Journey to a New Life

Continuing from previous blog, Day 67: Parenting as Duty vs Parenting as Self-Expression - Part 1 | Parenting & Fairness :

‘So when you parent from a starting point of duty – you do the same. You do what needs to be done but once the need has been removed you stop, you retreat. Parenting is then a formality, you do it because ‘it is written somewhere’ that you have to do it. You don’t do it from a point of understanding, you don’t put anything from yourself into it, you don’t allow yourself to explore what is possible when there is ‘no more need’, you don’t do it just for the sake of it – the very notion of spending more time/moments with your child, giving more of yourself is seen as ‘a waste’ (just as you would paying more than what your debt told you to pay). And every time you ‘pay your dues’ as ‘tending to your child’ – you take note of it, you keep a record – just like you would with a bank account where money movement is involved. And then later, when you child is older – you can remind him/her of these records and what the child now ‘owes you’ in return. Look at all these things I did for you – now what will you do for me?
This is parenting on automatic mode – there’s no life in your actions, in your attention. You are simply reacting to impulses. The impulses stop and you stop. You did not do those things ‘for the child’ – you did them out of duty, you fulfilled your duty – but you did not fulfil your child.’

When you parent from a starting point of self-expression, you move beyond reaction to responsiveness. There is nothing else moving you but yourself. You child needs you and you tend to your child – and then some. You are not keeping track of ‘what you are giving’. When you react, your action is dictated by what you are reacting to, you do the bare minimum, you do it grudgingly, you always do it the same way because you do not know of another way.

When you respond from responsiveness, from response-ability – you move yourself to respond simply because you can. You do not yet know how you will respond, this is unpredictable – only the moment will tell. You respond to the same need in many different ways, because you response is not dictated, it is not determined by the need – it is an expression of yourself. And how you express yourself changes from moment to moment. You stop meeting needs and you start meeting moments.

Say, your baby needs a diaper change. When you change a diaper from a starting point of duty, you change the diaper the way you always change the diaper. You are meeting/fulfilling the diaper change. When you change a diaper from a starting point of expression, you look at yourself, you look at your child and you change your child’s diaper in a way that takes you and your child into account. Your child is in different expressions in different moments, and so every diaper change becomes unique as you meet your child and his/her need for a diaper change in that specific moment. The focus is on meeting the moment which is all-encompassing, the focus is not on the need.

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The above piece I wrote as I finished my previous blog, to give myself a starting point for the next one to come (this one).

Now, as I have been going through my days since I wrote my previous blog and the piece above – I have been mulling over the point of ‘Parenting as Self-Expression’ and how to best explain it and describe it. Each time I think I found a good way to put it – and look at it again; I drop it, because in the very act of trying to describe it and define it – I am already limiting it in one way or another.

The reason why Parenting as Duty is easy to describe and explain, is because it is so very limited, repetitive and systematic. It is you behaving and conducting yourself according to particular rules that you follow. With Parenting as Self-Expression, I can give examples and stories – but those are only reflections of a ‘moment’ and they were only valid and true in that moment and they were only valid and true for me in that moment. What is a point of Expression for me, is not going to be a point of Expression for another.

Whenever I am looking into adapting a new skill or insight into my life, I often (if not always) have the tendency to look for guidelines, descriptions, some ‘how to’ to tell me what to do and how to act. I want to ‘read up’ on it and have as much information and knowledge available to myself that I can reference before I actually start walking/living/applying the new skill or insight into my life.

And even though I am doing all these things because ‘I want to be prepared’ and ‘really wanting to get this integrated in my life’ – it’s this search for descriptions, guidelines and info that in the end limits me and how I walk and live the point, because I am constantly reaching back to the information I hold within myself and trying to ‘make sense’ of the moment and what I am doing and trying to do it along the lines of the information. In those moments, I lose myself because I am holding knowledge and information as my starting-point instead of drawing from myself and simply walking/doing it and then I get disappointed with myself and the new point I wanted to integrate in my life, simply because I was not trusting myself to walk unconditionally in the moment.

The best way to find out for yourself what Parenting and Self Expression is – is to simply do it and live it. For me, this was realising all the moment where I was acting and behaving in a way which was dictated by beliefs, ideas, thoughts, emotions, feelings – were not supportive for myself nor for my child, and so to instead push and move myself to be here in every moment, to be clear and directive. I didn’t know what I was going to be doing, or ‘how’ I was going to be – but I knew that holding on to what I was doing was not going to work.

