As of yesterday, my parents have been together for 21 years. This is what I have learned...

As of yesterday, my parents have been together for 21 years. As wonderful as this is, I thought it would be an appropriate moment to reflect on all they have taught and shown me, and perhaps share it with you all here.

...What can I learn from their long relationship that can make me a better boy, and a better man? And, in future, a better partner, husband, and eventually, father? These are the four values I have seen that my parents have embodied, and that I feel, are trying to teach my brother and I:

1. Simplicity. In the family, we are simple, just like our celebratory dinner yesterday. Simple in our wants, simple in our desires, and simple in our habits. In this way, little is complex, and there are lesser grounds for problems. Mother and father wanted nothing more to improve their lot in life, and each other. It is this that forms the sturdy foundation of their relationship. They drive and build each other upward still with their tenderness towards my brother and I, and each other.

2. Selflessness. Growing up in families that did not always have it easy, my parents were raised to always think of others first. Naturally, they always deferred to each other?s respective needs and wants before satisfying their own. As a result, they build each other up continuously in a virtuous cycle of giving and taking, over and over again.

3. Straightforwardness. An extension of the notion of simplicity, mother and father have always been clear and direct in their communications and intentions toward each other. Nor did they ever play those terrible, obscuring mind games that try and establish forms of control in relationships, since they defeat the notion of a relationship as something built on trust and mutual understanding.

4. Solidarity. There is something to be said here about the words of a marriage vow. So simple, yet so significant that they must never be taken for granted. In times of struggle and striving, mother and father have done their best to support the other, and by extension, the rest of the family, in living out the three values I have mentioned above, so that we may all grow together and be happy.

Take this all into account, and you have all I can describe as a relationship of pure Synchronicity.

I hope this may provide some wisdom for anyone who reads it.

Amb l?amor,

StJaume