Commitment VS Obligation

An orientation program talk I attended this week.

http://themetapicture.com/moms-who-else/

An old lady picks up carton boxes to earn some money for meals. A curious reporter approached the old lady one day and asked if he could capture her usual day down on film. She kindly allowed him to. Waking up at 5 in the morning, she goes about the neighborhood looking for discarded carton boxes along the corridors and on the streets. She ends her morning at 10 by selling away the boxes she has managed to gather, and earned herself a few bucks. She used the money she has earned, and buys a packet of rice and two plasters(a.k.a adhesive bandages). The curious reporter asked her "What are the plasters for?", she said "Oh, I need them.", and they head back to her house. 

She lives in a simple two room flat. And just as she opened the front door, two men, lying on a mattress on the floor, came into view. They entered the flat, and the old lady puts down the packet of rice and went into the kitchen. The two men grabbed the food and began gobbling it down. The reporter, shocked at what he had just witnessed, asked the old lady "They just ate the rice, what are you going to have for lunch??". The old lady smiled and said "Oh, no worries, I have mine right here." and she lifts up the cover of the wok, and what appears to be leftovers from a few days back fouled the entire kitchen. The reporter, disgusted by the sight of the food, continued filming as the old lady has her lunch. 

After lunch, the old lady approached the two men lying on the floor with the two plasters. The reporter asked "Who are they?", "They're my sons" the old lady replied. She peels off a worn off plaster from one of the men's arm, and applies the new plaster onto a wound. She applied the old and used plaster onto herself. The reporter, touched by the loving mother of two, observed that the old lady has an old bandage, torn and tattered and dyed in a color of dirty yellow, wrapped around her forehead, stopped filming. 

This was a story one of the instructors told us during the orientation program.

The question thrown to us was "How many of you are committed to taking care of your parents?". Majority, if not all, of us in the auditorium raised up our hands without hesitation. The instructor chuckled.
"Put your hands down" he said.
I was bemused by his snark dismissal at our answers.

"None of you are committed to your parents until the day they're bedridden. All of you are OBLIGED to take good care of them and care for them because of their actions." he continued.

"Obliged??" I questioned him in my head. It is most certainly not an obligation for me to take care of my parents, I was adamant about that. But what he said next got me and every single soul in the auditorium stumped and wondering to ourselves.

"Until the day your parents are bedridden, and when you have to turn them around every 10 - 30 minutes, then you can say that you're committed to caring and loving your parents. Otherwise, you're just obliged to taking care of them because they have raised you up. They have brought you into this world and cared for you until you are old enough to work and feed yourself. It's an obligation to take care of them, because it's the only socially acceptable action every child is obliged to do."

That was it, every thing I thought was right, was wrong. I've never gave that topic that much of a thought, because I thought I was committed all these while. I sincerely hope I'm committed to taking care of my parents. What good would I be if I grow up and becomes rich and powerful, but I throw my parents into an old folks home?

Commitment or Obligation? Your actions, your answers.

The view from the back of the van. A view that has my childhood written all over it. I miss being a kid.