The Two People Who Taught Me How to Be Human

I have always been an emotional person. I cry at moving scenes in films, get carried away by moments of extraordinary achievement, and sometimes find myself shouting with joy when I witness something truly beautiful. I have never quite learned to keep my emotions within the boundaries that the world considers appropriate. Perhaps I never wanted to.

I have always believed that when something moves you, it deserves to be felt.

I have also tried, in my own ways, to make the people I love feel seen and appreciated. I may not always have been the best at expressing myself in conversations, but I have found other ways to reach people. Through words, poetry, compliments, small acknowledgements, and the simple act of paying attention to who they are. I have tried to tell people that I see them, that I value them, and that their presence in my life means something to me.

Looking back, I realise that much of this perhaps came from the two people who raised me. Not because they taught me to express love in words, but because they showed me what love looks like when it asks for nothing in return.

My parents.

I have known many wonderful people in my life, but I have never known anyone quite like my parents.

He lived to be 82, and I was fortunate enough to be there for him through his later years, until he passed away. I cannot recall seeing him angry. I cannot recall him growing irritable with age, losing patience with people, or allowing the difficulties of life to make him less compassionate. He was, quite simply, the most compassionate human being I have ever known.

Life was not always financially comfortable for us while growing up. Yet, somehow, my father always found a way to provide. He rarely said no to what we asked for, and often went beyond what we wanted to give us things we had not even thought of asking for. He had a way of making us feel that our wishes mattered, even when fulfilling them might not have been easy for him.

Only as I grew older did I begin to understand what that meant.

A parent can spend a lifetime quietly absorbing the difficulties of life so that their children do not have to feel the full weight of them. My father did that without making a spectacle of his sacrifices. There were no speeches about responsibility, no reminders of what he had done for us, and no expectation that we should spend our lives repaying him.

Even in his final years, he remained the same humble, innocent soul. If he needed something, he would worry about whether asking for help might inconvenience us. He would be concerned about troubling us with his needs, as though the child he had spent a lifetime caring for might somehow find caring for him a burden.

There is something profoundly humbling about witnessing that kind of innocence in a person who has lived for more than eight decades.

My father’s family often speaks of the way my parents took care of his family. My father was responsible for the upbringing and education of his siblings as his father was retired by then. They remember my parents as people who stood by their family when it mattered. Their goodness was not confined to their own children or their own home. It extended to the people around them, quietly and without the need for recognition.

I sometimes wonder whether my father ever understood how extraordinary he was. I suspect he did not. People like him rarely seem to know the measure of their own goodness.

And then there is my mother.

When I was young, she was strict with me. I was all over the place, and she had her ways of keeping me in check. But as the years passed, and as I grew older, something beautiful happened between us. The strictness softened. The woman who once tried to keep me in line became a tender soul who would find the smallest, sweetest ways to express her love.

Today, I find her one of the most beautiful human beings I have ever known.

There is an innocence about her that I find difficult to explain. She trusts easily, believes in people, and can be persuaded by the simplest words. She has a gentleness that makes her vulnerable to the world, yet there is something incredibly pure about it. She does not seem to have acquired the hardness that life often teaches people to develop.

I look at her sometimes and wonder how someone can grow so old without losing so much of the child within them.

She is now in her early eighties, and I can see that little child emerging again. The woman who once looked after everyone now needs someone to look after her. The hands that once provided comfort now need to be held. The person who spent a lifetime being there for others now deserves to be surrounded by the same tenderness she gave so freely.

My parents have always been deeply self-respecting people. They would never demand anything from their children or make their needs someone else’s obligation. They have their routines, their discipline, and their quiet ways of going about life. Even when they need help, they hesitate to ask for it.

Perhaps that is one of the hardest things about watching parents grow old. You know they need you, but they may never tell you just how much. You have to learn to read the silences, notice the little things, and understand what they cannot bring themselves to ask for.

And you do it, because they once did the same for you.

