The Ties that Bind

"You're not there
To celebrate the man that you made
You're not there
To share in my success and mistakes
Is it fair?
You'll never know the person I'll be
You're not there
With me"
["You're Not There", Luke Graham]

We live inside the prisons we construct for ourselves, with bricks of experience and the mortar of other people's opinions.

I was watching a movie recently where a character said 'you either learn to hate your parents or you end up becoming them.'  It struck a chord with me.  This past year, I keep coming in circles back to something uncomfortable of which I've been long aware, but which I've never much spoken.  It's not a big deal, just a niggling little thing, but because more recent events have brought "Pat as parent" to the foreground of my mind, and into this one-sided conversation I call a blog, it's perhaps significant enough that it's worth talking about.  Today seems an appropriate day.

I am an arrow to my parents and a bow to Dan.  And I've always tried to ensure, as much as possible, I place the least weight of expectation on Dan I can.  I tell him I want him to be happy, and whether that's single, partnered, gay, straight, atheist, theist, firefighter, chip truck owner, recycling collector, veterinarian... of little concern to me.  The weight of "find your happiness" is the only thing I want to burden him with.  It's burden enough.

But as for myself, I was raised by a generation that had it much worse than us, and wanted much better for us.  And we got it!  My life has been so much more comfortable than the lives of my parents, and I'm grateful for it.  I love them for all they did for me.  There is certainly no lack of appreciation on my part.  I think of the times and the circumstances, and marvel at what they accomplished, really.  But when they wished us well, it carried with it an air of urgency, of destiny, of responsibility to excel, and to become the thing they knew we could be.

I have always or near-always written of both my parents in a pretty positive light, particularly my mother.  I knew Betty only as a child knows its mother.  She died when I was 21, so I never really had an opportunity to get to know her "with adult eyes".  But this doesn't mean I have a rose-colored view of her, or of my father.  Every human comes with their share of good and bad, praiseworthy qualities and flaws.  My parents are no exception.  That I should remember and regurgitate the good is a choice, not ignorance.  When one dwells in the past, there is little point in allowing yourself to dwell in the bad if you can choose to dwell in the good.  So with some reluctance...

My mother was a demanding woman.

Deep within me, there is this tiny seed of doubt, planted there many moons ago, that still whispers "what would Mom think?" at many things I do or choices I make, most particularly as a parent.  I didn't become the doctor or the lawyer I was supposed to.  I didn't marry.  I didn't even stay Catholic.  I don't even believe in god (the way she did).

With Dad, despite his not being the wordiest of men, he did make it a point to let me know he was proud of me and supportive of me.  I also had the opportunity to know him as an adult, for him to see the man I'd become and continue to become, and to know that he "liked how I turned out", so to speak.  I don't feel this same burden of responsibility with my father. 

With Mom, I never had that opportunity.  I was barely grown and she was gone.  So much has transpired since then which she was not alive to witness.  In my waking mind, I know she would be very happy with how things turned out.  She'd love Liza-Ann.  She'd love Dan.  She'd love the house, the job, the everything.  I think she would be proud of the man I've become, even if she'd not have necessarily approved of all the little steps along the way that led here.  But the waking mind is not the problem, which is why the reassurances of others can be of no comfort.

Salvation from the yokes of expectation we wear is not found in satisfactory answers to the questions; it can only come from not asking the question. 

The doubt is an annoying splinter at the back of the mind, a little piece of unresolved childhood, a chess game unfinished with its pieces still on the board, poised a few moves from certain victory, but without the fallen king, without the handshake at the end and the friendly acknowledgement you've done it.

Some time back I suggested that when people quote Buddha as saying to 'kill your god' or 'kill your parents', they're actually misunderstanding and misquoting him.  It was one of many things I 'put a pin in' recently.

As I understand it what Buddha supposedly said was more akin to "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him, for he is not the true Buddha."  Within the context of the conversation he was having at the time, his point was that if you find someone professing the truth, promising you a path to enlightenment and salvation, they are a charlatan, because finding the truth is about looking inward, not outward.  No one has all the answers you require.  You have them.  You need only search inward to find them.  Much as he repeated in a lot of what he taught, he was encouraging his disciples to think for themselves and 'trust in your own experience of the world'.  (In typical fashion, mankind founded a religion based on his teachings, and over time distorted his advice until we're telling people that a peacenik recommended patricide.)

The Taoist view is very similar on this point (and many, many others).  The pursuit of happiness and enlightenment is largely a journey of self-discovery, a burrowing down into our own souls to find and discard false notions, until the weight of all the little prejudices, fears, and expectations we've taken on during the course of our lives can be set aside, and we are finally free.

These notions are ideas I've carried with me for a long time (irony?).  I understand that one need not leave the room to find happiness.  It's in here with you.  But you may need to remove some things from the room first to find it.  Likely your cell phone, your slavery to consumerism, and a whole pile of shit you've come to accept as truth over the years about which you're horribly naive or downright wrong.  I've been on this path for some time.  I've dug deep and ferreted out a lot of things, and I've gotten pretty good at understanding what does and doesn't make me happy.  I've pulled out or rewired a number of things I found when I looked inward, and I feel my life is better for it.  And I feel I'm a better person for it as well, if that counts for anything.

There is, in some circles, another interpretation of what Buddha meant about the whole 'kill your teacher' thing.  Buddha maintained nirvana requires us to 'let go of our attachments'.  Most people think of this in terms of material things, but those are only the most obvious.  These "attachments" go well beyond, including even things like romantic love.  And it must also, therefore, include expectations: the expectations we place upon ourselves, and the expectations placed on us by others, which we choose to accept and carry with us - the expectations of our gods (as told us by religion), of our teachers (through instruction and testing), and of our parents (through guidance and discipline).  'Kill your god.  Kill your teacher.  Kill your parents.'

These yokes are of our own choosing.  We take them on, perhaps too young or too naive to understand the burden they represent, and then we choose, daily, to keep on carrying them.  The only time we really find the impetus to divest ourselves of the ego-investment we've placed in the opinions of others typically comes with break-ups:  with friends, with lovers, and with former employers.  The relationship has ended, and so we are free to take all the things they've told us about ourselves and which we chose to believe, and rationalize them away one by one, telling ourselves how they didn't really know us or appreciate us, how their perspective was flawed, or how they're not as smart as we are, until we've finally, bit by bit, devaluing those opinions (and people) to the point where we are prepared to completely invalidate them as worthless, to happily discard that yoke and move on.

When I wrote my last post - a pretty personally revealing one - I said to Liza-Ann that I was able to do so because I no longer much cared about the opinions of others.  She - quite correctly - reminded me I did, just not the opinions of anyone who would be shocked or bothered by it, or would consider what I revealed embarrassing.  (Wise.  I love her.)

This tiny seed of doubt I carry that my mother gave me is a yoke I continue to take on every time I allow myself to wonder, and ask myself the question.  It's not her fault but my own.  She, like so many others, merely provided a blueprint.  I placed the bricks.  I carry the question within me, until I find a way to lay that burden down and stop asking it.

But I'm not Buddhist, and the only way simple way with which I'm familiar to arrive at the necessary decision of I no longer care how you (would if you were alive) judge me, passes through that rather dark place where I'd rather not travel.  I enjoy my child-like awe for her memory, where I gloss over all the bad parts and choose to remember her in the best possible light.  It makes it especially hard to not care.

Dead or alive, I don't know how to hold someone in high regard and simultaneously disregard their opinions of you.

So until I find another path, that splinter remains.

"When I was born, they looked at me and said
what a good boy, what a smart boy, what a strong boy."

["What a Good Boy", Barenaked Ladies]