Tag: Life

  • When Understanding Goes Too Far

    I sometimes watch the wayward behaviour of some while observing the contempt of others that are watching it play out, and wonder who between the two are less aware of their actions or motivations to behave that way. The ones among us that are of a softer nature will look on and seek to understand why someone may be acting out, afraid that judging them for acting out may be too harsh. The world is harsh enough as it is, and only getting harsher each day, so I guess there is merit in such an approach.

    At times, when we’ve had enough to deal with in our own lives, we look on with intolerance, demanding that the wayward behaviour be checked, because if no one is willing to accept such behaviour from us, why should we accept it from others? Right? But demanding change without offering a solution helps no one. It only exacerbates the already toxic state of the relationship or the environment around us. It provokes the wayward ones to escalate their protest against whatever it is that they refuse to accept, and it frustrates those that seek to understand.

    Moderation in all things is always called for. Demand without understanding, and you lose credibility when the solution becomes obvious later on. Understand without demanding, and you lose credibility when the demands foster the change that was needed to break the cycle. Do either without the other, and you resign yourself to an end of insignificance. Unfortunately, doing both requires purposeful conviction. Not blind conviction. Not the kind of conviction that is driven by a self-belief of what we stand for but for which we are rarely capable of defending when challenged. That belief that we insist on being respected despite not knowing why, but only knowing that through receiving such respect for our beliefs, we feel significant and less threatened.

    Purposeful conviction. You’d think it was easy given that it’s a simple matter of cause and effect, but of a different kind. You recognise the cause that you wish to champion, and you put your efforts into effecting the change needed to support that cause. Problem is, most don’t recognise the cause, they only recognise the affiliation. The need to be associated with something meaningful or relevant, rather than establishing meaning and relevance through their own actions and contributions.

    It’s all well and good to understand. But the failing of many is that we stop at understanding. We spend much time and energy in achieving that state, but then avoid taking steps to remedy the causes that we now understand leads to that unacceptable behaviour. Being perceived as understanding in nature makes us popular with those that don’t want to change, those that prefer acting out, being rebellious, and refusing to accept accountability for their state because they find it much more convenient and less taxing to blame others, or circumstances.

    The ones that act out, and are left to act out, become masters at presenting their tantrums as legitimate gripes or demands. They often end up being the bullies, the type A personalities, and the abusers. They become the oppressors that they grew up whining about. And those that sought only to understand but chose not to curtail such behaviour, or offer healthier forms of expression, they feed that cycle. They enable such outcomes, and they become the liberals. The ones that stand for nothing, understand everything, and fall for every whimper regardless of how incredulous the whimper is.

    Understanding is only ever the first step, and never the last. There is no point in seeking to understand if you intend to do nothing more than reflect on that knowledge that you have gained. Understanding must inform our decisions to act. Not acting is a decision in itself, but it’s usually the easy way out. It’s often under the pretense that we don’t want to get involved because we have enough problems of our own, or it’s none of our business. And that’s how the cycles of violence, intolerance, and abuse in society spiral out of control. It’s because those that understand do nothing, while those that do not understand act without guidance.

    Prompting someone towards having the courage to take control of their lives, regardless of what came before, is more selfless than it is selfish. Too often we’re distracted by the assumption that by demanding more, we’re behaving selfishly because we don’t understand how difficult it is for that person to be who they are if only we knew what they’ve been through. That is a horrid distortion of the truth. The truth is closer to the fact that leaving them to succumb to their past is in fact selfish, because prompting them to rise above it is often met with resistance and contempt, both of which erode your sense of significance or likeability in that relationship. So when you withhold advice or decide not to take action because you don’t want to be ‘the bad one’, you’re behaving selfishly. Standing up and being counted in a time when guidance and good advice is needed, not necessarily wanted, takes more courage and is much more selfless than shutting up and minding your own business.

    We have far too many that shut up and mind their own business, except when they enjoy the anonymity of social media and similar platforms, because once again, there is limited (if any) risk of them becoming unpopular in the relationships that they covet. I suspect that the point of this post has been made somewhere between all the venting, but at the risk of being redundant. It’s simply this. Seeking to understand is a noble first step. But it’s only a first step. Don’t stop there. Take the knowledge that you gained through that process and apply it with conviction in a meaningful way. Don’t be a passive observer of life, or the lives of others. Have the courage to change it for the better.

