”I know but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
I bumped into a friend yesterday, and we jumped into an hour-long discussion about how our parent’s behaviors, beliefs and ‘rightness’ sculpted us into a person of their ideals.
The pain of being who they wanted/needed us to be didn’t allow us to explore who we alone would want to be.
Our inner natural abilities, our imaginations, our hopes and dreams were silenced to fulfill theirs. The deadness inside or the absence of knowing ourselves, keeps us blind of self. We have no clue what life is without their dialogue narrating it.
Their narration of right and wrong steer us for years, and if we dare deviate, the guilt pushes us away from glancing at a separate self.
As the child grows up silent, the silence turns to resentfulness, and the tied up Spirit grows restless, until we dare to speak our feelings of forever falling short of the mark, theirs and ours, we are stuck.
The pain of not seeing yourself with your own two eyes, to be able to have the freedom to express your self leaves you in a huge hole of despair, and in order to spring free, you have to stop acting in your parents dreams of you, and find your own.
Usually the parent does not accept the ‘rebellion’, we are seen as traitors to their beliefs, that some how we have the power to diminish their beliefs by finding our own.
When your whole life has consisted of seeing the world through their eyes, your own eyes lose their power to discern reality.
Your eyes can only see you from another’s point of view. We have been trained to act a certain way to escape fearful outcomes.
Either being shunned, to an afterlife of hell, to the rage of God, to the disapproval of our elders, their wrath and scorn, we toe the mark, letting our personal feelings, dreams and hopes detach from out world.
My first and foremost role for 46 years was to not step off the narrow road of approval.
The absence of self goes unnoticed until the folks you have been trying to please shine in their emptiness.
When our mentors or heroes stumble and fall and not even attempt to get up, when we see the truthfulness laid naked, our own self arises.
There seems to be a sliver of a moment, when the truth grows large in its details, which our parents are exposed and their dreams were to fill a lack within themselves.
Our task was to build a façade that they hid behind.
When all you have ever been is a façade builder, you find that you too had a façade that you are giving of your body to make another’s empty container feel full for a moment.
And then, you become the parent, empty and needing of others to fill you up.
To break this cycle takes extreme effort to stand alone and empty without a free and separate thought.
All my thoughts, ALL my thoughts were handed down to me from my parents, and lived within me for 46 years, my eyes were unable to see me, for there was no me to see. I became the appendage of my parent’s worlds, I had no me!
You set out in search of yourself, you have no idea who you are, or where to find you.
A missing you is so hard to find, when the only you was connected to others.
When my world came crashing down, or the façade that I was a builder on, when I seen what I was covering up, I looked around and didn’t see a sign of me anywhere.
It is shocking in its magnitude and the freedom unlimited.
After 46 years of following their construction details, I was able to put down their tools, and walk away.
I was a free Spirit.
Freedoms just another word for nothing left to lose!
“He who does not enjoy solitude will not love freedom.”
Arthur Schopenhauer
