The greatest gift we can give our
children as parents is the knowledge that they always have a choice. Sometimes we fuck up and we do and say things
to our children that don’t quite line up with how we feel about them. Take my
mom for instance. I remember frustrating her so many times that she would
insult me in ways that I could dream of being able to do. So many times I was
told I was only good for laying on my back; I eventually believed it to be
true. I didn’t know I had a choice not to believe it. I was a kid. My Mother was
saying these things about me. I mean, they must
be true. Right? Every choice I made thereafter was solely based on the
knowledge that my Mother (and Father) believed these things to be true. And for
a while, they weren’t. For two years to be exact. Because I always remember the
insults getting worse when I was 14. I made a friend at school and she was
immediately deemed a bad influence. A harlot
if you will. All I was worried about were boys and what I needed to be
worried about was my education. And the sad part was, that although yes, I may
have been a little boy crazy, I was perfectly content with making myself feel
good sexually. I wasn’t trying to have sex with boys. I was just trying to figure
out why I was feeling the way I was. So many emotions come rushing at you as a
teenager. Everything is so overwhelming.
Every bad thing is horrifying and ever good thing is ecstasy. Every sadness
felt like the one that was going to drive you to jump off the bridge, and every
happiness was the ultimate reason to be alive. It was SO MUCH. And there was no
one to talk to. No one to confide in. I felt I had no choice and gave into that
belief that I felt and acted the way I did because that was just who I was. A whore. And I realize now
that I was denied the right to choose if that was who I wanted to be. In her anger and frustration towards me (and perhaps
towards her own failings as a Mother), my mom made the mistake of not reminding
me that in life, we all have a choice. I didn’t have to sleep with that boy. That was a choice. Just because in
anger she would yell these things, didn’t make them necessarily true. We
continue to underestimate the complexity that we are as human beings. Perhaps
our purpose in life is not to make money and acquire fame, etc., etc. Maybe our purpose is to be open to the error
of our ways, and as a society come together and raise the next generation of self-aware human beings. And I choose
this description deliberately. Self-aware.
We usually categorize this phrase with computers, AI’s. Having conscious knowledge of one's own character and feelings. And
how exactly can we as humans become
self-aware when we have other people, society and sometimes even our families telling us who we are rather than
letting us discover who we can be?