  • That Half Full Glass

    Do relationships end because people change, or because they finally realise who they’re with? Or is it closer to going in with a belief that growth is possible, only to discover that their partner was uninterested in growth? Or maybe the possibility of growth spawned an immature competition between the two, and they grew apart instead of growing together?

    I’ve seen and lived through my fair share (and then some) of bad relationships. The haunting reality of every single one of them was the amount of self-denial if not self-destruction that was insisted upon by one or both parties. In my mind, I visualise relationships as a glass half full. No, not that glass, another glass. We’re all semi-filled glasses of water in a way. Any person that claims to be entirely fulfilled by their own endeavours and independent of the contribution of others to feel completely whole is a liar.

    Back to that glass. We hold on to many glasses in our lifetimes with each glass representing a major area of interest, or passion in our lives. When it comes to relationships, our relationship glass is half full as we invite others into that space. We only invite those that hold the promise of adding to that half full glass so that we can top it up, realistically only trying to approach the brim while knowing that getting it to overflow is rarely, if ever possible in this lifetime. This world was simply not created for such perfect fulfilment.

    Nonetheless, when we invite others in, we hold an innate expectation that they will contribute towards that glass which will serve as inspiration for us to contribute to theirs. Sometimes, we’re not aware of how full or how empty the glass of the other is. We assume, based on our own perceptions and life stage, that those that appear similarly inclined have glasses filled similar to our own. This assumption, based on superficial interactions, inform our decisions to invite them in or pull them closer, all the while looking to draw on those expectations we never realised we had. It all seems natural until it’s put to the test.

    The gaps that exist in the souls of others only become evident when they’re exposed to the prying eyes of one who appears less vapid. Often, this awareness is news to them as well because in our efforts to protect our vulnerabilities from the world, we’re easily convinced of our completeness in the face of adversity. Believing that we’re victorious over our adversities steels us against the harsh reality of our weakness or neediness. No one wants to appear weak, except where such appearances promise to solicit the affection of those we seek.

    It’s quite the charade. When we desire the embrace of another, we’ll easily allow our weakness to show if there is reason to believe that such weakness will be perceived as tenderness, rather than impotence. Similarly, we go out seeking such weakness if we wish to be perceived as strong and dependable. But almost always, unless we’re self-destructive by inclination, we look for one that counter balances who we are. Our strengths must complement their weaknesses, and their strengths our weaknesses. Otherwise we encourage competition in a space where we seek harmony, and so the cycle plays out in varying permutations, all the while reflecting nothing more than the glass that needs to be filled, just in different ways.

    When our expectations are failed, we respond in one of three ways. We cut our losses and focus on our investment in our own glass, protecting what little we’ve accumulated over time by extricating the drain on that precious life source that gives us reason to pursue a new day leaving the empty glass to find another source of affirmation from which to fill its voids.

    At other times we compensate for what is lacking by complementing our lives with the contributions from others that are not fully invested in our intimate relationships, but fill the gaps of the plutonic needs that remain unfulfilled by the ones closest to us. Some see this as infidelity, depending entirely on your cultural or religious subscriptions, while others see this as a balanced reality that can’t be avoided. Again, entirely dependent on how you view the innocence or deviousness of such an effort. What it does do for the ones closer to us is it eases the burden of expectation that we place on them because we effectively buy ourselves time while waiting for them to catch up. We see their weakness and trust their sincerity to improve their state, so we offer them support while we nurture ourselves through other means in the hope that such alternate nurturing will be temporary only. Sometimes it works out, and sometimes it taints us to the point of needing such variety of nurturing as a permanent feature in our lives.

    The third response is the most destructive of them all. Pride, ego, commitment, or simply a rigidity informed by all of the above drives us to allow that drain to suck the life out of us as we wait patiently for the other to catch up. Their glass slowly filling up while ours drains, eventually resulting in them feeling emboldened in the face of our growing weakness. Their newfound confidence leading them to believe that they’re worth more than the spent soul they see before them, convinced that they were not the problem to begin with. In allowing ourselves to be exhausted in so many ways by contributing to a vacuum, we become the masters of our own demise. This is only ever possible if we feel responsible for the poor choices of others.

