How What WAS Shapes What's to Come — Random Thoughts on a Stormy Night

In this day and age it seems to be a popular pastime to blame one's parents for all the things that are going wrong in one's own life.

Of course, there are also those who insist that their parents had no influence over who they are as adults... as if they somehow magically left home at age 20 and were basically a virgin block of marble waited to be sculpted from scratch.

Perhaps reality is we experience it lies somewhere in between the two.

Personally, I have always subscribed to the idea that we are basically the sum total of our experiences, good bad and indifferent. As such, what we learned by example or by direct teaching from parents and family members is clearly part of who we are.

Perhaps some more relevant question would be to ask whether we learned something, and whether we are conscious of what those lessons are.

Or, are we just stumbling blindly through life in "reactionary mode?" When I look around me and look at the behaviors of some people, I have to believe that they are stuck in reactionary mode and surely they learned that particular unpleasant behavior somewhere.

I'm disinclined to believe that people are just abrasive, ornery and unpleasant purely from a genetic perspective. Chances are they learned that somewhere.

Whatever these traits are attributes may be, they have a tendency to follow us through life. One of the things I definitely learned as a kid was that my parents weren't trustworthy, and consequently I have always had difficulty trusting people.

I should explain that a bit further. It's not that I don't trust people when they've earned my trust; it's more a case of I don't trust people simply because they make claims that they're trustworthy. My parents often came across as plentifully trustworthy, but in practice they could not be relied upon.

I have to learn a lot about trust after I left home, because it definitely wasn't something I was exposed to while I was still living at home.

Undoubtedly, one of the places where these lessons from our early life are most likely to show up is in the arena of relationships. After all, our parents or caregivers are our initial models of what adult relationships look like.

In the case of my own upbringing, what I really learned from my parents and I was consciously aware of this was how not to have a relationship!

Their "always cordial and always very distant" type of relationship represented everything I did not want to have in a relationship. And I was aware of this even in my early teens. I looked at them, and thought to myself "this is nothing like what I want my life to look like!"

Hardly a very glowing recommendation of one's own parents!

I believe some of us arrive at adulthood extremely well prepared for the next step, while others arrive singularly ill prepared for adulthood... and we basically have to invent ourselves at the point when we "leave the nest," so to speak.

That said, it's rarely an All or Nothing proposition. For example, I was very capable of taking care of myself functionally, from balancing a checkbook to doing my own laundry and shopping. However, I was emotionally stunted and incapable in the arena of love and relating. And I had to learn that from scratch.

Thankfully, I had some good help later on in life, and learn to make wiser choices!

Thanks for stopping by, and have a wonderful weekend!

Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation! I do my best to answer comments, even if it sometimes takes a few days!

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Created at 2023-11-04 01:28 PDT
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