Few of us ever escape the desire to please our parents. For some persons, that is the primary motivation that drives them on to success even though their parents may have been dead for many years and even though they may not even be conscious of it. We are still trying to please Dad or Mom. For some, that is a crushing burden to carry. For some of us there is that corollary feeling that no matter what we do, we will never measure up to what we perceive as our parents' demands. But rare is that person who does not want to please Mom or Dad.

Of course, it also works the other way. Which of us parents doesn't want our children to be proud of us? It is said of the late religious leader Rufus Jones that he spent a lifetime measuring up to the accolades of his son who died at the age of 11. Writing more than forty years after his son's death, Jones put it like this: "I overheard him once talking with a group of playmates, when each one was telling what he wanted to be when grown up, and Lowell said when his turn came, 'I want to grow up and be a man like my daddy.' Few things in my life have ever touched me as those words did, or have given me a greater impulse to dedication. What kind of a man was I going to be, if I was to be the pattern for my boy?"  Rufus Jones became a great man partially because his son was proud of him. What a powerful bond there is between parent and child. How we love to please one another.