retail therapy

My parents are visiting. They go bananas when indoors, but are not enterpreneuring to go outside (in a nice warm Hawai'i...) and are always lookiing for something to entertain them. In short, they do not know how to entertain themselves.

So, I dropped them off at (rather fancy, well visited, famous, touristy) shopping mall called Ala Moana and came back 6 hrs later.

I was sure they would be tired. Not at all! Both of them were completely refreshed and perky. They enjoyed window shopping and people watching. Luckily the mall is mostly outdoors so they practically spent the day outdoors by the ocean.

Now they are home again and cranky and don't know what to do with themselves.

Interesting - what this modern age makes of human beings: people who don't know what to do with themselves and have to be entertained. There is no gratitide, no enjoyment of life, only grumbling that there is nothing external to keep us passively entertained.

Maybe that's how it always has been - that's why there are alcohol and drug problems all over the world. I once watched a documentary of some hut in middle of some African desert where grandma and her son and wife and kids live, and grandma brews some beer and is drunk all day. This was maybe 5x5 grass hut in the middle of nowhere. Obviously, that woman in that hut does not know what to do with her time either.

So, what does it mean to have parents and society like this? People that taught us those habits and now we are like them but feel that something is not quite right.

I was first feeling scandalized and then accepted that this is my heritage on one level. On another level, I am a child of God and that heritage is mine too, and needs to be nurtured.