The fire: Heat, light but it can burn you death!Yes, I'm back, it's been a while but I am back!
I have been thinking about this one all weekend. Sometimes we become aware of something, then there is no need to remember so it gets filed and then an incident or occurrence will cause you to pause - suddenly it's back on the forefront. Also had a discussion with some lovely & wise ladies at a dinner event on Sunday about negative versus positive motivation. The back drop of this is to remember that unless a person make conscious effort to learn and change, they will parent the way they were parented. Most adults just parent how they were parented and continue the cycle of "iniquity". I just recently learned that this word iniquity means a pattern of sin or negative/destructive behaviour that is passed down from one generation to the next. When I was growing up I was made to associate this word with bad stuff like witchcraft. Also, no one can give what they do not have!
Many of us boomers grew up with negative motivation, that is, parents and or authority figures used negative to inspire, or instill discipline. While this method of child rearing work in many instances, it left a lot of wounds and emotional challenges for the individual to overcome later in life. There is usually a lot of resentment and bitterness associated with this type of upbringing. You can sometimes detect this type by people who are driven and have no other reason but to prove to everybody that they can achieve. This is hard work, and there is no satisfaction in it because the reason for doing is not from a pure place. Grace is absent and it is all "self-effort". I can share one particular incident which had me very resentful of a teacher in primary school for a very long time. We were learning about flowers and plants and were told to bring in a potted plant to class on this particular day. Some students were very good and brought delightful exotic potted plants from home. I was not that keen on the assignment, so on the morning of the assignment I stopped by the road side and rooted up some wild foliage, put it in a tin can with dirt and took it to class. Even though I completed the assignment I got beaten along with the children who did not bring anything. The said teacher was expecting a child and so a group of us grade sixers decided go to the school to water the plants to visit teacher and her new baby during the summer break. Low and behold when we arrived at her home ALL the NICE plants were on her verandah! We had gone to the school first and thought the plants were stolen. I was fit to be tied at that point because I just saw this whole assignment as a way for the teacher to get nice plants and I didn't forgive her for that beating for a very long time.
On the other end of the spectrum, some children become so beaten down and wounded that they never overcome and end up becoming a self fulfilling prophecy where parents or other naysayers are quick to yell "I knew you were good for nothing and would never come out to anything". This is something that is painful for me to listen to or watch.
There are many elements at work in the forming of a personality, much of which humanity cannot even begin to fathom. Why two children from the same mother and father will grow up in the same household and one become an astrophysicist and the other ended up in jail? I saw this on one of +Soledad O'Brien's Black In America episode. Because each child is "wired" differently and each child responds differently to the same event or situation. Of course, most parents don't know that and apply the same method to parent both children with two very different outcomes.
At the end of the day, a parent is limited by their own life experience and level of consciousness. If the now adult child is mature enough, they will acknowledge this, forgive their parents and move forward with life, knowing that their own children will benefit from having more knowledgeable and wiser parents. If not, they will be stuck, and a stuck person cannot reach their full potential. A favourite saying of my mother when we were growing up is "when men on earth have done their best, angels in heaven cannot do more". This really did not mean much to me until I became an adult and have to deal with the reality and responsibilities of adulthood.
It's never too late to do the right thing though, so as one of the ladies said she raised her children with love and an iron fist and they all turned out very well, however she's now a foster mom to a child of this generation and realized, unlike many parents, that she has to adjust her methods to take into consideration the current social climate and the child's early history. This is a progressive woman if you asked me - but she's "awake"!
Have a delightful Wednesday.
MissSam
February 3, 2016
