Everyone Has a Part To Play

Today's contest topic is an interesting one and this is because I genuinely feel like each and everyone of us has thought about this particular topic one way or the other. If you haven't, well I have.

_{photo by Liane Metzler}

Back in the day, myself and my friends would always talk about how harsh our parents were in their training with us, and although we knew that they were doing all of that in order to shape us into good people in the future, I remember the thoughts that always went through my mind whenever I saw someone whose parents were more strict than mine, committing crimes that I wouldn't even dare think to commit.

That was when I started to realize that yes, our parents will try to train us in the path that they feel is right, but at the end of the day, we all end up becoming whoever it is we want to become, regardless of how we were trained or brought up.

It's almost like the "taking the horse to the river" saying, only this time, you can force the horse to drink for a while, but after it gets to a certain age, the horse gets to decide if it wants to drink or not and nothing you say or do will be able to influence it's decision.

Another example is the university, the one place where most people get to taste freedom for the first time in their life. And just like a lot of kids out there, many of us leave our home where we've had the best home training, where our parents are pastors and tried their best to train us in the way of the lord, and yet, the moment we step our foot into this unholy ground called the university where anything goes, all of that training flies out the window and we become someone else.

And what's crazy is that most of us don't even see ourselves becoming that person, but the people we meet along the way are the ones who shape us and can either add more lessons to that that was taught to us by our parents, or take us to the other side, where we get to ignore every last thing we were taught by our parents and just be someone new, someone they won't recognise.

So in order to be a bit more direct in answering today's questions, when a kid does something wrong, I feel the parent should be blamed for it because the kid is a kid and most of the time is only behaving based on how he or she was brought up, but when an adult does something wrong, the adult should take responsibility and be blamed for it regardless of your upbringing and this is simply because as an adult, you're in charge of your every move and decision and you know right from wrong.

At the end of the day, everyone has a part to play in all of it. Your parents part is to bring you up in the right way while also impacting you with wisdom, while your part is to remember their words and your training when you find yourself in places that are trying to make you go against those teachings.