family story

Every time I complain to my father about life being unfair he gets really upset. He calls me ungrateful because I have things so easily. He is from Kashmir and around age 65, so he is a old timer. During his times people lived in mud houses, had no electricity, no TV., not too many clothes, nor enough to fill their mouths. It is a small village that does not provide much for the people. He had 6 brothers and sisters and his father died when he was very young. He had to quit school in the forth grade because his mother couldn’t afford it. He did laborious work like bring groceries for people who lived in a mountainous area. Every day he would walk bare foot and do hard labor like fetch water from a water hole 45 minutes away. He had to take a large pail and carry it all the way to his masters house. He got his first pair of shoes at age 12 which was made out of plastic. On top of that he only had one pair of clothes. He later worked as a servant at a restaurant in Pakistan, and someone sponsored him to go to Japan. There he was a servant to the prime minister. He got lucky and ended up in U.S.A. Here he worked as a baby sitter with his limited English skills, and later on he was a caretaker for an old man. He went to school and cleaned houses on the side. He finally learned some English, and started working at a restaurant in the kitchen as a dish washer. He worked his way up to a waiter. Later he opened his own restaurant and now he has about three. That made me rethink of how easy I have it in life compared to him, and that I am ungrateful because God has given me a lot. He passes his values on to his children and encourages us to work hard too.