Parents and Children: the Bond of Expectation

The other day I watched this rather fascinating documentary about Dodi Al Fayed, Princess Diana's ill fated lover. The reporter was exploring how Dodi lived under the shadow of his wealthy and enterprising father, Mohammed Al Fayed, the founder of the world famous Harrods. Apparently, Dodi was haunted by his self-perceived inability to fulfil his father's expectations of him. Whether or not this interpretation is true, or who knows? a projection of the reporter's own intimate fears, the fact of the matter remains that we cannot but fail to fulfil our parents' expectations.

Of course, not everyone is fortunate, or unfortunate, to have a father as Al Fayed. Yet we are all the products of our parents' desires - let's face it, we are here at all because our parents wanted us to be. This gives them a deceiving sense of 'ownership' that works as long as we are little children. Alas, the problem is that as we grow into adulthood, our parents want more and more from us: they want us to be everything they were not. Where they failed, we are supposed to succeed. They want to mold us into more successful mirrors of themselves.

Yet it is obvious we cannot be all our parents would have liked us to be. We are not them, we can't live their lives, can't fix their mistakes or emulate their desires. We are someone else than who they are. The novel relationships we establish with our own world define us as someone else than who they are. So it is part of our affirmation as human beings to deny our parents' expectations. It is a very painful and lonely thing to do, and we should not discount the anguish involved in breaking such a strong bond of desire. Yet it needs to be done, if we are not to fail ourselves.

What to Do When Rain Pours

Truth be spoken, we don't have much to fall back on when the rain starts pouring just above our head. You can recap your CV and remember how much some HR people appreciated you. You can review your awards from when you were knee-high in the spelling bee contest. You can hug your TV or beautiful car. You can cuddle near your husband, brother, parent, as long as they can stand your self-pity phase. You can do something constructive and go shopping. Or, of course, you can go partying yourself out of your wits and deal with the hangover in the morning.

I'm not here to lecture. Perhaps it is good to keep a list of all wonderful things that ever happened to you. They will provide a comfort and make you reconstitute who you are. Because, isn't it funny how who you are begins to dissolute itself in front of your eyes at the first nasty setback?

What I think is that there has to be a way of tapping into your own self-worth, your deeper self. Perhaps there is no price tag there, a salary requirement, or an Ivy League degree. Yet deeper than that there's the sense of inner worth, the value of who you are. You don't get easily down there. Yet sometimes when you are really down and out, there's a small light of hope shining. I will get through this. I am better than this. I will recover and get back into it. An instinct of survival perhaps, but also a glimpse of the deeper self.

What Price Self Worth?

Undoubtedly, we feel good when other people say nice things about us. The other day, some guy on the street tried to pick me up by telling me "you're such a lovely girl". It was a lame line, but I couldn't help guiltily feeling good about myself. That's all fine, but there's a reverse to the coin. I have been more than once apostrophed while driving (despite being, of course, a brilliant driver). It didn't destroy my world, of course, but then again, I felt a bit unhappy about it.

I'm not sure why we depend so much on what other people say. It's not just close family, obviously, though they are usually the most powerful. Yet just about anyone on the planet has some potential magical power to ruin someone else's day just by pronouncing a nefarious word.

All this got me to thinking: do I really need to be told that I'm pretty, to know that I'm pretty? Do I need this mirror of the world to convince me of who I am? Should we be this dependent on our environment?

The Art of Persistence and Giving Up

You know, there are moments in life when, despite your insistence, things just don't happen your way. Let's imagine a situation. You are at a bus station, waiting for the bus to take you home (like me today). You know from memory, or just by the sign post, that the 390 should eventually do just that. Yet, minutes go by and no 390 is coming. Other buses keep arriving, picking up the others waiting at the bus stop. But no 390. You are tired, spent, hungry, and envious of all the other people who got their ride home. Will you get yours? Perhaps you should give up waiting. After all, you could just walk for fifteen minutes to the nearest tube station - a ride that is usually longer and more expensive, but now perhaps more reasonable. Yet, there is a mixture of will, stubborness or laziness keeping you in place. Come on, the bus should come any minute now. Any minute. Except it, just as stubbornly, doesn't want to.

Now, being generally more stubborn than a bus, I waited and waited until eventually it came. But it was a mixed blessing. The bus, as it turns out, had a premature termination stop way before my home. So I had to get down and wait for another bus. I arrived perhaps one hour and a half later than I planned, pissed off and all that. Was it worth the wait? Obviously not - getting the tube would have gotten me home much faster and much happier.

There must be an art, which I'm willing to explore, about knowing when to give up and when to persist. Will persistence finally break resistance? Or will the pressure make resistance harder? Or then again, aren't you paralyzed by the fear that, just when you give up on the bus and walk to the tube, the bus comes and you are too far to catch it?