So looking at it now, you need to change the conditions that facilitate the ‘growth’ of Parenting as Self Expression – just as you would prepare the soil/environment for a new plant/seed to grow. Where for the Seed of Self-Expression to germinate and flower – breath, presence and directiveness representing the ‘optimal conditions’ within which Parenting as Self-Expression can emerge. Whereas holding on to thoughts, beliefs, morality, emotions and feelings – is like pounding a bag of salt into the soil and never ever providing water to your seed, pretty much killing any opportunity for your seed to unfold – you will remain stuck in status quo.

So it’s not about what and how you will do things, but directing who you are in every moment. If ‘who you are’ is in place, the rest simply follows naturally.

In my previous blog I shared a quote from Osho on ‘sharing truth’ which one’s child.

I’ll be re-quoting the section that will be relevant for this blog:

“But never say an untruth to a child because he is so helpless, so indefensible. He depends so much on you, he trusts so much in you – don’t betray him. This is betraying! Telling any lie means you have betrayed the child. And finally you will be in trouble. Sooner or later, the child will discover that you have been telling lies. That very day all trust in you will disappear.”

So I left off my previous blog mentioning that I went through such an experience of betrayal – and how my parents’ decision to uphold an ‘untruth’ changed my relationship with them forever.

Now this particular memory…is all about Santa Claus.

I found Santa Claus didn’t exist for the first time around when I was about 8. Us kids went to the basement and found all the gifts there. Though I am not sure I fully grasped the implications of the gifts being in the basement – cause by the time I was 9 and it was next year’s Santa Claus = I believed in Santa Claus again (or had forgotten that he doesn’t exist).

Anyway, the second time I found out that Santa Claus didn’t exist was when I was about 12 years old. I know, pretty late right – but the whole setup at home was reeaally well done, so it was all very convincing. That year I was writing my letter to Santa, and I was asking for Barbies. According to my peers, Barbies were for ‘small children’ but I still loved playing with them and would do it in secret. So Christmas was the perfect occasion to ask Santa for Barbies because it was something just between ‘him and me’, no-one else would ever need to find out.

So I had just placed my letter in my shoe by the chimney, and I am all chuffed and happy – I’m gonna get my barbies!! Then as I am walking upstairs, I see my sister is in a bit of a bad mood and she asks me what I am so happy about, and I say it’s because of Santa Claus. Then she all of a sudden tells me ‘You stupid runt, don’t you know Santa Claus doesn’t exist – it’s been mom and dad reading our letters all these years and buying the gifts, or other family members buying it for us’. In that moment the fact that she’d called me a stupid runt completely flew by me – what shocked me to the core was that ‘mom and dad have been reading our letters all these years and buying the gifts’.

I ran down the stairs and grabbed my letter and quickly replaced my request with something more mature/adult like than ‘barbie dolls’ and put in a picture of a (Barbie) camera (since I couldn’t find any other pictures of cameras in the toy store advertisement booklets they dump in your letter box during Christmas time).

They ended up getting me a polaroid-camera which turned out to be a great present, but the whole Christmas experience was tainted by the sad truth that my parents were liars and deceivers.

It wasn’t like “ooooh Santa isn’t reaaaal – oh hohoho, that’s so funny, you really got me there!” and then the next moment all is forgiven and forgotten – No, no, no – I took this reaaaal serious.

I remember sitting on my bed the evening my sister told me, and when I was re-writing my Santa letter and going over the fact that they had been putting up this ‘alternate reality’ in essence, every year for the past 12 years, knowing they are presenting a lie. I looked at the amount of time and effort that had to go into keeping up this illusion every year and it was quite a bit of it!

So naturally I went: Jesus Christ, if they lie about this, if they go ‘this far’ to uphold something like this and didn’t even tell me the truth (had to find out from sister) WHAT ELSE ARE THEY LYING ABOUT.

I was heart-broken.

As a child, you have that absolute trust and confidence that you place in your parents, because after all: you are kind of defenceless in this world as a child, and so you trust your parents completely to ‘do the right thing’. That they stand as a point of absolute support, is assumed as ‘given’ when you’re a child.

Until it turns out that it isn’t.

Major illusion shattered right then and there.

