Families have been asking me about careers for their maturing youth. What courses should they pursue in college? There is no greater boon to a child than to enter the family business or profession. This can stabilize him through life. It is through pre-natal experience and influence during year one, year two, year three, year four, year five, that he is absorbing the knowledge from the cells of his father's body into his, from the emotions of his father into his, from the mind of his father into his. If the child is a girl, she learns from her mother. If her mother is a homemaker, housewife, full-time mother, these vibrations, in the very same way, enter her inner psyche. Thus children organize the foundation which will later be who they are. They are their father's and mother's child.
There is great mental, emotional and physical security for the son or the daughter to follow the family vocation. Such children have observed their parents, learned from them, slowly become partners with them in life. It is not always wise to allow your children to make the decision of what they want to do. Encourage them to do what you do and to become an extension of yourself. This is family dharma, family bonding.
Allowing your children to leave the home and make a stranger wealthy because of their service to him in a profession gives our youth only a 50 percent chance of being successful, Hindu elders say. Plus the family has lost a great asset. The children have lost half of their family connection, as they are no longer interested in what mom and dad are doing.
Don't be afraid to bring your boy or girl into the family business deliberately. Get them interested. Get them working with you. The ideas of "do your own thing," satisfy your own desires, wander into a career, move from one career to another midway in life, are modern concepts. It may work out. But there is a 50 percent chance of failure, debt and poverty. Hindu elders also say that by following the family occupation one will never go hungry. One might not be rich, but security is virtually assured.
The dharma of the householder is to build up wealth and knowledge, and to pass these on to the children, generation after generation. If they are in the jewelry profession, the wealth should go to the jewelers of the next generation, not to the musicians or computer programmers. Family wealth equals community wealth. Community wealth equals national wealth. National wealth equals global abundance.
The simple answer for modern Hindu families following the traditional grihastha dharma is to form a family corporation and bring sons and daughters – at an early age into what mom and dad are doing. Educate them in the family occupation from 6 to 13 and then employ them as partners on through life.
What better employee could one have? Who would be more honest and loyal than your own child? A family should not end at the puberty of its children, who go off into other spheres of interest. It should continue and mature into father-and-son corporations, father-and-daughter corporations mother and father, sons and daughters all sharing the same interests, all working to increase the family assets. Need we say more? You have caught the idea. Don't ask young children what they want to do. Tell them what they are going to do and involve them in the doing.
Article copyright Himalayan Academy.