Readers,
Please send your letters. They can be formal letters or handwritten notes. They are edited solely for grammar and spelling. Also, they are sometimes edited for length.
Dear Doctor Love,
I encountered your column while doing some research about Belize on the internet. I have a thirty-six year old son who lives there. He has been there for four years now and his father and I are worried about him. He works at what I would consider a marginal job, not using any of the training he got at four years of university. According to him, though, he makes plenty of money to survive and live quite well. Mainly, he says that he is very happy doing what he does and living like he lives. He spends a lot of time fishing and diving and is always taking long sailboat trips because of his job. In the meantime, he dates only local women and says that he has nothing serious going with any of them. He has no intention of settling down and having a family.
As parents we feel it is our duty to do our best to make him realize that life is a serious business and should be treated as such. All of the people who graduated university with him are far ahead of him in their chosen fields and it is possible that he may never catch up with them. He needs to move back home so he can start taking life seriously.
How can we convince him that it is time to start thinking of settling down?
/s/ Mom and Dad
Dear Mom and Dad,
In Greek mythology Odysseus and his men landed on an island inhabited by people who survived by eating the lotus flower. He sent some men to investigate the locals, who gave them some lotus flowers to eat. The lotus flower acted like a narcotic as well as a food. It was so delicious that those who ate it did not want to go back home or back to the ship. They just wanted to stay there and enjoy the lotus. Odysseus finally had to force the sailors back on the ship and get them out of there.
Mom, it sounds like your son may have eaten the lotus flower and fallen under the spell of Belize. For these people going back does not even seem like an option.
In the meantime, count your blessings. He sounds very happy. Talk to the average Belize vacationer and you will find that many of them are not happy at all. They work far too hard and are indebted to their eyeballs. What more could any parent want for their child than for them to be happy? Leave him alone and let him enjoy his youth while he can
