On Young Parents

The deeper you go into psychology, the clearer it becomes how much of who we are is set in childhood. Sadly, this isn’t only true of our drives and our strengths — it’s just as true of our wounds, our fears, our hang-ups, our limiting beliefs.

I still remember moments that felt, back then, like a glaring injustice on my parents’ part. Some phrases surface to this day, grate on the ear, land somewhere in the chest. Or thoughts that ran against my whole picture of the world and my values, yet somehow rang true anyway. I’m sure everyone carries a few memories like that.

Who I am today is a mix of role models to follow and a deliberate refusal of the traits I try to avoid in myself at any cost.

Recently, flipping through a childhood album, I noticed something for the first time: when I was seven or eight — the age at which I started consciously weighing my parents’ actions, registering their emotional reactions, judging them, arguing back — they were around thirty.

I’m forty-two now, and despite all the steady work on myself, I still “sow chaos”: I rush, I run late, I get emotionally unstable, I make the wrong calls. Sometimes I act irrationally, out of all proportion to the situation. And that’s normal. I learn, I draw my conclusions, I move on.

And when I remember myself at thirty, I realize all of those flaws can be multiplied by ten. And those are the very thirty-year-olds I, as a child, saw in my parents.

But children look at their parents differently. To a child, a parent is the absolute authority, the model to copy, the final word on questions of morality and values.

My parents have been gone for many years now, and I forgave them everything long ago — though on the whole my childhood was a wonderful one. I hope yours are alive and in good health; I wish them every blessing! And if you’re holding on to moments when you, as a child, were hurt, when you felt the unfairness of it, try to forgive them. After all, back then they were only learning the art of living themselves, only gathering their own wisdom.

Here’s to loving our parents and not taking their imperfection to heart — that, I suppose, may be the one trait that unites every single one of us. 😎