A lesson from the Wise

A Lesson from the Wise

The past weekend, I stayed at my great grandparents’ house in Pennsylvania to visit family. My Grandma Louise is known for cooking feasts for company whenever they stay over. Normally we would gladly have her cook dinner, but this year we finally noticed her age catching up with her. Since last year, Grandma Louise has gotten gout, a form of arthritis, in her feet and hands and has unwillingly had to resort to using a walker. We decided we would go out and get dinner someplace else so she didn’t have to cook for us (they don’t do much delivery in rural Pennsylvania). This upset my grandma Louise and at the age of 91 she still went ahead and made dinner anyways. She was willing to cook an entire meal with all of her ailments to have us eat together. Even though she didn't eat a single bite she knew from her years the importance of bonding at the dinner table and enjoyed our comany and time spent together.

As I have previously tried to emphasize, mealtime is not just to satisfy your hunger, it is for many other reasons including socialization and fellowship. I believe that families should eat together as often as possible.

In today’s society eating together is declining or nonexistent in too many families. Many families “just don’t feel like it” or of course “just don’t have the time”.

When you have a meal with your family you can increase the relationships and bonds between one another. You find out about how someone’s day was or what their plans are for the day. You can find out how school and work are going. You joke together. You laugh together.

Therefore I know that getting meals in as a family is hard. In my family we only eat dinner together and that is normally only 4 or 5 nights a week. Between all of our activities, there is hardly any time included to eat at all. Generally we will fabricate intricate plans that involve phases of time that people are home to prepare parts of the meal we will have for the window of time that we are home together. It may be hard, but it can be done.

If it wasn’t for dinner time I don’t know when we would talk. My sister is almost always in her room, my dad likes to work on his projects out back and my mom is always cleaning or out running. Dinner is just about the only time on a regular basis that we get to have conversations and be together as a family.

I challenge anyone reading this, if you don’t already, to have dinner with your family. If you need to, find a recipe online and make dinner, invite your family to join. This is an important part of life for any family and will lead to a more positive lifestyle. Go out and make it happen.