    As I mentioned in my thoughts about unconditional love, sacrificing yourself for the benefit of others in fact denies those that are worthy of your full contribution to begin with. Allowing your glass to empty because of some irrational commitment to an outcome that causes more destruction than it contributes towards a wholesome life is not martyrdom, it’s foolishness. Worse than this, it is reckless and selfish, because that moment of self-indulgence, when we reduce the purpose of our lives to propping up those around us at the expense of our own well being is nothing more than a statement of ingratitude for all that we are, and all that we’re capable of being.

    My glass will never be full, but I will never willingly allow it to be exhausted by others either. It’s the least I owe to myself, and to those that have a legitimate reliance on me to contribute towards their glasses as well. Anything less is unacceptable.

  • Taking Care of Me 

    In a self indulgent world, distortions of reality threaten to taint the essentials that hold our sanity together. The essentials are so much more difficult to recognise these days. This binary lifestyle that we’ve perpetuated for so long now insists that if we take care of ourselves, it must be to the exclusion of taking care of others. Even though I believe there to be truth in that, making such a statement seems like an unfair projection of my gripes on the world.

    Setting out on some open road therapy this week, hints of guilt trailed closely behind me. My focus having increasingly shifted to servitude over the years, self indulgence suddenly felt wrong, or blameworthy. Taking time to collect my thoughts, clear the fuzz, and regain my sense of purpose offered the only hope of holding on to what defines my unique contribution to this world.

    Self-censure has been rife in recent times. Sometimes because of the futility of expression to an oblivious crowd, but more often because of the taunting accuracy of predictable outcomes. Hope flirts on the edges of such trends and promises a break in the cycle, but that break is never self-realising. It takes an active contribution or effort to break a cycle.

    It’s like the waves that I see breaking over each other. Those washing up against the shore full of energy and motivation to reach the land as they crash and subdue the residual of the ones that went before. The ones that went before spread out lazily on the beach, aerated and foaming with delight at their achievements, then losing momentum from the complacency of their arrival only to recede in order to make way for the next wave of enthusiasm. And each time I saw this cycle repeat itself I was reminded of the lapping ripples of the Mediterranean off the island of Kerkennah. Peaceful and uninspiring, but so easily disrupted. A thrashing run through the waves I saw before me now would leave no trace even before my feet would reach the sand beneath it, while a casual stomp through the ripples on that island would see my footprints left in the sand beneath the water. Even if only for a while before the complacent lapping erased its presence while restoring the order of the ages.

    Life plays out in the cycles we disrupt every day. Without a critical mass of support, we’re no more than a bad wind drifting out to sea. Sometimes we impose ourselves as rocks of confidence and guidance as we watch the waves shape around us. But there are too few rocks and too many waves. Being such a lighthouse of fortitude can be taxing, but only as long as we expect the waves to stop pounding and instead to become ripples that caress our foothold.

    Abstracts aside, taking care of me threatens to become a central theme in my life if I lose focus as to why being me is important. It’s not important because of a need to prevail. It’s important because I provide, or at least seek to provide a counter balance to the insanity I see crashing down around me. The moment I stop serving a purpose larger than me, and I start serving me only, I add to that stench that I so revile.

    Taking care of me becomes more difficult as my awareness grows of what plays out around me. It’s easy to dismiss my contribution towards those that are obstinate in their distraction or defeatism, because I can easily justify it by focusing on the quick-wins instead. The ones that are hungry for change, for advice, for support, and so much more. But I’m always faced with the blunt truth when I shy away from the tough ones. Am I turning away to preserve my ego, or am I turning away because my time would really be better invested in one that will embrace my contribution? In fact, isn’t there a threat of ego-preservation in that as well?

    Egos, expectations, trust, and betrayal. It’s all part of how we express our happiness or dismay at the world. None of us are immune to its ill effects so be sure never to trust one that claims to have risen above it. The challenge is in being able to reflect and recognise the influences that each have on our choices. If we do, we stand a chance of living purposefully, rather than defensively. Without an ego, a leader will not step up to lead the masses out of a sorry state, and without expectations, followers will not look to leaders for guidance. Everything has its place. It’s when we allow it out of its place and let it prevail where it shouldn’t, that is when we lose sight of ourselves, and taking care of me suddenly becomes denying the rights of others in favour of me.

    We all need some self-indulgence sometime. Even for the one that has it all. When you find yourself awkward in your own company without any distractions or company to keep you occupied, when your thoughts scratch the insides of your skull or gnaw at your rib cage, and your instinctive response is to get busy with something, anything…when that is the state you find yourself in, know with certainty that you have not taken care of yourself. You have only distracted yourself from the reality you wish to avoid.

