by Pasithea Chan
We are taught as kids that parents are here to love us unconditionally and to give us the world. And so we grow up knowing there are two hearts and two lives dedicated to pleasing and providing for us. They do it everyday many times through routines we don’t feel that surround us like the atmosphere. We expect them to please us and lift us and accept us for everything we say, do, or decide. Many times we forget that these people have seen life and have their fair share of heartache that they choose to not burden us with. And though death is a reality we deal with everyday, we often attribute suicides among breadwinners and parents to economical pressures or relationship failures. But the truth is many parents commit suicide due to depression over issues such as disappointment from kids and their inability to get through to their kids to instill change.
We open our eyes in this world within a hierarchy that dictates roles, responsibilities, expectations, rules of conduct, and interaction. Parents provide in hope their kids lives are bettered and secured in return they expect their children to be better than them. But sometimes, children see the expectation of being better or grateful as a means of control or suppression of their identities, freedoms, and desires. The truth is, this is not a mathematical equation or an economic rationale.
The thing is love in families with respect to relationship between parents and kids shouldn’t be a cycle of duty and disappointment generally speaking. In our minds, we envision sacrifice and understanding to embody accommodation, content, resilience, and compromise. However, reality begs to differ given the fast pace of economic challenges, dynamic narratives of cultures and influence through globalization and societal values that kids and parents internalize. In the process, we deem everything as final and concrete when it’s in black and white and when we can quantify it in reward or material gain. Sweet nothings, kind words, gestures, and personal initiatives come packaged with social obligation, motive, to do lists, peer pressure, social gestures, and even social media image preservation. In other words, we still see people gathering in social gatherings for celebrations, decorating, cooking, laughing, taking pictures, and even exchanging gifts or thank you speeches.
Day after day, we see every age group or social circle relating only to those in it. So if you are teen, you have interests and personal traits you share or show only to your friends. If you are a parent, you hang out with other parents or co-workers. If you are a grandma you hang out with your grand-kids or your kids to talk about parenting or those good old days. So what has changed? Where did these segregation come from? Are we all hypocrites? Why are we in a place with people for a reason and for as long as that reason exists? Why are we not relating to our families young and old in a two traffic? Why is depression eating our lives away in suicide among young adults and parents? The answer lies in communication and stonewalling. It’s a cycle we all suffer from.
Civilization has made everything accessible and clear in terms of communication to state needs. We have nuclear or extended families that have specific roles to deal with needs. But in the process, needs have become wants but sadly only material wants are what counts. We no longer communicate the importance of immaterial things in our lives. We rarely appreciate the idea of empathy unless loss materializes such as death, tragedy, natural catastrophe, loss of business, loss of abilities to walk and take care of yourself etc. The thing is, bread is not the only thing that sustains us as humans. Routine kills us. Being misunderstood or unrelatable devastates us. Feeling out of place drowns us.
When we talk about communication, we visualize a sender and a receiver exchanging positions as sender and receiver to exchange messages. But these days, parents seem to their kids to be sending one message only: duties and expectation. Kids on the other hand, are sending one message as well: I need, I want, I am. However, the real issue is, it is working in one direction: sent. You are lucky if your message as a child or parent is received but you are even the winner of a lottery jackpot if your message is read and understood. Because of this broken cycle of exchanging messages the communication process itself has become so obsolete that the replies or read/received status often comes when it’s too late. Kids die due to suicide caused by depression because they are not understood. Parents die because of disappointment and depression from being taken for granted and misunderstood. Everybody talks about being in someone’s shoes but do they actually know what it means to be in someone’s shoes? It means you feel what they feel, you understand what they went through, and you know what they need and you are willing to give them all that they need. A lot of people discuss depression among young adults from the concept of gaps between their feelings and the reactions they get from people; the dreams/expectations they have for themselves and the realities they live in; but that’s not the case. Why? Because we are still answering these problems with material wants: manifestations of what was not attained.
