I SHOULD LOVE YOU 

©2026 by Sheryl J. Bize-Boutte

We are all planted like the trees

On this rolling chip of water and rock

Precariously suspended 

Dressed in costumes of choice or assignment

In skins of no-fault origin and accident

Drowning in murky oceans of difference

Our feet slipping in blood

Our eyes no longer focused

Our heads no longer raised 

To stargaze at the wonder

To absorb the miracles of being

Our arms no longer reaching

To hold on to each other

To keep from floating away

We avoid the profound and unshakeable truth

That we are fitfully and purposely connected 

Even in our separate nights 

And as we sleep beneath the same moon

Even in our divided mornings

As we awake under the same sun

Whispering the dream in their glow

You should love me

I should love you

THIS IS AN EXCERPT FROM “THE BURDEN KEEPER’S REPORTS” A SPECULATIVE FICTION NOVELLA ©2025 BY SHERYL J. BIZE-BOUTTE

THE BRIDGE
© 2025 BY SHERYL J. BIZE-BOUTTE

He lowered himself slowly into one of the old wooden rocking chairs on the porch. It was one of two identical chairs put in place several years ago back when there was something to look at out there. Now, it sat idle and still, caked with dust and the remains of the occasional dead insect.

He rocked himself slowly so he wouldn’t feel his lightness of being, his drained and feathery non-man body, the emptiness of his core. Yesterday he had rocked himself a bit too hard and thought he felt his empty stomach touch his spine.

He almost ended it right then and there.

No telling what he would look like when they eventually found him if he gave in to that. Still prideful, he was not about to leave an unsightly and unattractive mess for all to see.

After all, he reasoned with himself, if he still had enough strength left to rock himself gently, he was not quite done. And if he was not quite done, he would just be damned if he would lower himself to ask for another piece of low-paid work, a chunk of bread for lunch, or an onion for the now gourmet one-potato soup. He would just be damned.

Two and a half long years into the Great Depression and he had had it with the begging. He was a man after all, a strapping, strong provider, not a hand-out man, not a mislaid flop of skin.

He’d run the tobacco and sugar cane farm the same as his father and his father before him. Until now. Now it was all windborne dusty brown earth and weeds, with the occasional mass of hot dung dropped by his only remaining cow. He couldn’t decide whether to slaughter the cow for the meat or keep her for the milk, although at this point the milk was scarce, and the body was mostly bone. Even so, Vandelay was like family. He just couldn’t kill her. Not yet.

He, his wife and his young son were already on the brink of starvation before he sent the two of them to live with her mother in another state. At least she had chickens and small stream on her land full of catfish. It had been for the best. Especially after he had caught his wife levelling his shotgun at Vandelay. So, he sent them away. It had been a year, and he hadn’t heard anything from them, so he supposed they were still surviving. At least if things went wrong where they were now and they died hungry he wouldn’t have to watch it. The state he had been in for the last few years had made him ok with them not being alive as long as he didn’t have to be there when it happened. That way, whatever happened to them wasn’t on him.

The banging on the frail wooden front door startled him. And then the yelling of his name, “Henry, Henry! Open up, Henry!”

He recognized the voice right away. It was his closest neighbor down the road, Eisel. They had bonded over their poverty and stark desperation and kept each other afloat sharing whatever they had or managed to get. He sure hoped Eisel wasn’t there to borrow anything. Today, he had nothing but well water and a bit of sugar.

“Open up, Henry!” Eisel continued to yell.

“What Eisel, what?” Henry asked as he opened the door.

Eisel held out a piece of winkled paper. A flyer of some kind.

“Read this Henry!’ Eisel exclaimed. “Read this and let’s go!”

It was only then that Henry looked down at the rotting word porch and saw Eisel’s small suitcase.

“Read it, man!” Eisel insisted. “Then grab whatever you want to remember from this barren pile of rocks and dirt, stuff it in my suitcase if you want, and let’s go!”

“Go where?” Henry asked with a slight chuckle.

“Read the damn paper, Henry!” said a now testy Eisel.

“Ok, Ok!” Henry replied as he held the paper in front of his face.

LOOKING FOR STEADY EMPLOYMENT? GOOD WAGES? LEARNING NEW SKILLS?

COME AND JOIN US IN BUILDING THE WATER BRIDGE!

ASSEMBLE AT:
THE UNION HALL
123 TOMMY PLACE
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
WE ARE LOOKING FOR:
IRON WORKERS
CARPENTERS
GENERAL TRADES
TRAINING AVAILABLE

All he had to do was look out of one of his dust-covered windows at the barren expanse it displayed to know there was nothing to think about or consider. This was the lifeline he needed.