    [Another incomplete thought process to add to the collection.]

  • Final Moments

    cropped-cropped-cropped-cropped-tumblr_mu79gcdgio1qeoyseo4_128013.jpgI’ve always believed that if we were to live a long and painful life, and in the end, in our last few moments, we experienced the absolute serenity and completeness of everything we sought to experience or achieve in our lifetime, the entirety of the pain and struggles of our lives would be easily forgotten. It would still feel like a complete and beautiful life, because the intensity of the struggles before that point would directly inform the intensity of gratitude and peace we would feel when experiencing it. But only if we live in the present moment. Otherwise we’ll lose that beautiful moment cursing at its late arrival while still yearning for the past to have been different.

    Zaid Ismail

  • Contaminated (Part II)

    We live in times where the inclination to remedy a fall far outweighs any rationale to prevent the fall from happening. We’ll willingly encourage others towards intoxicants or unhealthy distractions, and then form support groups to help them out of that addictive state, while refusing to condemn the bad advice we gave in the first place. Accountability is only celebrated if it doesn’t disrupt the oblivion of the masses. Those that threaten such disruption are spurned for being callous, cruel, or arrogant, often accused of thinking that they’re better than everyone else. In short, we condone that which reflects our own weaknesses not because we believe in its wholesomeness, but because we feel more human in recognising the shared weakness in others. More than this, it makes us feel less inferior when we believe that we share shortcomings with others, rather than falling short of expectation by our solitary selves alone.

    It’s not about being better than everyone else any more. These days, it’s simply about not being worse. There was a time in human history that I imagine the focus to have been on competing to excel in human endeavours. People would have exerted themselves to achieve noble goals that served as inspiration to others to want to rise up and pursue even greater heights. It’s quite different today. Today, it seems as if we compete to see who is able to dominate through any means possible, where the level of domination is celebrated, without any concern for the means or methods that achieved such domination, except where those means and methods threaten our ability to actively compete.

    I’ve been fascinated by the term ‘fully formed adults’ ever since I first read it a few years ago, but my fascination quickly turns to disgust as I look around and struggle to find specimens that exhibit such qualities. Semi formed adults raise calloused and contaminated children. Children that grow up under semi formed adults face trials and hardships that are entirely avoidable, and fully surmountable, but they often shy away from the challenge of rising above because when they raise their gaze looking for a role model to guide them, they see nothing but more contamination of a society that is full of semi formed adults. It’s therefore little wonder why they themselves succumb to the same cycle.

    Regardless of how harsh our childhood may have been, we all reach a point of independence in life where we are able to feed or break the cycles that raised us. Critical thought is spurned as rebellion and disrespect because semi formed adults lack the skills and self-worth to effectively navigate their way through critical thought processes. The stigma associated with failure is so harsh that even in the face of absolute failure we’ll find a euphemism to describe our sorry state. Anything is better than admitting failure. It’s this same insincere and tainted social setting that continues to lay down a path of strife and distraction for children looking for meaning and purpose in life.

    In the absence of a critical mass of fully formed adults, those that try to break the cycles are placed with a burden that is tenfold relative to the effort that would be needed to raise a balanced and confident child. It’s a constant struggle of trying to convince or influence the child towards a wholesome standard while they are bombarded with the unhealthy standard of the semi formed adults that they’re surrounded with. Isolation from such a malformed society is not an option. When we disengage, we lose the right to judge, criticise, or cry foul.

    We need to stop raising children. We need to start raising adults. This mindset that has contaminated the world in recent centuries that childhood must be enjoyed with abandon so that we can start being adults when we reach a certain age needs to be abandoned. This distinction between childhood and adult life is misguided. It’s not about age, it’s about awareness and accountability. We should expect greater accountability as we progress through the stages of self-awareness and awareness of our surroundings. The same way we expect a child to stop wetting the bed once they have been taught the value of hygiene and the skill of using the toilet, we should continue to hold them to such levels of accountability in action and behaviour as they continue to acquire new skills.

    But adults that had a contaminated childhood often project those regrets on the children under their care. Instead of raising the standard against which they raise their children, they embellish the esteem of the child with gestures that convince them, the adults, that they’re doing a better job than the raising that created the flaws that they despise about themselves.

