I am tickled by the anxiety some of us feel at turning into our parents.
Even if your parents absolutely suck, you probably didn’t grow up with Mussolini as your father. And if you did, you might be the father of Alessandra Mussolini, and she was a model, actress, and eventually a member of European Parliament, so really, it might’ve worked out ok.
As I write this super late blog post after Thanksgiving dinner, my heart goes out to all of the people who are traumatized from their experiences of past holiday gatherings. Whether your parents were terrible, your relatives were judgmental, or you were in a troubled part of your life, the pain that exists can be palpable when we reach those calendar days we associate with our suffering. Family are the people we’re taught are supposed to love and care for us, which in my humble opinion, is why it hurts so much when they do the opposite.
But as I sit here thinking about the nature of our suffering during the holidays, I’m brought right back to narrative. The ideas about who we are seem to drive the experience of our conscious minds more than any other factor. Whether we believe life is happening to us or for us is often the determining factor of how we perceive any phenomena or event in our lives.
You could win the lottery and be pissed about your new tax bracket and all the relatives you never knew you had who want to demand a slice of the pie. You could crash your car and be endlessly grateful that everyone lived and while your nose is a little bit crooked at least you’re still breathing, pun intended.
So, preferably over a slice of pie tomorrow, when you look back at the narrative of your life that you’ve been crafting: think about who you are and consider what the pattern of your narrative is. Are you a grateful person? Are you the victim of circumstance? Was the game rigged from the start and you could never help what you became?
Who are the heroes and heroines of your story? And are you or your parents on that list? Who are the villains? Are you or your parents on that list? Are the villains just people doing the best they can manage with what they’ve been given? If they aren’t, what else could they be?
I know that’s a lot of questions. But sometimes we have to look back at the story we tell ourselves. We need to make edits and reinterpret things. Any story can be a story to be proud of, because you’re living to tell it, and that itself can be the beginning of the redemption arc. But there are shitty stories, too. We’ve all seen what a badly crafted story looks like: it feels terrible to listen to, and worse to tell. Like a 3rd grade report where no amounting of polish could make your bullshit smell good. Your interpretation doesn’t make sense because you don’t understand the details.
They say people who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.
The punchline is this:
Your origins are your history.