I could barely look them in the eye.

The whole Santa thing is supposed to be a fun, magical, mystical experience for the child and where this ‘illusion’ is supposed to be a gift you give to the child where they can still experience these things and believe that the world is ‘a nice place’ before they reach adulthood and total disappointment in life on Earth.

Really, it’s only making it worse. If you want your child to experience ‘fun and magic’ – don’t uphold a fictitious reality and so by implication fictitious fun and magic. Rather, work on creating a real bond of trust, of communication with your child. Do it every moment of every day (in contrast to throwing the Santa show once a year), develop integrity and respect between yourself and your child – the type of fun and magic that emerges from this is a lot more valuable, and actually makes the world a better place.

Not so long ago I decided to try and shower with Cesar, as I wanted some variation to always taking baths. He had been opening the shower doors and gone playing in the shower when we’d go in the bathroom, so I knew he was curious about the space. I saw it might also be tricky for him to be okay with a shower experience since he’d be way down below and I’d be standing instead of being low down with him, and he would also be more likely to get water in his face.

Since I figured that I was probably not the first mom to go around experimenting with taking a one year old with in the shower, I figured there’d be some good ‘tips n tricks’ on the internet of how to go about showering with your little one so both parent and child can have a fun experience.

I though the search results would be pretty straightforward, but interestingly enough the type of topics/results that kept crowding the search engine results were about ‘whether it is okay to take your x year old toddler into the shower with you’ – where in essence the ‘big debate’ was a morality issue of whether or not it’s okay for your child to be naked with you / for your child to see you naked, especially if you’re of the opposite sex. I found this quite fascinating because if I look at me and Cesar bathing (and also having successfully showered, by the way) – I don’t experience any issue with us being together in the water and washing ourselves. So – it’s not like there’s an inherent problem in the act of ‘showering’/’bathing together’; it is one we make up in our minds and then impose on the act/situation and make it real by thinking and creating emotions about it.

Then, quite interestingly – I came across a piece of Osho writing (I’ve been reading a bit of Osho every day, and then seeing how/where I can integrate/live a particular insight in my life/reality) which was directly relation to this point of ‘sexuality’ and how we, ourselves have supplemented sexuality with an additional meaning of ‘badness’ and taboo – and within that ‘warp’ the truth of sexuality and create a lie which we then present as ‘the truth’ and ‘how it is’.

“Truth is truth, and nobody should be debarred from it. Just because children are small, do they have to be fed on lies? Is truth only for grown-ups? Then does it mean truth is dangerous to the delicate consciousness of the child?

Truth is never dangerous, untruth is dangerous. And if you tell an untruth to a grown-up he may be able to defend; it can be forgiven. But never say an untruth to a child because he is so helpless, so indefensible. He depends so much on you, he trusts so much in you – don’t betray him. This is betraying! Telling any lie means you have betrayed the child. And finally you will be in trouble. Sooner or later, the child will discover that you have been telling lies. That very day all trust in you will disappear.”

When I read this piece, I remembered my own experience of betrayal with my parents and how deeply this touched me, and how I that day decided to never ever trust my parents again.

To be continued

In my previous blog I explained how a parent’s responsibility starts with self first.

This seems paradoxical, how can my responsibility towards my child start with a responsibility towards myself?

I came across a piece of Osho writing which I find pertinent to this point:

“Nobody has been exploited so much as children -- neither the proletariat nor women, nobody has been exploited so much and so deeply and so destructively as the innocent children. Because they are helpless and dependent they have to learn whatsoever you teach them. They have to imbibe all the falsehoods that you go on forcing upon them. It is a question of survival for them -- they cannot survive without you. It is a question of life and death! They have to be Christians, Hindus, they have to be Mohammedans, they have to be Jainas, they have to be Buddhists, they have to be communists. Whatsoever you are interested in putting into their minds, you go on putting it in. Instead of making them more alert, more aware, more alive, more reflective, instead of making them more mirrorlike, pure, you make them full of ideas...layers and layers of dust. And then it becomes impossible for them to see that which is. They start seeing that which is not and they stop seeing that which is.“

We cannot know, see or assess what is best for a child, if we are coming from a box of ideas. These ideas come from memories of our life, based on experiences we’ve collected. When we want to direct or guide a child, we can only do so from within the limited bounds of the box – as if the ideas in the box are the only options available, and whether they are actually best or not for the child becomes irrelevant – what is relevant is that the ideas and opinions we’ve gathered through life are put to good use.