    The common undertone and theme in society these days is one of demand, but little supply. We’re all demanding to be recognised for the struggles of our lives, and to be judged based on the gravity of those struggles, while remaining entirely oblivious to the fact that we are merely spawning another generation of victims that will take our efforts and raise it further. Their demands will be ever more destructive and selfish, and the erosion of society that we universally lament will continue on its downward spiral until a group of inspired young souls will look upon the generations that came before them with a sense of contempt and disbelief. The inheritance of wholesomeness that should have been passed down will be absent, and in such total absence they may finally resolve to correct the path that they’re on, rather than continuing the toxic cycle in search of affirmations and validations for experiences that hold no sway over the next generation.

    Adults that still place their insecurities and weaknesses before the well being of those that look up to them deserve a special kind of scorn. We all have the ability and the capacity to actively reflect on how we are perceived by others so that we can take steps to embellish our images in ways that would earn us praise. This is regardless of upbringing or value system. It is entirely based on who we wish to view us admiringly, and how we wish to feel about their gaze on us. We therefore cannot argue that such reflection in the betterment of our characters and moral assets is impossible simply because we were raised by a calloused or contaminated society. The resolve and courage exists for us to change the way we live our lives. The motivation however, is lacking, because it is significantly easier to fulfil an expectation of a consumerist society than it is to raise the expectations of the next generation.

    [end rant]

  • Contaminated

    A blistery childhood or a beautiful one. Both leave lasting impressions on us but not always in ways that we realise. A blistering childhood has been the cause of many to grow into beautiful people because they chose to create a world for themselves that did not echo the sadness from which they emerged. Equally so, a beautiful childhood has prompted many to assume a level of entitlement and aloofness that soured their souls and sent people gasping for air when exposed to the stench of their arrogance.

    The circumstances of our childhood was probably never a matter of our choosing. Sometimes we may have even made choices that defined it when we were allowed such definition as children in the presence of barely formed adults, but there is a justifiable absolution for children that make such bad decisions in the presence of adults who should have known better. Such kindness is not so easy to dish out for adults who continue to choose badly due to a contaminated childhood.

    The motivation behind the actions of parents are rarely known even by the parents themselves. This makes it that much more difficult for the child, the real child, to find a path out of that cycle as they try to understand why they hold such a deep sense of self-loathing, or a vacant stare of expectation, or worse, a longing for completeness.

    The pain that sometimes shapes our lives in our early years often end up leaving us ambivalent in our later years. At times it feeds the resilience of our souls in our struggle against a cruel world, while at other times it hampers our expression in ways that make us contribute towards the cruelty we wish to escape. Recognising those traits that detract from our wholesomeness is only half the battle. The rest of that battle is fought for the rest of our lives as we consistently try to unlearn a form of unhealthy expression that we were raised to believe is entirely normal.

    I see children that were raised in homes where explicit adult behaviour was flaunted as fashionable, personal hygiene as optional, and vulgarity of expression as humorous; and they struggle to operate in a setting where such behaviour is not tolerated. They struggle to rectify their ways, or reconcile their upbringing with what is demanded of them by society. The harshness of the demand undermines the burden of reality that they carry with them. But even that is a burden that they only reasonably comprehend much later in life.

    Until they reach that stage of relative awareness, relative because it’s near impossible to be fully aware of the difference between your normal and society’s normal, they will struggle in relationships that often define them as uncooperative, unwilling, or simply unacceptable relative to what would otherwise be a normal expectation from a normal adult. But such a demand from them is not entirely unreasonable.

    Tough love has never been so tough to implement. Parents that find themselves raising children from contaminated environments will likely spend a lifetime accepting that they are perceived to be disciplinarian monsters, while the fruits of their labour will be enjoyed by the normality experienced by their charges later in life. The point that needs to be made is a difficult one to articulate, partly because it holds such prominence for me, and partly because its definition escapes me.

    The balance that is needed between discipline and compassion is that much more difficult to strike when the one who is charged with raising the contaminated child is themselves contaminated. Their effort becomes that much more valiant and admirable, but their state, if observed casually by the normal of society, leaves much to be desired.

    [The point was barely reached, let alone sufficiently articulated in this post. Much reflection is still needed on this issue.]

