Experience has shown me repeatedly that despite the best efforts of adult people, raising children can be simultaneously an amazingly abundant and harrowing experience. I've never met anyone who doesn't carry baggage around that relates to their parents. If they say they don't, I'm pretty sure they must be flat-out lying, in denial, possibly are of an age in which pop-psycho sensibilities of absorbing analysis of lifetime details was not in vogue, or are blissfully medicated. Or not.
Let me make it clear that I love my parents, the two people on Earth who have known me longest. We've certainly had our bumps in the road, a few (dozen) potholes perhaps, and I take full credit for being a willful and perhaps more than occasionally flat-out annoying child. That said, our relationship has grown over the years into something that I think of as a friendship, and I am deeply grateful for that, especially when I look around at the possibilities around me for pretty dreadful parent-child relationships. I can't say it's perfect and I'm not sure what perfect is anyway. 'Perfect' has that way of sounding waspy don't-challenge-or-question-anythingness to me that makes my skin crawl. So 'perfect' is not my ideal. Besides, my family has offered me a wealth of opportunities over the years to take a hard look at who I am and how I want to be in, and relate to, the rest of the world.
The funniest thing about these learning experiences is how they so often pop up when I least expect them. Or, how one statement brings about a cavalcade of baggage that can sit there and bounce around in my skull for eons. Sometimes it's even useful.
I am always so thrilled to hear people I admire like Jack Kornfield and Pema Chödrön say that skull-bouncing never really goes away. The key is how you relate to it. Thus, I am reminded that I'm perhaps not as crazy as I thought I might be, and there are these incredibly together people I admire who not only experience the same stuff, but fess up to it. It is liberating to know this is true for others, especially others in a position where they could put out the image of being on a pedestal of enlightenment... which to me is enlightening.
My mom has a curious mix of not saying what is on her mind and simultaneously saying exactly what is on her mind. That may sound oxymoronic, but it is what it is. It does on occasion create a guessing game of where in creation that kernel of thought process came from, and it also often opens a reflective window for which I am grateful.
One of my favorite mom moments occurred in December 2007, a few days before I ran the AIDS Marathon in Honolulu. We were chatting away about the stuff we chat about when she said, "I don't know why you are running this marathon when you know you aren't going to win."
When I composed myself from my laughter, with my father in the background saying 'it's not about winning' with a simultaneously annoyed-amused voice, I explained that yes, it was true, that it was about completing the marathon, being there, culminating a period of preparation for something that once seemed an idea that wasn't remotely in the realm of possibility. It was about working hard to achieve something (and to give back). It is a world view that my Midwestern depression-era parents instilled in me and has served me exceptionally well. I think she got it.
It was after that conversation that the real work began. And continues. In that one statement from mom, a lifetime of feeling pressure to achieve was laid before me. More than that is the failure of not being best at everything. It ultimately is how I process being in the game. I find myself unhappy if I am not at the top of the game, while giving little notice to the fact of my participating in, and adding to the experience of the game in my own unique way.
The not-measuring-up is always there. What mom did was bust it open into awareness in an uncannily insightful way. I feel myself going into that hamster-wheel space of not being good enough, and on good days I recognize it. I breathe. I chuckle. I think of mom, which sometimes makes me laugh out loud (in a really good way). On some days I get funky. And on some funky days I go for a long run, or meet a friend for lunch, or otherwise get myself out of the house and into the realm of humanity where I'm far more likely to appreciate the world around me and pay less attention to the myriad wildly creative stories I can create in the comfort of my own skull. On bad days I get moody and maybe I'll eventually write in my journal, lance the pustules and ooze it all out. Or not.
Today, I am reminded that in doing this I am a member of the human race, and how incredibly easy it is for me and the rest of my fellow humans to quietly slip into our skulls and be the most creative creatures that ever stepped foot on terra firma. Because we can. We can create stories on top of stories, and then top those off with more stories. And then add several (thousand?) elaborations for good measure.
OK. I can and do quite capably.
Mom reminded me that there are alternatives.
