"A fairy tale about humankind"

(Baonghean) - My son Bim just started first grade this year and is learning to read and write, so he spends all day reciting poems he learned at school. Today he recited a poem, and there was a passage that went like this:

"Knowing what children yearn for"

Stories of the past and the future

I don't know where it came from.

"And she went to live there..."

Suddenly, it stopped reading and looked at me excitedly: "Now Bim knows why we have grandparents, right? Grandparents are there to read fairy tales to Bim, don't you think?" I was dumbfounded. To be honest, I had never asked myself, "Why do we have grandparents?" or "Why are there old people?". But why?

There was certainly a time in human history when people posed this question. I remember an ancient story about a king who one day decided to confine all the elderly in the city to the deep forest. He believed that the elderly were a burden to the young, incapable, difficult, and dependent on others' service. A son, unwilling to send his father to the forest, disobeyed the king's order and hid his father in a storeroom. Then, suddenly, a terrible plague broke out throughout the city, and no one knew how to cure it. All the elderly, those who had survived previous outbreaks of this ancient disease, were taken to the forest. At this point, the father emerged from his hiding place and showed everyone how to treat the illness. That's when the young people realized that the elderly are a reflection of the past, history, and ancient knowledge; without the past, there can be no present or future.

If I told this story to my son, Bim, would he understand? I think it would be very difficult. Many adults don't even understand this principle. In many families, the intergenerational relationship is as tense as the Cold War of the 20th century. In many workplaces, young people see their elders as a barrier preventing them from advancing further in their careers. This is an unnecessary, unworthy, and unacceptable confrontation in this society, because it goes against the order of nature. There is a beginning before there is an end, yesterday before today, and a beginning before eternity. It's a cycle that ensures the existence of life, as if from the very beginning, our chromosomes were just tiny molecules, storing the memories of thousands of years ago, before forming the complete individuals of today and tomorrow.

If we don't know how to love and cherish the image of ourselves from yesterday, only when it's gone will we realize something within us is shattered. Only then will we see that what is sacred and precious doesn't need us to question its reason for existence. The reason lies in the blood flowing through our veins, a flow that extends from the very beginning of humankind. As if suddenly remembering something, I asked Bim what the poem he had just read was called? "A Fairy Tale About Humankind."

Hai Trieu