There comes this phase of life where we (not so) suddenly realise that we are turning parents to our parents. This set of responsibilities come with their own set of complex emotional reactions subject to circumstances. However, at some point in this phase of life, we also need to step back and question our responses to find out, “Is the adult in me responding to the present moment? Or, is the child in me responding to the person from years ago?”

Yes, for a lot of us, our upbringing has been hell problematic. I will still say that our parents deserve forgiveness because if we really think back to it, our parents give us what they wanted the most but never had.

For our parents, that’s education and the freedom to study whatever you want and for as many academic degrees as you want. Both our mom and dad have been brilliant students, our dad was the one of the best scholarship winning science students and our mom was a through and through extremely skilled all-rounder. But sadly, and it does break my heart to even imagine the life they had in their youth, to imagine being so skilled and knowledgeable and yet not finding the means to pursue studies or careers for that matter. It is tragic. Of course, I know it’s not just our parents. That’s the story of most of our parents’ generation basically. So, what we got as kids was education and that was the one thing, the panacea for every suffering in life.

As a result, what we never got was acknowledgement or acceptance as people, as individuals with our own needs and wants and emotions, most importantly. So now, we are naturally inclined to think that making someone feel heard, acknowledging and accepting others as they are, appreciating people for what they are worth, and everything on these lines is the one holy path to living a fulfilled joyful life. This incessant chase for joy and happiness amongst us is because we have very few happy conversations to recall from our childhood family times.

That’s all about the comprehending the present situation part of the story. But, when it comes to “breaking the cycle”, the story is complete only when we act upon our introspections. And this chain of painting someone else’s life with the one colour we never got to touch in our lives can be broken only when we accept that fulfilment is all about mastering the art of balancing every aspect of human life.

There is no one panacea, no one holy path to living a life one is proudly happy to live. And this is what needs to reflect in our behaviour, in our choices, in our conversations with the people in our lives, especially with the younger people in our lives.

P.S.: This post does not refer to abusive and violent relationships. It is not intended as a judgement on anyone’s personal choice either. The thought shared here is only a personal perception.

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