Laura, at 11D, calls our attention to an article in the Sunday NYT Magazine by Bob Morris, in which he reflects upon his desires to push his elderly father to physical activity beyond what the older man wants.   Laura sums it up nicely in her title, "improving our parents."   The story Morris tells ends with some regret that he pushed his father too hard.

     I know this feeling, having watched my mother die slowly, over the course of two years or so, of cancer (my father died suddenly of a heart attack years before).  There were times during her illness when I pressed and prodded her to do more and better than she was.  And there were times when I had to make big decisions that she resisted.   Morris gets at the selfish undercurrent of such anxieties:

…What he really needed was more affection, not exercise. Yet I kept
trying to impose my will on both my parents right to the end. How dare
they become so old?

I think about them now, when I go out walking with such determination it’s almost as if I’m trying to walk away from myself….

     The demise of our parents, inevitable as it may be, is a picture of our own demise, and that is one reason why we are so uncomfortable with it.  When faced with the physical decline of a loved one, we have to walk a fine line between doing what is best for them and what is most pleasing and affirming to ourselves.  Knowing the right action is not easy.  But we have to struggle to find the right thing.  Mencius comes to mind, my mind at least.  In describing one of the great sage-rulers, Shun, Mencius says that he

…knew that if you don’t realize
your parents you aren’t a person, and if you don’t lead your parents to
share your wisdom you aren’t a child.

 I like that rendition, "realize your parents."  What he means is that in our own actions, as we perform our daily duties, we are not only doing for ourselves but we are enacting the honor and respect of our parents.  That sounds like a heavy burden, and Confucians mean it to be a conscious responsibility.   But it is precisely in that activity that we make ourselves human.  Notice, too, how Mencius expects us to lead our parents to share our wisdom.  In other words, as we grow to adulthood there will be things we know better than them, and these things we must share with them, that is our responsibility as children.

      Whatever his regrets in pushing too far, Morris was right to seriously engage the question of what it was that his father needed.  He tried to do the right thing.  The biggest challenge is to keep our own expectations about what we think they want from getting in the way of realizing them.