I always thought I was a good mother, until my kids turned out to be little monsters. I don’t know what went wrong. I tried to discipline them and I tried not to spoil them. I tried to give them all the opportunities in life without piling on the pressure to succeed, or conversely, starving them of parental love. Somewhere along the track though, they were corrupted. I blame the modern world. Everything is so immediate: information, food, romance. Old fashioned values of hard work, perseverance and reward have gone out the window. All that’s left is the instantaneous pleasures of ordering fast food, clicking about frivolously on the web with, even new love is just a click away…

My daughter now owns her own home and when her oven broke down, boy was there a scene. She’s got this sense of entitlement, that ‘It shouldn’t have happened.’ I tried to explain it’s just an oven repair, Sydney living could be way worse. If the worst of your concerns is the inconvenience of needing to get your kitchen appliances repaired, then you’re living the dream. She couldn’t understand this. I tried to persuade her to be grateful that she lives in such a great age where we have such appliances and gadgets that make daily life a breeze. There’s simply no struggle for survival, although I think a bit of that would do her good.

They say that practicing gratitude makes people happier. This is part of the reason why Buddhists are the happiest people, because they are equanimous, they don’t let things faze them. Do you think if a Buddhist needed dishwasher repair around Sydney, they’d make a fuss about it? I think they’d probably introspect over their good fortune in having one in the first place, and then they’d probably feel even happier than they did before. Perhaps I should have raised my kids Buddhist. That would have counterbalanced their sense self-entitlement in this spoilt ungrateful modern age.