You should always and forever respect your parents. There is no space for a “why” in this sentence, "Why should you respect your parents?" That is because they deserve it and because you will respect them if you have a simple brain and a heart. Your parents keep your happiness and needs above their own. You should respect them because they taught you how to walk and because you took your first steps by holding their fingers. There are countless things they did for you and you will never be able to pay back for their favors. 

We should respect and support our parents while they are alive. There are some people in our society who try to respect their parents only after their deaths. While they are alive, no one is there to support them and treat them. Sometimes, they die without a sip of water. But right after that the children start to cry and weep and going from place to place build many kinds of monuments spending thousands or millions in their names. But that helps them only a very little. They have gone for good. For the departed ones there is only a very narrow opportunity to receive merit. Therefore, better to do it while alive, today, right now, do your own merit by yourself. 

We see some children who dislike looking after their parents strive to find some excuses saying that they have no time. But when we were little ones our mother or father did not seek such excuses. However, those who seek loopholes are not regarded as truly grateful sons and daughters. This is not the way that we should respect and support our humble and simple parents especially at the time in need. If we are mindful enough we can perform many kinds of meritorious deeds such as generosity, morality and meditation on behalf of our parents while they are still with us and also after their passing away. This is also one of the moral duties of the children. 

Your parents are the only ones who will love you always. No one in this world will love you more than them. Other may claim to love you, you may think that your friends do, but they may fake may be not. But your mother and father love you from the bottom of their heart and that is never feigned. The love of you parents is the best thing in the world and there is nothing above their love. They always bless you and pray for your better future and never worry about themselves. They pray for their kids because they love you. Respect their love because you are lucky to have them. Think about those who do not have parents, and consider yourself as the luckiest person to have them in your life. Regardless of your relationship with your parents, you’ll miss them when they’re gone from your life. Always Respect, Care for and Love them.

Oprah Gail Winfrey is an American media proprietor, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist. Winfrey is best known for her multi-award-winning talk show "The Oprah Winfrey Show", which was the highest-rated program of its kind in history and was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2011. Dubbed the "Queen of All Media", she has been ranked the richest African-American of the 20th century, the greatest black philanthropist in American history, and is currently (2012) North America's only black billionaire. She is also, according to some assessments, the most influential woman in the world. In 2013, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama and honorary doctorate degrees from Duke and Harvard.

She was born “a Negro” in 1954 into severe poverty in segregated Mississippi to an unwed, little educated teenage mother, Vernita Lee. While her mother looked for work up North, Oprah lived with her grandmother, Hattie Mae, a Negro maid serving white people and whose dream for Oprah was that she too would become a maid but hopefully for white people who would treat her with some dignity and respect. They lived in Hattie Mae’s primitive home, which had no electricity, running water or indoor plumbing. It was there Oprah was taught to read and to recite bible verses by the age of 3. And in church each Sunday, little Oprah absorbed biblical stories and began to dream big possibilities for herself.

But life took a terrible turn for Oprah, when at 6, she was sent to live with Vernita in a Milwaukee ghetto apartment. It was chaotic. With different men, her mother had had a daughter Pat when Oprah was 5, a son Jeffrey when Oprah was 6 and it later turned out when Oprah was 9, Vernita had another daughter secretly put up for adoption, coincidentally also named Pat. While Vernita was away for long hours cleaning homes, Oprah starting at the age of 9 was physically and sexually abused by male relatives and others and she was raped. Oprah tried to run away but even the home for girls in need had no bed for her. She grew into a troubled teenager who at 14, gave birth to a baby boy, who died in infancy.

No one could handle Oprah and she was sent to live with her father Vernon, a barber in Nashville, Tennessee. It was just what she needed. He loved her, made her feel safe and secure and he built her self-esteem. Although he too had little education, he understood the value of an education and had Oprah read a book each week and write a book report for him. He also encouraged her to excel in school and make the most of her life. She became an honor student and earned a scholarship to Tennessee State University.

At the time, African Americans were seldom seen on television but Oprah started to see herself as a black version of white television star Barbara Walters and began taking steps to make that dream a reality. While in high school, Oprah won the Miss Black Tennessee beauty contest and with that visibility and her charm, at 17 she got an on-air radio job with a local black radio station doing the news part-time. Continuing to work in local media, at 19 Oprah became Nashville’s youngest and first black female television news anchor at WLAC-TV. She did that so well, that in 1976, at 22 she was recruited to co-anchor the 6 pm news at WJZ-TV in Baltimore.

