BRAVO “BABU”, odgovara na engleskom jeziku Božo Šimunović

                         “What is your idea of perfect happiness?”

To my dear grandchildren their grandfather “Babu” in his seventh writing will write his personal opinion of “perfect happiness”. As the Holy Bible teaches us, from the beginning of the world, from Adam and Eve to our present days, we have all been born by the same rules, with the same happiness, without any knowledge, without any direction for our lives. Unfortunately, there were cases when some were born without a life goal and happiness, because they were born sick. Although the title of the seventh description is not about them, we can only think the best for them and that is all we as individuals can do.

There is only one thing in life that a man cannot buy, and that is happiness. Why? Because man is born with his own happiness. As a child after his birth little by little  he develops himself into an adult , so does his happiness develop in him. But often people do not notice it, for example, because each tree has a kind of image in it, a statue that cannot be seen with the naked eye. In order for this image or statue to be seen with the naked eye, an artist is needed to carve an image or statue out of that tree. It is the same with the living people of our planet. We make ourselves happy, and there are those, unfortunately, who only make themselves unhappy.

Man is divided into life episodes, which are counted or based from birth to ten years. This is the first episode in which a born child develops as a boy or a girl, develops vision, begins to laugh, talk, go to school, learn to count, write, read, remember what he reads and the more he reads the more he will know, and the more he knows the more will remember etc. And so already from the first episode of life a man moves on to the second episode which is from ten to twenty years. Going from the first to the second episode, we no longer feel like children but young adults, even though we are not yet, but in us our ideas develop and force us to think so.

In our second episode of life, our life path and goal develops, we look for ourselves, we want to be what we want, regardless of the advice of the olders, regardless of school needs, we live from day to day without thinking about the distant future. And there is this labyrinth in which many could not orientate and through which they had to go and make their decisions for the future. Those who made their decisions for the future in reflection of the time of the second episode immediately switched themselves to the third episode of their lives. It is the character of the life of the second episode without which it was impossible to go further. Therefore, it can be safely said that in the development of human life, the second episode is decisive for every human being.

The third episode of twenty to thirty years, is for every man an episode of happiness and contentment. I say this because I have personally gone through that period and I have an experience that I want to talk about in this seventh description. My experience tells me that the third episode is the most important for almost every man, as over 75% are known to have married in that period of their life between 20 and 30 years. In all marriages, serious thinking then begins, no longer youthful thinking but family thinking. Out of marital love and family needs for children, children begin to be born and family household needs multiply and increase. What we as parents need to think about now is the future of our children.

And now for the needs of our children we move on to the fourth episode of our lives which is between the ages of 30 and 40. Then we no longer think as we thought in previous episodes. Now we think more about family future, family health, family joy, family happiness and how to educate children so that they too are satisfied and happy with their lives. There is no going back, only forward and forward to complete contentment and complete happiness. That’s the experience of half of our episodes of life. And we want to pass on our experience to our children, not only in word and deed, but also through the memories of our family life’s together. These are the family values in which and with which our children grew up and through which our children have gone, of course in schools learning the virtues of school education so that they can better trace their future.

We are already entering the fifth episode and we as parents want our children to go their own way, looking for their direction, their happiness, always adhering to the universal rule that the time has come that they should and must leave the family home and start living alone and think how to start building a family nest, have children, family and happiness, and we their parents will live in the hope and expectation of their family happiness. So it was in the past, the past that we learned from our parents and they from their parents and so it goes from the beginning of the world and so it will go to the end of the world.

The fifth episode of human life refers to between 50 and 60 years of age. In those years, many parents became grandparents when their parental love passed on to grandchildren. There are rare cases in this fifth episode of human life that parents have become great-grandparents and great-grandparents, and those who have are because they and their children got married early. A hundred years ago and more while children and grandchildren lived in a community with their parents in the same house or under the same roof, parents did not miss their grandchildren as much, as to say, today. So as I write this seventh writing today, October 6, 2021, your grandfather “Babu” wants to tell my first grandson Zane/Andrew Bennett, to my first granddaughter Simone/Eva Bennett,

Litle – or big – girl Simone, grand-pa Babu and big boy Zane sing GANGA in summer 2008.

 to my second grandson Cash/David Boban and to my third grandson Tristan/John Boban

 First picture in snow in February 2021. in the City of Austin Texas. “Babu” Mile Boban, right grandson Cash/David and grandson Tristan/John Boban.

 Second picture Grandpa “Babu” Mile Boban, grandson Tristan/John and grandson Cash/David

watching TV, May 28 2021.

that we were happy, very happy and content whenever we were with you and we were together. We always told you various stories and you laughed and always asked me: “Babu” tell us more stories from your childhood. It always encouraged me to sit with my grandchildren and tell them stories, which they listened intently. It is the purpose of all grandparents to pass on to their grandchildren the family adventures from the past. From this fifth episode, we move on to the sixth.

As much as the sixth episode is as long as all the others from 1 to 10 years, the sixth and others are shorter in content than the previous ones.This is normal. Why? Because the grandchildren have grown up, finished school, gone their own way to seek their happiness, to seek their future, in other words to create their family. When we see each other we see each other as a family, as a descendant of the same family, but, I repeat, but no longer as grandparents holding their grandchildren in their arms and on their lap. Now we are all adults, some are grandparents, the other parents and third grandchildren. These are God’s rules to which we all belong, no matter if you respect them or not.

The seventh episode of human life could be compared to the second episode. Why? Very simply, because the members of the second episode that we all went through and thought about where our future would take us. We who today are members of the seventh, eighth, ninth, etc. episodes also think about our future which is no longer how to accumulate as much material resources, how to become rich and not live richly, but how to be happy, live happily with family, and most importantly is to live in peace with everyone, to owe nothing to anyone, to have good relation and honest accounts with everyone.

My dear grandchildren, I have already entered your grandfather “Babu” in the eighth episode of my life. Whether or not I will get to the ninth episode, only our Dear God Knows. That is why I am very happy that I took every opportunity and was with you, telling you various stories through which you will remember me, your eternal grandfather “Babu”. That is my wealth that you have helped me increase. To end this seventh writing with a quote that my father Petar Boban, Gabrić told me, repeatedly said: My son the man is not a rich man who has a lot of money, but the man who has many children who will give him a future, happiness and satisfaction is a  rich man. For me that is the “Perfect Happiness” of every man.

Your eternal grandfather “Babu” Mile Boban.