Children like me and children like them

Of late, I’ve been thinking of what a great influence our upbringing has on us. I took a mid-of-reading-week-vacation at the home of a dear aunt who has very young children. As I watched them, it hit me with quite an extraordinary force, how the things you learn as a child, really get printed onto your soul.

It made me wonder…Do parents realize that their role extends to beyond that of primary care givers, as far as soul-printers? If people knew, that their half baked beliefs and their protective helmets, their customized paradigms, their myriad insecurities- were being written into the eyes, lips, thoughts and actions of their little children, would they volunteer to take up such a tremendous responsibility? Simply for a thing so trivial as pure, unadulterated, unconditional love in return?

What about when these children grow up?

It’s so heart breaking to think that the people you love and respect so much, your very own super heroes, could have been so wrong.

The mythical enemies…

• That the world is dangerous and everyone’s out to get you
• That you must guard your wealth and not share, don’t even think of trusting.
• That marriage is not about you, but about the people who raised you.
• That you must never, ever trust your feelings but keep the strongest of them locked in your chest. Even when they pound hard enough to crack your ribs. ( If you’re confused, call your parents, beta)
• That you must always expect the worst and spend your energy gearing up for scarcity/catastrophe.
• That a bland and predictable life is far better than one that is even slightly tinged with risk.
• That experience is to be avoided in favor of imitation.
• That happiness is rare, that life is about hardship
• That it is important to appear conventional
• That, if you are a girl, men are only interested in chewing you up and spitting you out, that you should avoid them completely until your parents find a socially acceptable jerk-off who will do the above mentioned within the confined canopy of holy matrimony and that your only choice as a woman is to put up with this sort of baloney.

I know that for so many, life has been persistently ugly and unfair. It is only natural for such people to want to teach their children to save themselves.

So they teach you all they know, they give you all their armor and ammo, and send you out to the world, to war with it.

But that is the greatest lie of all. There is no war. There is nothing to fight in this ‘real world’. There is no great evil nemesis. All our monsters lie on the other side of the mirror. You start to win when you can begin to look them in the eye…even as you know it is yourself you will see.

I wonder what their parents taught mine. I wonder what life taught them. I wonder why they didn't notice that the world was changing.