Then suddenly Oprah’s career came crashing down. WJZ decided she was dull and stiff on the air and noted she regularly mispronounced words. They fired her. “At the time, I was devastated, devastated!” is how an emotional Oprah recalled her feelings on her “Oprah Lifeclass on 10/17/11, all these years later.

But rather than put her out on the street, WJZ looked for something else she could do. They had a failing talk show, “People Are Talking” and with nothing to lose, they stuck her there on August 14th, 1978. And Oprah blossomed as she never would have as a newswoman for she could be her very personable self. In what at first appeared to be a demotion, turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to her as she found her real calling. The show became a hit.

In 1984, a Chicago television station, WLS TV hired her to take over a failing half hour talk show and within the year, her “AM Chicago” became Chicago’s hottest local show and it was soon expanded to an hour. The next year it was renamed “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and in 1986 it went nationwide and its popularity mushroomed, eventually going global and attracting many millions of viewers each day over the 25 years it was on the air.

Then Oprah stunned the entertainment industry by doing something unheard of. Even though her show remained enormously popular, in 2011 Oprah ended it so she could pursue her next big dream, building an entire television network. That network is OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network) which in the U.S. is No. 279 on the Direct TV satellite/cable guide. It got off to a slow start yet I believe eventually it will become very successful.

But whatever happens, Oprah is growing immensely from the experience as she pursues dreams that at one time most people would have laughed off for a poor “Negro” girl in rural Mississippi. But she dared dream them and acted on those dreams to achieve all that she has.

Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. Yet he invented those things despite having little formal education.

Born on February 11th, 1847 in Milan, Ohio, he was the 7th and last child of Samuel and Nancy Edison. In all, Edison had just three months of school because his teacher thought he had a short attention span and was not very smart. Instead Edison’s mother took him out of school and personally taught him how to read and write and do arithmetic and she assured him he was very intelligent. Then she did something else that was life changing for young Edison. She sent him to the library and encouraged him to read. Starting with simple texts, eventually Edison read Shakespeare and was fascinated by his writings and enjoyed other great literature. He read “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” and other historic texts. And he devoured scientific journals.

Those were the tools he needed. Like Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Sidney Poitier and others with little formal education, he self-educated. Edison had an insatiable curiosity and read extensively for the rest of his life.

But Edison also had another serious problem, one that could have destroyed his career. He had a severe hearing loss, thought to be from a childhood bout of scarlet fever, later made worse from middle ear infections. Ultimately, he was 100% deaf in his left ear and 80% deaf in his right ear. But he never let this stop him, always finding ways to compensate for his hearing loss.

At 13, he became a newsboy, selling newspapers and candy at the railroad depot in Port Huron, Michigan, his family having moved to Port Huron when he was seven. At 16, Edison moved from his parents’ home and went out on his own, after getting a job. That job came from a remarkable occurrence. The stationmaster’s son, three-year-old Jimmy MacKenzie had wandered in front of an oncoming rail car. Just as that car was about to hit and kill the little boy, Edison leaped in front of it and grabbed the child, both of them tumbling out of harm’s way. Jimmie’s dad was so grateful, he trained Edison to be a telegraph operator and got him a job. This was a big break because telegraphs were the Internet of their day, transferring vast sums of information businesses needed to operate.

It was a wonderful opportunity and at first everything went well. But at 19, Edison was working for Western Union on the Associated Press news wire, working 2nd shift so he could read and also so he could test his inventions.

One night one of Edison’s experiments went very wrong. While working on a battery, he spilled battery acid on the floor, which then soaked through, destroying the floor and seeping all over his boss’s desk below, destroying the desk and everything else it touched. The next day, Edison got fired. There were no unemployment benefits in those days and Edison was soon broke.

But just as things looked their darkest, he turned to his friend and mentor, Franklin Leonard Pope. Pope was also a telegraph operator and an inventor, engineer and lawyer who let Edison move into his Elizabeth, New Jersey home and keep working on his inventions. Edison received his 1st patent on June 1st, 1869 for an electric vote recorder for Congressional bodies to quickly count votes. It was a good idea but it bombed. As one legislator told him, the slow process of manually counting votes allowed plenty of wheeling and dealing and that is what politics is very much about.