  • Inherited Complacency

    As parents, we always want what is best for our children, don’t we? The well-meaning and responsible ones, that is. The trials of our lives teach us lessons that we often wouldn’t wish on our enemies, and so we do our best to guide our children in a way that protects them from having to learn the same lessons themselves. Given how scarce mindfulness is, it is almost inevitable that such an endeavour will prompt a level of over-protection that ends up sheltering more than it protects them from those unpleasant experiences that caused us to snarl at the world.

    We always start out with good intent, but because we spend so much time avoiding the perceived cruelty of our childhood or even our young adult lives…hold on…it doesn’t stop there, does it? I mean, the vast majority among us continue protecting ourselves from an ill conceived reality up to our last breaths. We immerse ourselves into a reality largely concocted from a cocktail of our own ill-informed perceptions, and then vow never to test that perception of reality from fear of having gotten it wrong twice over. So it is probably more accurate to say that we shield our children from the fears and trauma that we spend our lives avoiding.

    In so doing, we make assumptions about our children. We assume their level of resilience, their natural inclinations towards how they perceive the world, and so much more including what their passions are. At no point do we stop to consider that perhaps our tainted view of life has robbed us of an innocence that they still have, and rather than guiding them in the best application of that innocence, we force them to subdue it. You know, those moments when we believe that their sincerity is in fact naivety, so we preempt a negative outcome and send them off with a defensive disposition rather than advising them on how to effectively deal with betrayal of trust, or disappointment should it occur. The list of over-compensation on our part is endless.

    And in this way, we raise fearful kids that appear healthy relative to our norms, but struggle to find their niche in this world, except through their unique permutation of the escapism with which we raised them. Apart from the inherent sadness of such an outcome, there is something that really gnaws at my peace when I consider the damage it does. It is the realisation that there are millions of oblivious innocents who don’t even know what they’re passionate about in life. They grew up so focused on the passions of their parents, that they readily adopted it as their own. They followed such adoption with a deliberate passion aimed at mastering what they do while rarely realising that such effort was focused on impressing their accomplishments to their parents, and not to passionately raise the bar in the discipline or skill for which they expended the best years of their lives.

    Such a pursuit leaves us unfulfilled in such deep recesses of our souls, that we spend the latter years of our lives seeking it out, while never really knowing what it is that we seek. Moments of brutally honest reflection will prompt us to consider the reality that we are not the same as the people that shaped our views of the world. Yet the moment we protect our children from a threat that existed once a long time ago in our lives, we impose on them the bitterness of our perceptions of reality, while forgetting that such imposition makes us no better than those that raised us with bitter recollections as well.

    And so the cycle feeds itself until at some point we stop and choose to question before we act. Apply our minds before we decide. Live with conscious action and not subconscious reaction. When that happens, we begin to afford ourselves a view of the world that is less tainted than the one we inherited. We see opportunities where threats once prevailed, and we see growth where subjugation appeared to be the only safe option.

    The harsh reality is this. If we fail to live curiously, our children will either be exactly like us, or would not want to be anything like us. Parents often have a bad habit of expecting their children to live the lives that they (their parents) failed to live under the guise that such a failure was a result of the parent’s sacrifices to give their children a better life. It discards all the beauty and appreciation that results from the lessons learnt and instead focuses on the emotional distress that lingered when they saw themselves as victims rather than students of the world.

    That’s one very powerful way of projecting your impotence and insecurity on subjects over whom you wield a great deal of emotional guilt. But of course, parents are benevolent by nature, and therefore are only capable of wanting the best for their children, so it can’t be possible that they would do such a dastardly deed like live vicariously through their offspring. Right? For some strange reason we tend to live as if our personal exploits are our personal exploits, and that parenting is something that is a formal endeavour in parallel with such exploits.

    Stated more simply, we reserve a space in our lives for our exclusive indulgence, which is often the space where we express our passion most purely, without allowing our children to be a part of that expression or growth. We deny them the opportunity to witness our growth and in so doing, we shelter them from anything more than a life of compliance and complacency.

    I think the emphasis we place on responsibility in the upbringing of our children is often exaggerated. Responsibility is definitely important, but so is exploration, personal expression, and living romantically. Not the sloppy mushy fairy tale romance that everyone gurgles at, but the romance that sees the world with less judgement and more understanding, Less fear and more embrace. Less safe and more conviction.

    There will always be an easier path for them to take. But that’s not the path of excellence. We can’t lament the stagnation or decline of humanity if we constantly focus on doing what is safe. When being safe becomes the yardstick of success, and we know that not everyone achieves success, it means that anyone that falls short of that yardstick drags us down. It means that we set our targets low, and then celebrate any incremental achievement towards that low target, while never realising that we were capable of so much more.

