Wynford Ellis Owen
Your children are not your children
Kill your parents’ voices stone dead….
Every time I return home from any event in which I’ve worn my best clothes - suite, shirt, tie, shoes, etc – the very first thing I do is go upstairs and change to my every-day clothes and shoes. Now, I’ve done that religiously over the past almost 75 years of my existence so far. Why? Well, it’s all down to my mother. As a child, every week on my return from chapel in my Sunday best clothes, the very first thing she’s say to me would be, “Go upstairs to change – go on, now - before you do anything else! Your best clothes won’t stay best for long unless you do. Go on – upstairs you go! Change - straight away!” And I’ve obeyed that dictate ever since – still do, in now my 76th year.
Now, there’s nothing harmful in still obeying my long-dead mum in this regard; in fact, it’s quite positive – at least my best clothes stay in good condition a little longer than they ordinarily would. But what if your mum or dad or both modelled negative, injurious behaviours and coping strategies to you in your susceptible and impressionable youth that are now harmful to your physical, mental, or spiritual wellbeing?
When I see people complaining about being stressed, anxious, or feeling depressed. I tend to ask myself, ‘Who’s stressed here? Who’s anxious here? Who’s depressed here? Is this how your mother reacted to the ‘downs & ups’ of life, its tragedies, and its challenges? Did your father over-react to things? Was he a worrier, one who catastrophised everything? Was he or your mum, or both depressive? Did one or both tend to view life through the self-pitying prism of victimhood? Were they frightened of something – financial insecurity possibly? Who’s really doing the living and dying in your name here? Is it you or is it still your mum or dad, or both? Are you still obeying your parents in the same way as I’m doing when I still go upstairs to change from my best clothes, because that’s what mam told me to do?
Sadly, quite often that’s the case. That’s why I call a lot of our problems, ‘Mumism’ – to a lesser extent, ‘Dadism’. On life’s journey we have to find out who we are without our parents’ negative voices in our heads. It’s surprising the number of people who never get to live their own lives. Instead, they’re just acting out their own parents’ dictates and often failed attempts at living the inspired life.
You’ve got to kill off their voices – otherwise you’ll never be free to live your own life and reach your full potential.
As Kahill Gibran writes in ‘The Prophet’:
‘Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you.
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls’ dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backwards nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The Archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the Archer’s hand be for gladness.
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.’
Today, find out who you are without your parents’ negative voices in your head. Kill them - as the Bible tells you to - stone dead! x