“Just one problem, Eisel. How will we eat and how will we get there?”

“I got that all figured out, Henry. I do have a car after all, my good man. We can do odd jobs along the way. We know how to do a lot of things. We can work for food, we can work for shelter, we can work for money. When we run out of gas, we will hitch a ride. But Henry, we have got to go!”

Henry gathered his meager belongings and ignoring Eisel’s suitcase offer, placed them in a paper sack. He grabbed the shotgun as he walked out of the front door. He dropped the sack on the ground, pointed the shotgun at Vandelay and fired. To his relief, she dropped with a noiseless grace.

At least she wouldn’t be alone he thought.

He put the shotgun on the backseat floor and his sack of belongings on the rear seat. Then he climbed into the passenger seat of Eisel’s now rusting 1921 Ford Model T, bought when he was in his heyday supplying sugar cane produced moonshine and raking in vast profits. Eisel hadn’t saved a damn dime and now that he really needed it, had little but that car to show for all the money he had made.

“Wait a minute, Eisel. I forgot something,” Henry said before Eisel drove off.

Henry ran from the car and back into the house. Shortly, he reappeared. As he walked toward the car, Eisel saw he had a mason jar with the lid screwed on tightly to avoid spillage of the precious
liquid inside.

Well water with sugar.

Who knows how they did it, but they did. Along the way, most people were polite and generous with what little they had, sometimes almost eager to share as if it would bring them more or at least the comfort that they were not alone. Henry and Eisel slept in the car until the engine caught fire a third of the way to California in a little town in Oklahoma. From there they hitched rides in cars, on the backs of trucks, wagons and the occasional baggage car, but mostly they
walked. The routes they travelled were always dictated by the conveyance they could find going westward.

They slept in parks and one time the woods. Sometimes homeowners would wake up to find them sleeping on their porches and shoo them away, but they learned quickly that if they stuck to
porches of elderly folks, there was always a chore or two that could be exchanged for a hot meal.

One arthritic couple simply could no longer reach the cans of beans, preserves and flour they had stored on a high shelf and credited Eisel and Henry with saving their lives, along with a feast of biscuits, plum preserves and meatless chili. Sometimes a bath was offered and one time they were invited into a crumbling mansion and got to sleep in real beds.

They never had enough money for a hotel. Lucked up in Carson City and did three days’ worth of clean-up work for a used-to be rich furniture store owner who was trying to save his business after a severe rainstorm and a leaky roof. That payment allowed them to eat fairly well for the rest of the trip. Not one ounce of real trouble. There were so many like them at the time it was a normal thing to see people out of place.

After three weeks of slow travel, they found themselves at the door of 123 Tommy Place.

They were both hired right away as general laborers, Henry signing up to be trained as an iron worker, Eisel, a carpenter.

At the job site, the men were leaving for the day. Wives and children were waiting for them at the base of the elaborate expanse of scaffolding that seemed to float above the bay waters.
Neither Henry nor Eisel could figure out how this bridge over all this water could be built, but it was happening, and they would be a part of history.

Still in awe of it all, Henry’s attention was broken when among the families beginning their walks to the cars and buses that would take them home, he thought he heard a familiar voice.

He turned in time to see young iron worker bend to kiss his wife and hug his young son in a way that seemed as natural for them as it was familiar to him.

He briefly thought this could have been his life if he had been put in another place at another time, but he quickly dismissed the notion as a wasteful musing.

That night, as he and Eisel settled into the boarding house provided by the union, he couldn’t stop thinking about them.

It would turn out that he would see them often, almost every day at quitting time when the wife and son would show up to greet the young man named Vincent, a journeyman ironworker.
Vincent was experienced enough to have his own section of the bridge near the top of the scaffold away from other workers. Henry worked closely with Vincent during his first six months of training and Vincent was generous in showing him all the basic skills and nuances of the trade as well as how to safely climb and descend the scaffolding which had already taken several lives.

From the beginning of the project, workers would slip and fall through the scaffold gaps or lose balance from high places and plummet to the bay waters below. There was only one who survived the fall and did not drown, but he eventually died in hospital of his many injuries.

Henry became obsessed with Vincent and his family, asking many questions which the proud family man Vincent was always willing to answer.

Henry came to know that Vincent had met his then wife-to-be and her boy on a train from Utah to California. It was love at first sight for all three of them he bragged joyfully. Said her ex-husband had been a cruel and evil man who loved his cow more than he loved his family and had died a few years back.

