Thoughts And Trivia

Maybe due to some psychological programming, we fail to notice the human side of authority figures like - Parents, Teachers, Police Officers and of course Bosses. As we plod towards our own grave, each new experience could help us understand, more and more the Human, that our Father was. And that would help us understand the Human inside us!
(Substitute "Parents" for "Father", if you like).
It is when, we have the first look at our first child, in the hospital crib, that we understand the basis of the love our Father had for us. That way we can better understand our own bonding with this bundle of our own flesh.
As we go through the growth of our children, we can understand why our Father was so restraining to our activities (Don't, Don't, Don't) - his fears of us getting hurt. We can let our children out a bit more, due to this understanding of fears of our father. We can say 'yes go ahead' and wince and pray to GOD for their protection.
(On the other hand, understanding children is much easier, since we have gone through the same set of fears and emotions when we were their age.)
As we and our spouse grow up over years of marriage, we can realise the feelings of our Father as a man. We can now understand, why he many times mistreated our mother - as we saw it. It can help us to be more forbearing about the 'all-to-human' frailties, of the human, that our spouse is - as she does for ours.
It is difficult to come to terms with the realisation that Father was as much a human of flesh and blood, as we ourselves - not a mere card-board cut-out figure.
He lead a human life of his own - which to him was the main drama-stage of life. As ours is to us and our children's is to them and our spouse's to her. All feel that the rest of the characters are there to play a role in our drama-stage - only a little better than the stage props.
We feel cheated, if we realise that, role players in our lives, on the sly, also have a drama-stage of their own - in which we are only a bit-role-player - no more. Why do they have to "two-time" us in my Drama-stage and work as Hero in another Drama Stage of their own -much like a Boss learning of moon-shining by a subordinate.
We are now able to withstand the fears that made father err. Yes, now we empathise with his rights and wrongs, so much, that we need to look into mirror to separate us from him - even then sometimes the resemblance is too close.

Posted by Girish Bhatnagar at Thursday, September 22, 2005