People don’t always die because they didn’t get what they dreamt or wanted. People die because they drown in loneliness, isolation, misunderstanding, the feeling of being invisible, underappreciated, and insignificant. In this line, while young adults die from neglect, low self esteem, inability to fit in, guilt, and body image problems; parents die from feeling they can’t get through to their kids or help them. The common denominator between both scenarios is that both groups feel like they’ve failed someone. Both groups feel like they are not enough and that their lives don’t matter because they can’t make any change. Their minds are aware that there are things that they can’t change but their hearts simply can’t cope with the disappointment, failure, and loss. In the process, the kids realize they’ve lost love and the same applies for parents who think their kids think they don’t love them because their kids seem so lost. What we need to shed light on is that parents can’t stop loving kids and the same applies for kids. It’s the way nature is. We imprint on our kids and our parents imprint on us this so called love of family. Family love is like a nail that can’t leave or live without its bed. The only difference between parents’ love and kids’ love is that both need to be reminded that parents are the eyebrows that protect the eyes – the kids. Eyebrows are always above the eyes but that doesn’t mean the eyes are less than the eyebrows or that either can exist without the other normally. So what do we do to bridge this gap in communication? How do we remind parents that eyebrows protect the eyes and how do we remind kids that the eyebrows are meant to be up above them to protect them not to just denote rank/importance?
The answer is simple: coin duty with conscience but coin love with empathy.
Parents need to be reminded that obligation must be clearly explained and justified and that it goes in both ways. Giving is the duty of both parties: parents and kids. Parents give love and needs while showing what it takes and what it means to provide for kids. Kids give respect to parents by understanding the sacrifice and that obedience isn’t by just doing what parents want sometimes it’s by showing sympathy and appreciation for that effort. On the other hand kids must be taught that parents will always love you even when they don’t like what you become because loving you, means understanding you at fault and at your best.
Today my message on parental depression while parenting is about the importance of the balance we must have between conscience and empathy. Love isn’t for love in this material world but death exposes want before need when conscience dies and empathy decays. Perhaps, we need to revisit why we do things, break down processes, divide tasks, ask for help from time to time, listen to someone for no reason, put down our phones, miss a meeting or a chance to hang out with friends. Perhaps, it is good to remember that when we are at our worst moments, we are not the worst case, we are not the only ones suffering, and this is not the end. Parents and kids need to remember to believe in tomorrow and hope. Parents and kids need to remember that one day kids lean on parents, the next day, parents lean on kids. Life is a cycle but it’s definitely not just a cycle of obligation and expectation. Life is a cycle of love balancing on conscience against anger feeding on fear. It only takes a heart to make an initiative but it takes a mind to reconsider a decision or a word that’s been used. Sometimes, all it takes is a walk through the streets under the pouring rain to see the homeless, the orphans, and in worst cases to look into an open casket moments before it is closed and put in the ground. The moral here is going through life is like crossing a road. You need to stop a little, look around, listen, and estimate before you cross. Stopping in your tracks to think or assess is sometimes harder than looking and listening or even using your feet to cross the street. Why? Because work never finishes, because food needs to be cooked, because chores and to do lists keep piling, and because everything keeps getting more and more expensive. The only things that are constant are time and chance. They are not constant in terms of available they are constant in terms of being missed. Time runs and doesn’t stop, chance comes but flies. So please try to listen not to answer but to understand. Try to see not look. Try to feel to know not to just relate. Try to see what you need not just what you want. Try to speak your mind not just what you dream. Try to be honest not just to be right but also to be fair. Try to help not just be there. Try to be there not just in presence but in heart and soul. We can all use some love and accommodation, some patience and some kindness, and of course a lot of gratitude and forgiveness of others and ourselves.
Let’s take everything said and done with a grain of salt remembering that in nature, change can crack a stone to give water but in life people can break before change can have a break. So next time you see a stone breaking as a spring comes out to burst life into a place, remember, people are harder than stone when it comes to change but death changes people harder than stone.
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