Henry knew then who the woman was.

Who the boy was.

At least in his mind, he did. It all fit, so it had to be.

Henry could not let it be.

As Vincent stood to stretch, Henry pushed him off the scaffolding. He pushed him so hard that Vincent was propelled several feet beyond the edges of the scaffolding and appeared to try to flap his arms and fly before he hit the waters below.

Although it happened quickly, Henry took it all in as an amused observer, laughing at Vincent’s hopeless attempts to save himself.

“Well, you may be a wife stealing son of a bitch, but you ain’t no bird!” Henry yelled as Vincent continued to flail.

Before Henry could yell for help and act as though another accidental tragedy had occurred, he felt a strong pull on his legs and arms. His limbs were being wrenched from his body. There was no blood, only a smattering of dust and dried remnants of what had been left of him so many years before. Then followed the rest as it was absorbed and disappeared into the keep.

Kament then completed the rest of his process. Destruction.

As Kament stood at a narrow corner of the now completed bridge, preparing to move on to his next, he looked up to see a glistening array of human forms floating upward from the bay. One by one, all of those lost to the building of the bridge were being rescued and rising to stardust.

He recognized Vincent right away and wondered why since recognition was not one of the things he was supposed to be able to do. His fading was beginning to become more pronounced.

But none of this up floating was his doing. He was not assigned to and had not prompted this rescue and knew it signaled a major shift in purpose and report.

He was weary. Weary enough to linger.

Transfixed and immobile he continued to gaze at the elegant rising forms. His shutdown was suddenly interrupted by a line of bright light appearing just below what they called their horizon, calling his name, calling him home.

War

The car 

         has careened 

out of control!

where is 

            the world

heading to?

the mad 

       trump card

prevails, infectious

       world nations

falling in line…

         zest for power

domination 

         rules the roost!

how they sharpen 

          the  edges for

economic 

           materialistic

gains 

infusing 

              wrath… 

conflagrations 

        catch up

         unstoppable! 

Is there any 

          end to war

once it is

            unleashed?

No!

it    escalates

               flaring, 

burning!

merciless 

                  killing, 

  destruction

            demolition!

the hapless

                 humans 

innocent children, 

      women, the aged

fleeing for life….

the gory picture 

             of

        scattered

scampering 

         ants, when the

ant hill collapses…

      how 

    self destructive

the whole endeavour, 

                warfare!

its multifold

               fangs rise,

nuclear  

               bacterial

unleashing 

             emissions 

killing the environ

            the earth, the 

human, nonhuman!!

         these rapacious

leaders  

       mad, blindfolded 

setting their

                very ship

they travel

                on fire

   seldom caring 

       for aftermath…

may be AI phantoms

              shift them 

out of the rubble!

who can reason

              the insane

 to sanity?

          no world body

effective to the

          level desired…      

alas! 

     few conscience

keepers 

        do raise their

voice, but 

        who can stall

the floodgates

       that broke open

with fury 

           torrential! 

Only 

they sit and 

                     croak 

the frogs 

             beside the

pond, 

poets, philanthropists

         peace workers

they do endlessly

      croak and croak! 

I will sing for hope

Hanaan Abdelkader  – Egypt

I still carry in the darkness of my soul

Remnants of purity

There is still a longing in my veins

For poetry and song

My heart still beats faster

When it sees from afar

The archipelago of palm trees

And when the setting sun visits it

And begins to sing its melancholy tune

For the sun of love to gather its golden shawl and depart

My melody still sings for life.

***

I still love the chatter of birds

And the childhood of the brook and the smile of the moon

Despite the pain, I still carry in my soul

Remnants of light

I will dance despite the oppression and dream of justice

I will carry in the darkness my sad guitar

And play from the depths of my heart

A warm, delicate tune

And sing for hope.

Visions Fill the Eyes of a Defeated Basketball in a Show Room: A symphonic tone poem in three 

Part disharmony revisited

1-Visions fill the eyes

So close to the desired end, earthly paradise is summarily

replaced by fevered heat dreams that rise from super-highways

borne on gasoline vapor locks instead of air, assuming 

a nebulous form that coalesces Into something like a white 

stretch limo parked in outside the showing room, outside an arena, 

the pictured windows smeared with oil rich smoke and volcanic dust, 

acid rains etch furrows in like burst veins on a hot, slick surface, 

leaving behind moist dots of clotted rain that simmer and boil 

on the superheated surface causing eruptions, explosions destroying

the tiny worlds contained therein, alien civilizations formerly entombed 

by glass, released now, expanding into lost galaxies of where all

the hidden stars reside, marbleized and frozen in sidereal motion.

