Old Values and Modern World

Summary

The text contrasts the traditional parenting and communal values of a Romani community with the modern world's materialistic and individualistic approach to family and child-rearing.

Abstract

The author encounters a group of Romani people outside the Court of Justice, observing their traditional parenting practices, such as breastfeeding in public and carrying children close to their bodies. These practices are instinctive and foster a sense of safety and community among the children, which the author admires. The narrative reflects on how modern society has become disconnected from such basic human values, prioritizing wealth and material possessions over nurturing relationships. The author suggests that the pursuit of money and status has led to a culture where love and freedom are compromised for material gain, and where children are often raised at a distance, both physically and emotionally. The Romani community, despite facing hardships and prejudice, maintains a lifestyle that values freedom and close family bonds, which the author implies could be a lesson for the broader society.

Opinions

The author expresses admiration for the Romani community's parenting, particularly their instinctive nurturing and the strong sense of community they instill in their children.
There is a critique of modern parenting, which often involves prioritizing work and material wealth over spending time with children and fostering emotional connections.
The text suggests that modern society's focus on "who has more" and "who is better" is detrimental to creating genuine love bonds within families.
The author points out that the pursuit of money in modern society can lead to a loss of freedom, as people become entrapped by debt and the pressure to accumulate material possessions.
The Romani community is portrayed as embodying

Old Values and Modern World

I walk by the Court of Justice and see around twenty people sitting in front of it, waiting for their lawyers to come.

They are gypsies, as I can tell by the clothes they wear and by the language they speak. Women dressed in colorful flower patterns dresses carry their children in their arms. Tall, dark-skinned men wearing large black hats are arranging their mustaches.

Some of the children cry, and their mothers caress them gently. The babies are breastfed out there on the street, and the mothers act like that is the most natural gesture in the world. And it is the mother feeding her child with her milk; what can be more natural than that?

I stop by and look at them amazed, with my mouth open, trying to understand why they couldn’t find a place of their own for so many centuries. They were persecuted, banished, sold as enslaved people, and never trusted by anyone.

Yet, as a mother to another one, I admire them with all my heart. While we put our babies in strollers, they carry them close to their skin. This is proven to increase the baby’s immunity and help the baby grow up feeling safe, and I’m sure they didn’t read that in any parenting book. They do it instinctively.

They breastfed their babies instead of buying expensive formulated milk. They keep their babies and children close to them and their large families, making them believe and feel they are a part of a community.

They sometimes know to be better parents than us.

Yes, there are also some downsides to their parenting, and I won’t get through them since that isn’t the story’s purpose. I realized that we sometimes forget to be and return to the basics in our perpetual search for better and more.

We work all day long, away from our children, just and only for money. And I don’t mean survival when I’m writing “money.” We run and rush to build a material world, a house of Lego pieces, or one made of cards. We forget to nurture our children and buy them in return the newest iPhone on the market.

We live in a culture of “who has more” and “who is better than the other.”

We don’t create love bonds between ourselves and our dear ones. Instead, we buy their affection by giving them objects they won’t even care about after a while. We live in a material world, conditioned by the corporations and our environment. Freedom is now replaced by money. “Give me money, and I’ll give you my freedom,” we whisper to the bank manager, begging for a new loan. In this way, a new brick is put on the wall. You know, that wall that keeps us out of the freedom land.

I look at the gypsies waiting in front of the Court of Justice. They are tired of waiting for the lawyer’s arrival.

“You know what?” one man says to his wife. “We should take the children and move to Ireland; I have a cousin there to help us out. Forget about this damn land”. He takes his wife and children and leaves, not fearing living the life of a nomad.

At least he has his freedom.