This is obviously not the best way to go about raising a child.


Why?

Here we come to the dimension of responsibility towards your child that is not directly related to you and where it comes to being all about the child. The child is a person on his own. He or she is a life-form, which came through you, but is not owned by you. Every child has his or her own unique expression, and that expression will differ from your own and other members of the family. Your child as a life-form happened to have come through within your family-setting, but could have sprouted up anywhere else just the same. There should be no entitlement involved in raising children; where you believe you have the right to raise your child ‘this and that way’ because ‘he/she is MY child and I can do with MY children whatever I want’. Children are not supposed to be possessions, they are gifts. They are gifts with an immense amount of responsibility attached to them. Because here we have a life-form, that like Osho says – is completely helpless and dependent – and here we have you, the parent, as an able-bodied individual – that can stand in as a point of support where the child cannot for itself. And everything you do, everything you say will impact the child. Better still, the child counts on it that you know what you’re doing, and that you’re looking after its best interest. It gives you its trust completely.

Most of us have our own experiences with our parents where we are less than happy with the way they treated us, with ways in which they imposed their ideas, their way of doing things, their opinions and their values. Some we rejected forcefully, others we are not even aware we are living. We’ve all seen and realised the extent to which our own parents influenced us and influenced our life’s path. Some we are grateful for, others we’d like to erase from our minds.

So: Who Am I in relationship to my Child? – is that of Self-Support to ensure that one is working on breaking down the walls of self-limitation to open up the way to self’s utmost potential.
Who Is My Child in relationship to Me? – is that of a life-form here to express itself, to develop itself and grow into its utmost potential.

Which then brings us back to the role of the Parent, where Who I Am in relationship to my Child is that of support, direction and guidance – as self has walked and is busy walking the path to utmost potential and is aware of the stumbling blocks, the temptations, the falls, the consequences and what it takes to correct ones misalignments.

Within this, an interesting thing takes place, because as you commit yourself to the development of another to its utmost potential, new dimensions and aspects of yourself and your own self-expression open, where the limits of your potential will shift in the most surprising moments and ways.

So realising that having and raising a child within this principle, the principle of Life, is a task of utmost responsibility – it is best to develop and work on one’s own potential as much as one is able to before taking on this task; as it will make it easier to develop your child’s potential rather than its limitation.

Currently when we look at family and having children, we go by sheer ‘feeling’ to decide when we want to have children. We get a feeling that we want a baby, we get oozie at the idea of having a family, pictures and imaginations start popping in our heads, they seem so nice – and then one day you say the words: I want to have a baby! If you’re lucky, the adults looking at starting a family will first consider their financial stability before entertaining the reality of having a family – but many will allow the feeling and desire for a family/baby to overpower common sense practicality and bring into this world a child that is necessarily compromised.

Raising a child being the responsibility of holding Life in your hand, to grow it, to develop op it without rigidly moulding it, without breaking it – is a massive task in itself. To lay this responsibility unto yourself whilst not being in a financially stable position makes it that much more massive, if not impossible. It is easy to get carried away by feelings, pictures and imaginations of what it would be like to have a child. But realise that there, you are looking at your own ambitions, your own interest of how you want things to be – and are not actually taking into consideration the life of the future child, who will suffer the consequences.

I really want to stress this point because, parenting is the most important job in the world and it’s an all-or-nothing situation. Once you are a parent, that’s is: no take backs – and it’s a responsibility you will have to live with for the rest of your life. It can be fun and rewarding and it can also send you straight down to hell – if you have the choice, prepare yourself in the best way you can to make sure that you are up to the task.

So really, a parent’s responsibility towards the child doesn’t start with self, but starts with self before there is even an actual child.

To be continued

In my previous blog I laid out how one within compromise will start to develop a specific ‘give and take’ relationship with one’s child of one allows to indulge in a pattern where you decide to hold on to ‘what you want to do’ and consequently will not direct your child or give your child attention when the moment for it presents itself. Being aware that you are robbing the child direction it needs, one enters a cycle of feeling guilty which you will then seek to relief by ‘giving back’ to your child, but where this ‘giving back’ is not what is required of in a moment, and where you allow the child to hold on to ‘what he/she wants to do’, just as you had granted yourself this permission.