2- Of a defeated basketball team

Denied the basket and the ball, wordlessly they congregate at center court, 

hours after the outcome, the arena emptied, shut in, lights blackened, 

each man mimes his movements in the game they are forced to play, 

scattered across the hardwood, twelve separate paths to the goal silently 

blocked in total darkness as they describe perfect arcs to the hoop, 

no longer one on one, they are blank, mirthless shadows within shadows, 

silhouettes cut from darkness, pasted on a field of black, rising to the occasion, 

spurred on by the wordless cheers of the dissipated crowd, a white noise 

that rises and clings to the unseen rafters overhead like smoke, a second skin 

or is it a flock of black birds descending in tight circles, drawn downward by

 a primal need for revenge?

3- In the show room

Or in the junkyard of Petaluma or wherever the detritus of civilization collects, 

wherever the dead, exploded television sets collect, their screens empty, 

glass fissured and scorched by internal combustion parts, components in ruin, 

disconnected wireless radio messages contained no longer residing inside 

cracked stereophonic speakers, finally released like the hotwired audio machines 

welded to the generator that exploded expelling Compact Discs, VCR tapes 

and cassettes, dad’s, vinyl records that melted like blackened eyes over 

the metal husks of rusted, ruined cars, on the tanks of discarded toilets, 

in which all the filthy rain that falls, collects, spreading tiny rainbows of oil 

and gasoline on the porcelain skies, while rain drops fill to different levels. 

A trained ear can make out the separate discordant notes each drop makes, 

together, collectively, these notes become a kind of symphony.

Athanasius Kircher Seated on a Crocodile Composing

His Encyclopedic Works

Kircher, the man, is a  living specimen in 

a divine cabinet of curiosities. Runic scripts 

evolve from his fingertips, his quilled pens; 

all the mysteries of ancient tongues are 

supposed to be revealed with.

This man, part-magus, part-monk, writes on,

his creations legion: solar clocks

from magic seeds; rune stones and

monkey dust curatives and salves for

all that ails,  inventions and novelties

such as vomiting statues and pianoforte-like

instruments using living cats to produce 

torturous sounds supposed to be like music, 

like spy portals in revolving carved heads, 

sound amplifiers in other busts, altered to

allow listeners to overhear conversations

in remote locations; owner of Egyptian relics 

actually, made in Rome, misdated by 

a millennium ; practical theories of convection

formulated by firsthand viewing volcanoes 

from within, a research only a holy fool

could survive, whole volumes of inscribed

work, catalogues of presumed fact, completely

borrowed, wholesale copied from other scholar’s 

work, most, if not all of his own, disproved even

as he wrote on.  This man in his element,

endless amazed as he was amazing, surrounded

by angels, sun gods and goddesses, half-dragons

and half-snakes, a man so self-possessed

only death could save him from himself.

A Night of Serious Drinking as “Vertigo”

after reading Quan Barry 

All the imbibers, the refugees are emancipated from

The Complete Works of Vincent van Gogh:

The Absinthe drinkers, potato eaters, self-portraits

with and without ears,

All the close, musty rooms without adequate heat,

poorly drawn fires, smoke filtering from long,

clay pipes, loosely rolled tobacco and the tightly packed,

Exhaustion apparent in all the worn faces, the downtrodden

and the bedeviled, the unforgiving and the damned

pounding down their

Libation of choice on a night of serious drinking: the green

fairy, essence of wormwood, conveyances of

deep dreaming while awake, mortal stasis while

breathing, metempsychosis in a bell shaped glass;

Once paralysis is made liquid, bodily functions require

a superhuman exercise of the will simply to consider

locomotion;

Standing upright becomes the purest form of vertigo there is.

