On Winning the Parent Lottery
The title of this post refers to a statement from the book and the talk, "The Last Lecture", by Randy Pausch, a Computer Science professor at CMU, who had pancreatic cancer, to which he succumbed in July 2008. In his book, Randy talks about how you have don't have any control over who your parents are, and how they influence your life the most in your formative years, which in turn determines to a large extent, the shape your life takes.
Recently I read three books on stories of women oppression- "A Thousand Splendid Suns", "Not Without My Daughter" and "Princess: A True Story of Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia", based in Afghanistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia respectively. All three are excellent books, and I highly recommend reading them all; especially the first one. I shudder to think what would have become of me if I were to have been born in a family/country that had no concept of women's rights whatsoever.
I feel *so* lucky to have been born and brought up in India, by excellent, very well educated parents who have been most supportive and encouraging of all my ambitions, my goals and my interests in life. I very much consider myself to have won the parent lottery, hands down.
Recently I read three books on stories of women oppression- "A Thousand Splendid Suns", "Not Without My Daughter" and "Princess: A True Story of Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia", based in Afghanistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia respectively. All three are excellent books, and I highly recommend reading them all; especially the first one. I shudder to think what would have become of me if I were to have been born in a family/country that had no concept of women's rights whatsoever.
I feel *so* lucky to have been born and brought up in India, by excellent, very well educated parents who have been most supportive and encouraging of all my ambitions, my goals and my interests in life. I very much consider myself to have won the parent lottery, hands down.
posted by Pradnya at 11:25 AM
4 Comments:
Hi Pradnya
I haven't read any of these books (yet) - but the movie by Nagesh Kuknoor "Dor" made me feel the same way. So lucky to be born to educated, supportve parents even if we haven't agreed on everything over the years.
Harinee
PS: I saw the last lecture on you tube and loved it, especially the part about brick walls.
Very true. It's not as if I agree with my parents on everything. In fact we argue a lot. But the fact is that they have molded me quite well in my early years, gave me a lot of exposure to a variety of things in my formative years, and supported me in almost all of my decisions in my adult life, whether they agreed with it or not.
I was thinking the same as I was watching Slumdog Millionaire. Were I born couple of levels down in the economic ladder, I doubt I could have made it here.
I've read Princess and I was shocked to see the arab's treatment. Every non-arab women should celebrate every day for not having been born in that ridiculous country.
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