Fools hold on tighter

#44: A 100-word story on sometimes foolish battles of parents

“Don’t don’t don’t stare at the sun” PC: Reena Kapoor. Instagram: @1StarDusty

A fool’s battle

When his son first learned to walk, talk and read before his peers, the village headman swelled. “MY son!” he boasted. 

As the son grew, flourished, the father tightened his hold. He claimed his son merely stood on the father’s shoulders. 

When the village voted the son headman, the father started criticizing his son’s farming methods, governance, everything. Eventually, the son stopped talking to his father. 

Distressed, the father consulted a sadhu. “My son forgets his duty!” 

The sadhu smiled. “Look inside. What makes you grasp so tight? Life passes for all. Wise men make space for the next generation.”

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reena | 05.17.24

*sadhu = a holy man, sage, sometimes an ascetic.

This story arrived while pondering the great variety of foolish battles we parents take on vis-a-vis our children, rationalizing our grasping under various guises—it’s what’s best for them, I don’t want them to make the same mistakes I did, I know better, etc. Most of these are cover for our need for control, our triggers and fears, our threatened egos and perhaps even our passing relevance. 

“Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.”
– C.G. Jung

Far from claiming I've conquered my own misguided tendencies, I write to introspect and question. Here are some of my explorations:

~how can we make space for our kids? Surely it isn’t a magic bulb that lights up as soon as they turn 18. In younger years kids do need parental guidance and correction but even then over/helicopter parenting can hurt them. Maria Montessori knew and proved the importance of making space for spontaneous learning of the child. 

~what about when our kids are young adults, embark on their independent paths yet are not immune to our influences? If we were more or less OK parents, in most circumstances our kids remain bonded to us. If we’re lucky they may even respect our view of life, perhaps ask for our guidance at times. Yet even when they do, shouldn’t we respect our kids’ individual journeys? Kahlil Gibran’s classic poem says it best (pasted below).

~how can we reflect dispassionately on how we’re showing up as parents and on the real reasons beneath our anxieties related to our kids? What when we mollycoddle adult kids, constantly telling them what to do/not to, being overly invested in their every decision from whether to put on a jacket to which exact career to aim for, and how. How much of this dynamic is driven by the parents’ own unfulfilled needs, anxieties and triggers? 

You may house their bodies but not their souls…

-Kahlil Gibran

~I read somewhere that all unsolicited advice is a form of criticism. Perhaps this applies to our children as well—and from a much younger age than we realize. Instead of ensuring our legacy as that overly critical voice in our kids’ heads that they’ll spend a lifetime (and a gazillion $s in therapy) quieting, how can we show up as beloved guides they call on when needed? 

 ~when our kids find life partners, do we celebrate them finding the kind of love that sustains and enhances the best within them? Or do we carp about their waning attention for us? Are we strong enough to accept that the best and the correct outcome would mean their love for their partners and children is more central to their lives than we are? 

~as our kids grow up, move out and on, finding their own milieus and worlds to flourish in, are we truly treating their life with the same curiosity, interest and respect we would give to an equal, positive, independent relationship we hold dear? This is perhaps the hardest of all shifts, yet must be accepted like aging and death. 

~as life progresses and we find our own relevance fading, do we accept that passing? how do we find our interest and engagement elsewhere instead of trying to wrest control from our children in realms where they should rightly, and hopefully, outshine us?

Along these lines, the chief protagonist of a short story I wrote, had this to say:

“…She fully understood why people claimed having grandkids is even better than having kids. Not because grandkids are perfect versions of our kids, without their flaws. But because, finally as grandparents, we’re able to see how perfect our kids really were, in their own unique and lovely ways. It was just our faulty notion of parenting that obscured such vision….”

This was the story:

Memory tissue adhesions

On Children

Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931)

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.
And he said:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

  You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

From The Prophet (Knopf, 1923). This poem is in the public domain.

How do you think about these timeless, generational questions? I’d love to hear from you.