The Ceremony

Everyone is applauding long before

anyone has seen the bride or the groom

as if directed by the archdeacon

of antiquities, crew chief of the burnishers

of pews, rows, and rows of them so bright 

and slick, they repel the occasional rain 

that falls through the place where a steeple

would have been before the church was converted

by Navaho warriors to a hogan to let the Great

Spirit in, to allow the smoke of healing fires

Escape. Here on the edge of the Southwestern

Desert, as arid as Martian wastelands, interplanetary

penance portals, lost seekers are referred to after all

the earthbound sanctuaries, sainted places, have

been exhausted, all the sacred temples, burial

mounds, caves of redemption, warehouses for icons

played out by the faithful, standing in ragged lines

to touch the worn wooden effigy of Our Savior

of the Souls, Our Lady of Pent-up Frustrations, 

Our Burial Mound of Reclining Statuary, Our

Souvenir Stand of Holiest Waters, confections 

blessed by on-premises priests, blood from 

the stigmata of virginal suicides, made in China

facsimile glow-in-the-dark missions, Christmas

tree ornaments, the wounding lance of the unhealing

seekers after holy grails on display, not available

for any price yet, not even what was yielded from

the passing of the offertory trays, bequests left

by patrons of the sacred arts, tax exempt foundations

exploring the possibilities of unified field theories

involving Native American Folklore and Medieval

Christian Idol Worship, they who clear the center

aisles for easy passage from one state of being to

the next, they who scatter dried herbs and scented

liquids, part aphrodisiac, part aromatic, part soporific,

specifically made for vision inducing hallucinogens 

so that when the high priest looks up to view the anointed, 

it is unclear exactly what he sees, what he should say, 

how the ceremony should proceed and when it does, 

what it means.

The Killing Fields as Robert Towne’s Screenplay for “Chinatown”

after reading Quan Barry’s Incontrovertibles

Seven million skulls planted on the sloping streets in

soft earth beneath cobblestone streets.

The skulls that sprout are fashioned into masks for

street mimes, performance artists, trick or

treating kids.

Each time a siren is heard, a new round of killings is

being announced.

Hovering overhead, chopper blades localize the places where

blood has been shed and broadcasts it to networks,

police headquarters, the general’s palace.

The mastermind behind the most heinous of the ritual killings

sends disciples made totally suggestible by infusions

of drugs, sexual addiction and hypnotic commands,

to continue the killing

Blood of the victims is used to write DEATH TO PIGS 

on walls, or to leave tell-tale prints to warn those

who follow the killers here, that the Future will be

determined by a new kind of Primal Law: Kill or Be 

Killed, Eat or Be Eaten.

Stated fears of race wars, and political persecution, are just a

rationalization, an excuse to insure that the killing will

go on.

Witnessing the senseless murdering reveals that, Death is a release,

that what may be done to the next generation, the unprotected

by arms and man, will be much worse that what has been

done to the dead ones, and you will be powerless to prevent it.

There is no overthrowing the strongman, only Death will survive.

“It’s Chinatown, Jake.”

It’s the Killing Fields.

The Assassination of John F. Kennedy as the Marathon Run Up

Mt. Olympus

after reading Quan Barry and  J.G. Ballard

We’ve seen the pictures hundreds of times by now whether

we cared to see them or not:

The originals of the motorcade  in black and white followed 

by the bizarre shooting Live of presumptive assassin,

Lee Harvey Oswald.

The unforgettable processional afterwards: the cortege, the banging

of the drum slowly, John John’s loyal salute.

And in color: The Zapruder tapes slowed down frame by frame,

on that warm, clear November Dallas day: Jack’s bare

head, Jackie’s hat, Governor Connelly and his wife

waving to the crowd, Jack’s head exploding, blooming 

like some time-lapsed flower bursting open, smoke rising

on the grassy knoll…

And we are running; smoke rises like fog on Olympus wreathing the hidden peak and all that might dwell there.

26.2 miles of running steadily uphill over brutal, rocky terrain

in summer’s dreadful heart stopping heat, the goal less

and less realistic, less visible with each step upward,

steps that bring you higher but no closer to the gods.

The Bridge of Colors

It matters not the clay that shaped the jar,
nor the wind that blew through the flute of bone,
art is the thread, subtle yet well-known,
that binds all maps into one single star.
The hand that weaves, the voice that tells the tale,
belong to no shore, nor a single wall;
they are lights that guide through the future’s call
with rhymes of silk and silver’s trail.
Let the brush travel through paths of earth,
let the dance awaken the sleeping square,
for a statue is life that breathes the air,
erasing the hate and giving peace birth.
Peoples of the world, open every door:
let your neighbor’s song become your own way,
for art is the sun, the wine, oand the day
that joins our distant souls forevermore.

