the responsibilities so your spouse can have a fun-filled evening with their friends.
More importantly, it’s important to have an identity after marriage or having children. It is important to reflect on the things that make you happy and the boundaries that are important to you. It’s more important to not develop our sense of self on our husband or wife and manifest our personality on the traits of another. What makes you, YOU is what is your personal brand. If you are certain of who you are, its important to hold on to that because no one else will. You are your own best friend.
info@asmashums@gmail.com