What I found quite interesting here as well, is how one will use past moments/periods of where things were hectic and where the parent went ‘the extra mile’ to justify why it is okay to hold on and want to have ‘personal’/’me-time’ because “look at all those things I did for you” and “I spent so much time on you, why can’t you just give me a break right now”,… where the parent draws on ‘fairness’ to justify their desires and their behaviour of pursuing it.

So the whole design of it is actually quite clever. Because you find yourself in a situation that is disproportionate, you have to put substantially more time in your child than you do towards yourself or anything else – which is just an outflow of the design of children/babies and the dependency that comes with it; it’s not like they ‘chose’ to deliberately take in a lot of your time. And then you have the parent who makes the deliberate decision to try and go ‘against’ the design and ‘capture’ a bigger margin of time/energy to go towards themselves which necessarily creates an imbalance which they constantly have to counteract by trading with the child/children by giving them things they want and desire so that at least things are ‘fair’ in terms of each one being allowed their indulgences.

So within all of this, what I found is important to realise is that: yes = things are not fair. Sometimes in life you’re on the end where things are really good for you and other times you’re on the end where things suck ass. The thing is that you can’t allow the design and structure of things determine ‘who you are’ and ‘what you’re going to do’. Say you really want to have a unicorn. Yet, by the design of things, we don’t have unicorns on Earth – what are you going to do now? Throw a tantrum? Be spiteful at horses for not having horns? Get yourself a horse and force a horn unto its forehead with God knows what consequence? I know – it’s a farfetched example, but it does very clearly show how ridiculous it is to try and get something which by design is just impossible. We can try having a unicorn by taking a horse and forcing a horn on its head, but we cannot do it without creating consequences, by creating ripple effects through trying to force something to exist – which goes the same for wanting and demanding some form of ‘fairness’ within your parenting reality to and with your child. You cannot manipulate and force your ideal/desire unto reality/your children without them being adversely affected by it. Because you are making real sacrifices to attain something unreal.

In the first few months with Cesar there had been moments where I found myself with a lot of inner conflict and where I couldn’t’ see straight as to ‘why am I experiencing myself this way’ because I was so ‘in it’. I would then make use of Osho Zen cards to do a reading and fascinatingly enough, the card which represents the issue would be the same one over and over again when I had that same experience which was: ‘the dream’ – and the solution was each time to ‘let go of the dream’. Where I was, without being much aware of it – holding on to certain expectations, hoping for things to go a certain way and where reality was not going the way I was expecting/hoping it to go. The nature of taking care of him at that stage was very intense and took a toll on my body – and I would hope/expect him to sleep a bit more or if he had started sleeping more, to ‘keep up’ with this pattern so that I didn’t have to spend as much time and energy in actively soothing him (as he was very uncomfortable back then considering the acid reflux and colic and needed constant ‘intervention’ to alleviate the pain/discomfort for him). So when I got to the point of walking him and bouncing him around for the so many-eth time at night – I would be going ‘pffffft’ and a build-up of energy would start to emerge. This was because I was hoping/expecting for this ‘not to happen’. So when I finally got the point and embraced that things were tough and weren’t going to change – (or maybe they were going to, but that would still be irrelevant), where I realised that I was only making things worse for myself by holding to a ‘dream’, as I am constantly contrasting what is happening to this dream and within doing so make reality look more dull while making the dream look more colourful; the only thing that is going to give me peace is just to be here in every moment, to take every moment as it comes without any expectation. And sure enough, I was more content than ever before and could move myself with ease and would actually explore more ways of assisting Cesar which I previously wouldn’t have even thought about. Because previously, I was so busy ‘suffering’ and just being in ‘automatic’ that such an option would’ve just totally slipped me by.

So this is how I’ve seen the role of Fairness play a point within parenting and being a mother and how it can turn parenting sour if one allows fairness to move oneself instead of self moving self for the sake of what’s best for all, and how dropping Fairness in a simple point such as not expecting things to go a certain way can go a long way.

I’ve written now two series (paranoia and fairness) on what I’ve identified as ‘problem areas’ within parenting which become apparent very early on in the parenting stage, and would like for the next series to take on solution/correction dimensions as we’ve now seen and understood the problem and so can transform our movement within and towards corrections to establish a new parenting paradigm as Principled Parenting.