Fernando Josè Martínez Alderete

Mèxico

The Sowing of Silence

Peace is not born from the coldness of steel,
nor from signatures on paper, torn and hollow;
it grows in the furrow where wounds start to heal,
between the stranger and the friend we follow.
It is a language where borders are gone,
trading the rifle for the grain of wheat,
where hands that once fought, before the dawn,
now build the shelter, the bread, and the seat.
Let the walls of shadow and fear now fall,
let the echo of hate be lost in the gale,
for more strength is found in a finger’s call
that reaches for another, beyond the veil.
It matters not language, the faith, or the skin,
the earth is the map of a single heartbeat;
we are the lineage that lets grace in,
leaving the ghosts of the past in retreat.
Peace is the bridge that spans the abyss,
the table is set, the light on the face,
to find in the other a kinship like this:
that their home is our home, a shared holy space.

Fernando Josè Martínez Alderete

Mèxico

Dr. Fernando Martinez Alderete

Writer, poet, theater actor, radio producer. Born in Leon Guanajato Mexico on April 21, 1977, President of Mil Mentes por México in Guanajuato. Dr. HC, global leadership and literature.

His poems were published in more than 200 anthologies in fifteen countries around the world and he is author of ten books, of poetry, short stories and novels.

‎Survival Will Be Immortal History

‎Mesfakus Salahin

‎Bangladesh

‎

‎When will sweaty hands be able to say –

‎This homeland, river, forest is mine;

‎The head above my shoulders is unsold;

‎The sky full of stars above my head is mine;

‎The sun will cut through the darkness with its light;

‎The moonlight will be the ink to write my story?

‎

‎

‎When will the newly born voice say –

‎There is no burden of debt on the head,

‎No bloodshed touches the map,

‎The fluidity of existence grows at will,

‎The largest budget in world financial policy,

‎I am not only the country’s, but the world’s greatest asset?

‎

‎When will the shepherd flute say –

‎The pure soul plays in my stomach,

‎The wind and the sea swell in the faintness of the melody,

‎The wounds of the river are just the artist’s paintings,

‎Childhood is not incomplete due to lack of water,

‎There is no shortage of money in human market?

‎

‎When will people say as human beings –

‎The color of our blood does not change,

‎Our hands are not severed,

‎The shepherd’s two hands are not withered,

‎The language of the heart is tied without a thread,

‎And the destination is one and the same?

‎

‎When will the arsenal be destroyed in the path of love,

‎The earth will be purified by the spread of humanity,

‎Shadows will be enchanted by the scorching heat,

‎Nature will not burn in the fires of aggression,

‎The atoms of love will flow in torrents

‎The power of arms be as sweet as a fountain?

‎

‎When will the horse of egoism stop,

‎The hydrogen bomb won’ t be made in the furnace of ego,

‎The smell of bullets won’ tt scar the rose’s chest,

‎The fertile time won’t be pierced by the shore of modernity,

‎The Alsaceian squad won’ t guard the breakfast table,

‎The rainbow will bloom at its natural pace?

‎

‎When will the trees absorb the essence of narrow-mindedness,

‎The violent palaces will become the huts of compromise,

‎Captivity will cultivate free freedom in blood,

‎The waters of the river will be transformed into love,

‎The history of division will be washed away by equal distribution,

‎Our survival will become an immortal history?

‎

‎When will the bond of friendship be sealed by the sails of a ship,

‎The boundaries of the ocean will not swallow the long flesh of the heart,

‎The word ‘our’ will belong to everyone,

‎Religion will depict the presence of heaven,

‎The body will become the bodiless soul,

‎The mind will become our pilgrimage?

‎

The Role of Family in the Development of the Nation

The family is the most important foundation of society and the starting point of human life. Every person learns their values and moral standards within the family. A strong family is the cornerstone of a stable society.

Today, in the Republic of Uzbekistan, supporting families, encouraging young families, and providing social assistance are important directions of state policy. May 15 is widely celebrated as International Family Day. The family is the foundation of the nation. A strong family guarantees stability and progress in society.

In modern families, women are engaged in entrepreneurial activities, contributing to the material well-being of the household. Parents raise their children to be knowledgeable, patriotic, and responsible individuals. Moreover, the family plays an important role in passing national values from generation to generation and preserving the cultural heritage of society.

Every family has its own values. Preserving family values is the duty of every person. Family members should show respect and love to each other, while children should be attentive and considerate toward their parents. The family’s history, traditions, and customs passing continuously from one generation to another strengthens the stability of society.

Child upbringing begins in the family. A child learns love, respect, and moral values from their parents. A child raised in a healthy family grows up to be independent, honest, and responsible. Parents prepare their children for life, raising them to be knowledgeable and socially active. Therefore, love, warmth, and affection within the family are extremely important for the child’s mental health and future.