Four-legged Table

Before reading further, readers should first imagine a four-legged table

Alright, now you have imagined it. I am going to explain my theory – the four-legged table theory. However, I am not sure if there is anyone who has made this theory before. Anyway, the theme is “family.” I want to describe a family as a table. I was inspired by Elisa Prajogo’s idea, my Indonesian friend from UW. Elisa talked about a family being a ship in the storm. If a member falls down from the ship, the rest of the crews will fall with him/her. Elisa opened my eyes into my new viewpoint on caring for and protecting my family.

Let’s go to the four-legged table theory. I suppose parents are bottles of wine on the top of the table and children are the legs. Children would be there as legs to support their parents as they aged. Supposedly, the older the wine, the better it tastes. Thus, that’s how I will describe parents: we give them more love as they aged. As for children, they are the legs. Say there are two children, one child will hold two legs. Those children should work together in preventing the wine from falling. If a child happens to be missing, two legs are gone. Suppose now you know what happen to the table and the wine.

Often, children have different traits that they adopted from their family and social lives. Same case as the legs, each leg may have different feature to it. One might be heavier that another and another might be longer by several millimetres than others. Yet, their purpose is of one; to prevent the wine from falling. Without working together as a whole, the legs will be disabled.

Thus, a family is a four-legged table. If a leg goes missing, then the whole family has to be rebuilt by readjusting the table into three-legged. Changes applied might often be painful and unsustainable. In conclusion, whether a table will fall is all depended on the legs.