But while working with Pope, the two of them developed the stock ticker, which became widely used by brokerage houses for stock quotations. From that stock ticker and from selling other related telegraphic device enhancements to Western Union, Edison made money.

He invested that money in creating his first laboratory, in Newark, New Jersey in 1871. There he successfully developed more telegraph enhancements; most notably the Quadruplex telegraph which allowed a single telegraph wire to carry four separate transmissions.As a result, Edison made a lot more money and built a company in the process.

In 1876, 29 year old Edison sold his Newark facility and with his family and employees, moved to Menlo Park, a small New Jersey community about 25 miles from New York City. There he built a research and development (R & D) facility, the first of its kind, containing state of the art technology and everything else he and his team would need to go into large scale creation and production of their inventions. And that facility grew as his inventions made money.

Today, R & D facilities are common and the vehicle to develop many new ideas, but at the time, no-one had ever seen such a facility. Soon it was copied by other large organizations, including Bell Labs for their work with telephones. This was arguably Edison’s first invention of many which would change the world.

But his first invention which got global attention and made Edison famous was the phonograph in 1877. It recorded the human voice and allowed its playback. It was like magic to the public which was astounded by such a device. As a result, Edison became known as “The Wizard of Menlo Park” and his inventions would keep him prominently on the world stage until his death in 1931 at the age of 84.

Edison didn’t let a lack of money, lack of formal education, deafness or the failure of an invention stop him. He persevered. Might perseverance make a difference in your life? One more attempt to get a job or a promotion? One more attempt to start a business or close a deal? How about another bold pursuit of your dreams?

John Harold Johnson was an American businessman and publisher. He was the founder of the Johnson Publishing Company. In 1982, he became the first African American to appear on the Forbes 400. 

Johnson was born in rural Arkansas City, Arkansas, the grandson of slaves. When he was eight years old, his father died in a sawmill accident and Johnson was raised by his mother and stepfather. For Blacks, Arkansas City public education ended with the 8th grade. 

Johnson’s mother wanted him to continue his education and saved her money to relocate the family to Chicago. But when he graduated from the 8th grade, she hadn’t saved enough money. To his humiliation, she had him repeat the 8th grade rather than let him temporarily drop out of school.

When he was 15, the family moved to Chicago and struggled through the Great Depression. His mother lost her job as a domestic, his stepfather couldn’t find work and his older half-sister lost her job as well. From 1934 to 1936, like many families, they had to go on welfare and they were deeply ashamed. Johnson however graduated in 1936 with honors from DuSable High School. He was senior class president, editor of the school newspaper and the yearbook. But he couldn’t afford college.

Then he got a break. At an Urban League luncheon for top high school students, he met Harry Pace, the President of Supreme Liberty Life Insurance Company, one of the largest Black owned businesses in the U.S. Pace liked him and hired him and for the next six years, taught him “about business, life, success, and Black America.” In 1942, Pace gave him the assignment that changed his life. White media paid little attention to positive Black news and Pace asked Johnson to prepare a summary of Black news so that as the President of a Black company, he would be well informed.

Johnson collected the news from sources far and wide and when he’d share it at parties; he was the center of attention as Black people hungered for Black success stories. Johnson decided to start Negro Digest to publish these stories. Pace agreed to let him solicit subscriptions from the firm’s 20,000 Black customers and use the firm’s stationery. But Johnson would have to pay the postage which was $500. Johnson didn't have the $500. So he went to a big Chicago bank to borrow the money. They said, We don't make any loans to colored people. Johnson ignored the insult and asked, Who in this town will loan money to a colored person? That man sent him to perhaps the one bank that would, but that bank would loan only if he had collateral. He had no collateral. Fortunately, his mother did. It was her furniture and she relished it as the cornerstone of her home. Even with Johnson’s help, it had taken her a long time to pay it off and she didn't want to risk losing it. He pleaded with her. Her response was to pray for guidance. When after a week she still couldn't reach a decision, Johnson joined her in prayer. For the next few days, they prayed together and they even cried together. Finally, she said, “I think the Lord wants me to do it” and Johnson got his collateral from the only source he had. 

This let him pay the postage and he was thrilled. Then another problem arose. Johnson couldn't raise the money to publish Negro Digest. 

