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.