    If we hope for greatness for our children, we must be willing to accept that they will be able to achieve more in their lives than we did in ours, without seeing such achievement as an indictment against ourselves. It stands to reason that the student will always have the potential to exceed the accomplishments of their teacher. Providing a child with insight and developing their life skills rather than indoctrinating them with habits and rituals allows them to take what you’ve built and improve on it. It allows them to contribute positively towards this world instead of consuming only. It allows them to take us forward instead of maintain the status quo.

    But most important in all of this, as I’ve said before, don’t set them aside in your avenues of expression and passion. Demonstrate your conviction in a way that they can enjoy and observe so that it builds a yearning in them to live with conviction, rather than to be complacent. Any complacency you see in them is a reflection of what they witnessed in you, while the conviction that they demonstrate in their lives is a reflection of the passion that you lived with while they traveled your journey with you.

    I think that’s important. I think it’s important to understand that our children are not there to only live a subset of our lives with us and then move on to create their own version of the same. I think they are supposed to colour every experience of ours as they grow while witnessing our growth. In so doing, they learn through first hand experience that it’s perfectly fine not to have all the answers, to fail, and to stumble along the way. They’ll learn what it’s like to share their lives with those around them, rather than to live their lives expecting from those around them.

    Let them inherit more than just the ability to cope with life or a cruel world. Instead, give them an inheritance of courage and skill to leave this world in a better state than it was before they arrived so that their presence was felt and appreciated, rather than existing and departing almost entirely unnoticed.

  • The one who loves less…

    I once heard that the one who loves less is the one that controls the relationship. It sounds pretty obvious at face value, but it assumes that the expression of love is as obvious as well. It also assumes that the interpretation of control is in fact control and not influence. It assumes a lot. But with most satisfied to think in the shallow end of the emotional pool only, it’s no wonder that such proclamations gain unchallenged veracity.

    Love is never monolithic in its expression. A bunch of flowers for one may be an endearing gesture, while for another it could be superficial or fake. Some prefer to see conviction in a personal gesture or investment of time and effort, while others need the flowers to believe that they were remembered at a time when they weren’t present. Whether one form of expression is better than the other is not the point. The fact that it translates into a gesture that reflects intent, and in turn, is appreciated for what it was intended to convey is significantly more important.

    Intent, therefore, is what counts. Intent, therefore, also demands sincerity. A gesture is only a gesture towards acquiring a specific desired outcome if that gesture proves to be an embrace of another, rather than the acquisition of benefits for personal gain. That seems a bit wordy, so here’s a slightly lighter take on this. If you give with the intention of receiving, you’re giving for your own benefit and not to sincerely express appreciation or endearment of another.

    We all seek to control and/or influence. That is what determines our level of significance with our significant others. Whether such control or influence is driven maliciously or not remains a question of intent, and given the above, it’s near impossible to be absolutely certain about the intent of another. At best, we are able to measure the reciprocation with which our efforts are met. The greater the reciprocation, the more likely we are to believe that there is an equal conviction on their part in responding to our efforts. The less the reciprocation, the more likely we’ll recede from the belief that we’re being taken for granted, or are simply not being appreciated at all.

    The one that controls the relationship is not always the one that loves less. Quite often, conviction in the potential outcome drives some to be controlling when they find that they are unable to subtly influence the behaviour of those they love in the direction that they truly believe will benefit them. Benefit to both the one influencing, and personal benefit to the one being influenced. Perhaps, by the same logic, I could argue that the one who controls less may love less, because in doing so, it could easily reflect a lack of conviction on their part. It could suggest a lack of belief in the innate goodness or the beautiful potential that has yet to be realised from the relationship.

    It’s all about what’s in it for us. If I aim to extract more benefit for myself than I hope to contribute for others, then definitely my efforts at controlling or influencing the outcome will be self-serving. In that case, my love for myself will be greater than my love for any wholesomeness to be achieved with another. However, if my aim is to extract a benefit for the other, without sacrificing myself in the process, then perhaps it could be argued that I am the one that loves more. If I sacrifice myself in the process, it simply means that I see myself as lacking in value to those around me, and therefore need to expend myself in their service if I ever hope to achieve any level of significance in their lives. A truly unhealthy state to be.