So what did he do? He cleverly sent 20,000 letters offering subscriptions for $3 but would charge just $2 if the money arrived within 30 days. Three thousand people sent in their $2, which gave him $6,000 to start the magazine. From that modest start, a business empire was born. 

In 1945 he began Ebony magazine, a huge success now with a circulation of 1.6 million and in 1951 Jet magazine, another big success. 

He later started and built other businesses as well and today the Johnson firms, headed by his daughter Linda Johnson Rice, employ 2,600 people and have $400 million in annual sales.

If you are determined to succeed, do as Johnson did, keep a positive attitude and look for opportunities. Then have the courage to act on the one that excites you, for even if you don't initially succeed, the experience will make you wiser and better prepared for the next opportunity.

Do you think your problems stopping you from pursuing important goals? If so, I'd like to tell you about Stephen Hawking, the famous physicist and bestselling author.

Stephen William Hawking is an English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, author and director of research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology within the University of Cambridge. 

His scientific works include a collaboration with Roger Penrose on gravitational singularity theorems in the framework of general relativity, and the theoretical prediction that black holes emit radiation, often called Hawking radiation. Hawking was the first to set forth a cosmology explained by a union of the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. He is a vigorous supporter of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Hawking was born on 8 January 1942 in Oxford, England, to Frank and Isobel Hawking. When he enrolled at Oxford at 17, he took up rowing and was athletic enough to compete in boat racing at the intercollegiate level. But about the time he turned 20, he noticed he’d become a bit clumsy and even occasionally fell down. When the problem continued over the next year, a family doctor referred him to a specialist who sent him to a hospital for testing.

For two weeks, the hospital tested him thoroughly. They ran electrodes into him, injected fluid into his spine and took muscle samples. When they finished; they gave him devastating news. He was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (often called ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease). For people suffering from ALS, the results are horrific. Within a few years, they lose use of their muscles and eventually become entrapped in a paralyzed body, dependent upon others to help them with their most basic needs, including bathroom functions. They breathe through a hole in their throats and death often results within five years of the onset of the disease.

But at the time of his diagnosis, Hawking had fallen in love he and Jane Wilde became engaged. Despite his problems, they married, which brought him great joy but also meant instead of sitting around feeling sorry for himself; he had to get a job.

To earn a living, he got a research fellowship within the Cambridge Colleges and later earned his Ph.D. and became a Cambridge Professor. As his disabilities grew worse, housing became an obstacle. Fortunately, the Hawkings found a home near the campus that could meet his special needs and rented it. And despite the severity of his problems, they began to raise a family that grew to three children.

The Hawkings were happy in that home and decided to buy it and fix it up, when another obstacle presented itself. To pay for the home, they applied for a mortgage but were turned down by everyone because the severity of his health problems made him a bad risk. Even Cambridge wouldn't loan to them. That rejection was especially hurtful to Hawking.

But with persistence, they found a lender who would loan to them and they bought the home. As time passed, Hawking’s condition worsened and that home became largely inaccessible to him. However, he was now a well known, highly regarded Cambridge Professor.

Rather than reject him as they had before, Cambridge provided the ground floor of a house they owned that had large rooms and doors wide enough to accommodate his electric wheelchair.

Later, when Hawking could no longer feed himself or get in or out of bed without help, students lived with them rent free and assisted Jane in helping him. Eventually the students were replaced by 24 hour nursing care.

To breathe, Hawking had a tracheotomy and he could no longer speak. Yet even that didn't stop him. A computer expert created software to run a speech synthesizer to let him communicate by using a hand switch, or by using his head or eye movements. He has spoken with a synthesizer for many years.

What is Hawking’s response to his physical problems? “I am quite often asked: How do you feel about having ALS? The answer is, not a lot. I try to lead as normal a life as possible, and not think about my condition, or regret the things it prevents me from doing, which are not that many.”

Despite the severity of his problems, Hawking at the age of 64 is a renowned physicist who has authored best selling books and written dozens of scientific papers. He continues to teach and as a highly popular speaker, continues to travel.

And one more thing: He and Jane have been married for over 40 years and are now experiencing the joy of being grandparents.

Your problems may not be as bad as Hawking’s, but still depress and overwhelm you. If you could find a little joy and a bit of self-confidence and give yourself a gentle nudge to go forward, you may be surprised at how much it will temper your negative feelings and help to lead you to the fulfillment you've been seeking.