Parents, peers and other benevolent plagues
Medium · Sociocultural Commentary · 2016 · 859 words
Visa reflects on how protective parents and authorities cause unintended damage that leads to rebellion and the discovery of reality.
Parents, peers and other benevolent plagues
I've been reflecting on how people get into drinking and smoking and drugs. And by extension, how my life has come along so far.
Unintended damage caused by protective parents and authorities
When you're a kid, every parent and teacher and authority will, understandably, tell you what you cannot do, what your boundaries are, what you must or must not do.
They will also lie to you or deceive you about a bunch of things– religion, sex, drugs, alcohol, poverty, death and so on. They do this partially to protect you from the ugly, messiness of reality, and partially to save themselves a lot of grief.
They might have set out with the intention of answering all your questions and telling you the truth of everything, but the reality of parenting is difficult and painful and nobody can do a perfect job. (Louis CK and Michael McIntyre have covered this reality humorously.)
A part of them wants to make sure you don't get hurt. A part of them even wants to keep you cute, simple, helpless. (Paul Graham has written about this really nicely with Lies We Tell Kids).
When you first discover this, it's easy to get angry with your parents about this. But as you grow older and begin to have responsibilities and obligations of your own [2], you realize that adulthood is a lot harder than childhood, and that parenthood must be even harder.
So you sympathize with them– or if they were really, really messed up, at best you might understand why they were the way they were, even if you can never quite forgive them. Acceptance is a worthy thing to work towards.
The seductive peers and the (often misleading) promise of escape
In contrast to all of that, the first person who offers you your first cigarette or drink tends to appeal to your independence. They'll ask, "Why are you worried about what other people think?" It's a question you might not have even thought to ask until that point.
And they're usually really sweet in those moments. They'll look into your eyes and treat you like a full person, a full adult, not a child, not an obligation. They seem sincerely interested in you, your struggles, your concerns.
It is INCREDIBLY flattering. It goes beyond "Wow, you're pretty." It's more like "Wow, you're YOU."
And so I think when people say yes to cigarettes, to unprotected sex, to staying out late, THAT'S what they're saying yes to. Every kid knows cigarettes are disgusting. We do scary, dangerous and unfamiliar things because for the first time it seems like someone truly cares about us- not just our grades or our health or the labels on the pedestals they put us on. [3]
Some people dismiss all of this as childish rebellion- and yes, it is. But it's so much more than that, too. It's a naive, ignorant and tentative step towards independence. When do you learn who you are otherwise? When do you learn to live for yourself?
Owning a decision is a powerful, heady thing, even if it's a really stupid decision. Tattoos, piercings, boyfriends, whatever. "I will what I want." [4]
Moving forward: encourage self-exploration and self-determination in yourself and others
If all of this is true then we can imagine what the healthier alternative must be like. When adults treat children like people, with their own minds and interests and curiosities. Encouraging them to explore their OWN interests, not just what Daddy wishes he was good at as a child. The parent or authority's job isn't to decide for the child outright, but to provide an environment and context in which the child can explore and learn and grow.
And here a bunch of nice pictures come into my mind.
1. Kahlil Gibran's poetry: "Your children are not your children / They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself."
2. A Truly Great teacher who really cares– the teachers that everybody remembers their whole lives. A football coach and his heartfelt pep talk. That darkroom scene in Boyhood with the photography teacher. Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting and Dead Poet's Society.
If you have a young person in your life, pay full attention to them and ask them what they're interested in. And it's genuinely interesting! Every person is a glorious kaleidoscope of curiosities, shaped by unique perceptions and perspectives. You'll see the universe in their eyes.
And the scary, terrible thing is that these things can be really fragile. A few dismissive sentences can crush it outright. (See: ZenPencils: Kevin Smith — It costs nothing to encourage an artist)
So you have to be really gentle with people's dreams. Never tell them that they're stupid or wrong. Just ask them if they've thought about X, if they've thought about Y, and so on.
AND really, this applies just as much to adults too, just that we tend to take a little longer because we've often internalized a lot of BS over the years and we forget what we care about.
So, what do YOU want to do with this precious, fleeting life? I'm all ears.
Originally published at https://medium.com/@visakanv/coming-of-age-making-sense-of-the-damage-caused-by-well-intentioned-family-and-friends-a16a7e126ed3.