I have always seen blaming mommy and daddy for how ones life has gone as a convenient excuse to not to not take personal responsibility for ones own actions. I have always preferred to take personal responsibility for my own failings. Perhaps that is commendable but today I am not sure that it was wise. Upon an ongoing introspection it has become ever more evident to me that events in our formative years have an impact upon how we develop as humans. And while I will never place blame squarely upon mom or dad as they too were once children and raised by less than perfect parents just as I am an imperfect parent to my daughter, I do understand that how we are raised does have an impact upon who we become and the path we travel to get there be it rough or smooth. But it is not just mom and dad as it takes a community to raise a child. I was taught by society to obey without question when I should have been taught how to objectively think for myself. I was taught to never reveal weakness rather than how to effectively face and overcome weakness. My morality was handed to me as opposed being taught how to find my own moral ground to stand upon. I was taught to hide my feelings which evolved into stuffing my feelings rather than objectively facing them and learning how to mitigate the sway of emotional lows and highs. But in the end I cannot really hold a grudge against family or society as for one it is utterly useless, and secondly it was the path I traveled through life that has led me to the place of enlightenment that I now enjoy. Perhaps if I had been raised as I argued is best I would not have ever attained my current level of wisdom as from my POV wisdom is born of facing and overcoming painful experiences. Thoughts?
Yes, you and I and everyone else are a product of how we were raised and by whom. As a child I envied the mothers of my friends because their's were sane and rational. While I had to deal with the burden of a mother who emoted and acted irrationally that formed my own basis for questioning authority at an early age. Couple that with a father who was a workaholic and I ended up learning how to survive from books and the examples of others. That less than ideal upbringing provided me with self reliance and a commitment to be a better parent than my own. I was fortunate to find my soul mate early in life and between us we have managed to raise a sane and normal child. While never aspiring to the title I did learn that according to my daughter's friends we were the "cool parents". There are many lessons that I wish that I had learned sooner than I did and I don't sweat the fact that I didn't because I can't change the past any more than I can change how I was raised. What I have learned is to be content with myself and my own failings. I am far from perfect but what I have accomplished is satisfying. I have tried to be someone who makes the world a slightly better place than I found it. I don't need wealth beyond that necessary to pay the bills. I don't need to be a celebrity or a sports star or to be famous or to have power over others. The price to achieve those positions is just not worth paying IMO. Instead I have learned to appreciate that in the end it is the love that we share with others that matters more than anything else in this world. In that respect I consider myself to be one of the luckiest people on the planet and if it took the upbringing I had to endure to achieve where I am today them sobeit. I have no regrets and hold no grudges. As the OP said our parents were the product of their own upbringings and dealt with their own problems as best they could. Doubtless I was one of those problems at the time.
I guess the key word here is "blame." Blaming is something we do when we are trying to ignore our own responsibility, when we are seeing things from a limited perspective. It's often about defending our own ego. Parents and community do play a huge role in who we become but we also have choices. In my experience, once a person gets through blaming they start to realize it doesn't help change things or make things better. It vents anger and assuages guilt but it's a filter we use to view reality not as it is, but as the ego wants to see it. To understand is to forgive. Blaming comes from a place where a person is only concerned with their own self. A person doesn't really know what love is until they have been wronged by someone but decide to forgive them because they understand them. This can apply even if a person is abused by family. Forgiveness may take a long time but when it comes, it sets us free. Seeing an abusive family member not just in this single slice of time but understanding the whole of who they were in the past, who they are in the present and the potential of who they may be in the future helps us with that. Even if we don't agree with their actions we may come to understand why they made (or failed to make) decisions. Free will is something that is developed. If we wish to truly be free and make the best decisions that fulfil us then we have to set aside things like blame. Unfortunately sometimes to get past blame we have to feel the anger of it fully in order to express it and then accept it. Acceptance is the condition we should seek to attain, the opposite of blame. For example, I can look back and be angry at my parents because they constantly moved from one address to the next when I was a kid. I was always the new kid at some different school. I didn't fit in anywhere and I didn't develop lasting bonds of friendship with people. That made me lonely and angry and I blamed my parents. After a while though, I began to understand that my parents moved because they had to follow work. Then I began to accept that this was how my life was but that doesn't mean it's how my life always has to be. I can choose to develop myself and be a good friend and that will aid me in forming bonds. I am not a slave to my parents' decision, I can be who I want to be. Accepting and moving past that anger allows me to do that. In the meantime I developed some great attributes of self-reliance and independence that make me the type of person others can lean on. I can stand on my own so others can stand with me.
The nature versus nuture issue has been resolved ages ago. The way you turn out is a mix of both factors. Anyone who has siblings figured this out.
Parenting is one of the hardest, most demanding job there is. It can also the easiest (good and bad) Unfortunately the average person "learns" to be a parent by either replicating what their parents did to/for them, or rejecting what their parents did to/for them. I spend a lot of time during our first pregnancy learning about the stages human development and various techniques to assist/enhance said development. don't know if it had much of an impact overall, but my four kids turned out to be well adjusted productive humans, and it made me feel a tad more "in control" of the whole "daddy" situation.
As all new parents quickly learn kids don't come with instruction manuals, on/off, volume controls or even mute buttons. Anyone who invents a remote control for kids is going to become a billionaire!
Your initial premise is sound and still holds validation because as adults we are indeed responsible for our own actions, yet you questioning whether or not taking complete responsibility for your actions is also logical. What we have witnessed and experienced as children does have their impact on our thinking even through our adult years. I have found myself pondering over how different my life could have been, had I not experienced certain things when I was younger. I find myself telling myself that I am an adult and certain things have no relevance or impact on me, being that I am an adult. I too find that in some instances and circumstances that my experience with what I have gone through in my younger years, did ad still does have an impact. I say this because when we are younger, and I referring to childhood or years before we left home, I had absolutely no control over even though I may have wanted a different outcome; I was too young to make a difference. I often find myself sounding like an old Rod Stewart song, “I wish that I knew what I know now, when I was younger.” I also have found that who I am currently, is a sum total of my past experiences. I seriously appreciate your starting this thread; we all need a reflection pool at times.
As a whole and in totality, the posts have been well grounded and insightful. Thank you all for your input.
