Meeting Your Parents
Pattering the hardwood floors with boisterous, cherubic feet, you sprint toward the comforting presence of your mother and thrust a question upon her. The question, of course, doesn’t matter. It’s likely something puerile and simple, like, 'If I eat a watermelon seed, will a watermelon grow in my stomach?' Or perhaps it’s a trickier one, such as, 'Where do babies come from?' No matter how serious or inane the question, your omniscient guardian seems to always have the answer. When you’re a child, your parents know everything. They are the smartest people you know. They have it all figured out. However, an irrevocable disturbance occurs when you get older and the perceived omniscience of your parents is shattered. Where you once found certainty and security, you find fallacies and regrets. You discover that your heroes are just ordinary, flawed human beings.
As you approach adulthood, the lens of childhood is no longer tenable, and you must face the reality of who your parents truly are. Human. Criticizing your parents for their shortcomings from your sententious, ostensibly pan-optical point of view sows only bitter, low-hanging fruit. It’s useless, reductionist, rotten. You become a petulant toddler eager to smash the sandcastles around you, but incapable of constructing your own. It’s far more interesting and useful to assess your parents as fallible human beings, sympathize with their circumstances, and recognize that they toil with the same fears as you.
A nauseating dread materializes once the responsibility to make sense of the world is transferred to your hands. The veil of childhood has been lifted, and you discover that not only do your parents lack the answers, but no one else seems to have them either. The immensity of existence, the absurd search for meaning, and the sickening consideration of death become anchors submerging you below the comforting oceanic layers of blissful ignorance.
Humility arises when you acknowledge that your parents still grapple with God. Your parents still fear death. Your parents were first-time parents. You parents didn’t and still don’t have the answers. They too are struggling to adapt to new phases of life and are steering blind down uncharted paths. Accepting this immutable fact allows you to process your past with greater sympathy and also provides you with prudence.
This week, I began reading Karl Ove Knausgård’s first volume of Min Kamp (My Struggle), a series of six autobiographical novels, and found that his writing mirrors certain reflections I’ve had over recent years. Early in the work, Knausgård reflects on the contrast between his adolescent perspective and his father’s at the time. He is acutely aware of how different stages of life shape our daily experiences in remarkably different ways:
“…how great the difference was between our days. While my days were jam-packed with meaning, when each step opened a new opportunity, and when every opportunity filled me to the brim, in a way which now is actually incomprehensible, the meaning of his days was not concentrated in individual events but spread over such large areas that it was not possible to comprehend them in anything other than abstract terms.”
Further on, he shamelessly admits that his duty to his family remains just that—a duty. He loves his family and cherishes his children but notes that they constitute only a portion of his life and are not sufficient for his happiness:
“The question of happiness is banal, but the question that follows is not, the question of meaning. When I look at a beautiful painting I have tears in my eyes, but not when I look at my children. That does not mean I do not love them, because I do, with all my heart, it simply means that the meaning they produce is not sufficient to fulfill a whole life.”
Your parents are parents, but they are people too. They have passions, fears, commitments, failures, regrets, and trauma. The same goes for siblings, mentors, friends, and spouses. We naturally view people solely through the roles they serve in our lives, but this blinds us from their aspirations, emotions, and sacrifices. Each person’s life extends far beyond their circumstances that overlap with ours. This statement seems obvious, but it’s easily forgotten when we drift back into an egocentric view of the world.
When accepted, there’s a comfort to the truth that no one else has all the answers. The shame, the fear, the pressure you feel now was experienced by your parents and others not too long ago. They share in your anxiety and imperfections. Like Knausgård’s father, they also feel the friction between different phases of life and the transmutation of meaning that comes along with them. Life is not a game in which each player, except for you, understands the rules and makes all the right moves. Many moves come down to a roll of the dice and the fateful bottom of a chance card. Let the unknowns provoke curiosity rather than disturb or obstruct your actions.