My father’s passing changed something within me. I do not think I have entirely found my way back to the person I was before losing him. When someone who has been a constant presence in your life disappears, the world does not necessarily stop, but your relationship with it changes. There are days when you drift, when the realities around you seem distant, and when you struggle to find your footing.

But my mother brings me back.

Sometimes, all it takes is looking at her face.

There is something about knowing that she is still here, that she still needs me, that makes me pull myself together. Her presence reminds me that life has not finished asking things of me. There is still someone to care for, someone to protect, someone whose well-being matters beyond all the noise and confusion of my own life.

She has become my pillar in the world I now inhabit.

I do not say this because she demands anything of me. Quite the opposite. It is precisely because she asks for so little that I feel the weight of wanting to give her so much. I want her to feel safe, loved, and cared for. I want her to know, in whatever ways I can show her, that she does not have to worry about being a burden. Not to me. Not ever.

I was fortunate to have parents who never made love feel like a transaction. They never made us feel that we owed them for bringing us into this world. They did not impose their goodness upon us or insist that we become like them. They simply lived as they did, and somewhere along the way, we learnt what mattered.

They taught me that kindness does not need an audience. That providing for someone is an act of love, not a reason to seek gratitude. That compassion is not weakness. That dignity lies in how we treat people, especially when we have nothing to gain from them. And that one can live an entire lifetime without making other people feel small.

Perhaps they also taught me something about silence.

Not every expression of love needs words. Not every sacrifice needs to be announced. Not every good deed needs to be remembered by the person receiving it. Sometimes, the most profound influence we have on another human being comes from what we do repeatedly, quietly, and without expecting anything in return.

I cannot claim that I have lived up to everything my parents have taught me. I have my flaws, my struggles, my moments of confusion, and my own share of mistakes. But whenever I try to understand the person I have become, I find traces of them everywhere.

In the way I feel things deeply. In the way I try to appreciate people. In my instinct to look beyond what someone says and understand what they might need. In my belief that a person’s worth has little to do with how much power they possess and everything to do with how they make others feel.

Whatever goodness there is in me, I know where much of it began.

I have never married, and my life has taken a path different from what many might have imagined for me. But sometimes, when I look at my parents, I feel as though I have two children of my own.

Two beautiful, innocent souls who need my patience, my time, my protection, and my love. Two people who spent their lives looking after me, and who now, in their own ways, have placed their remaining years in my care.

There is a certain tenderness in that reversal of roles. The people who once made sure I had everything I needed are now the people whose smallest needs I want to anticipate. The people who carried the weight of the world so that I could grow are now the people for whom I want to make the world a little lighter.

I do not know how many more years I will have with my mother. None of us is ever truly prepared to answer that question. But I know that while she is here, I want to be present. Not merely in the sense of being around, but in the deeper sense of being available to her, of noticing her, of making her feel that she matters.

My father is no longer here for me to hold on to, but his life remains something I can hold on to. And my mother, in all her tenderness, is still here to remind me of the person I ought to be.

If I ever manage to leave behind anything worthwhile, I hope it is not a title, a business, a body of work, or even the words I write. I hope it is the evidence that two ordinary people, through their extraordinary goodness, managed to raise someone who understood the value of being human.

I owe them more than I will ever be able to express.

And perhaps that is all right.

They never asked me to repay them. They never asked me to become anything in particular. They simply loved me, in the quiet, unassuming, steadfast ways that were natural to them.

All I can do now is love them back.

For my father, I will carry the memory of a man who showed me that goodness can exist without anger, arrogance, or expectation.

For my mother, I will try to be the strength she needs, the reassurance she may never ask for, and the safe place she has always deserved.

And for both of them, I will remain grateful for the greatest inheritance they could ever have left me: not wealth, not status, not even a name, but a way of looking at the world and trying, however imperfectly, to be a good human being.

If there is a little goodness in me, it is because I was loved by two people who never needed to tell the world how good they were. They simply lived it.