paradise lost again

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sorry if i am over-posting. poetry comes from pain, today it hurts a lot. i am thinking about the generation i see in my son's age group, let's say 24-30. on this forum i am so happy to have found this many really brilliant young people who think so clearly and innovatively and express themselves so beautifully. it is not what i had seen among my son's circle of friends. i thought the whole generation was like them-but apparently not. i wrote this addressing the ones who are lost...

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we tried to give it all to you - the love we never felt from our parents, the respect we never got, the right and the freedom to question everything, even us. we thought we could save you from our fate.

maybe we expected too much for you and from you, and it became an unseen burden that broke your spirit, that which we wanted to preserve whole and intact at all cost, like ours used to be. our parents forgot, but we remember what we were. how long we have waited to see you become!

I dont know how we failed you, but we surely must have. where are you going, so fast we cant follow, so far we cannot see you? our parents made us not want to be like them, but we made you not want to have children at all. is this what it means, that the world will end 'not with a bang, but a whisper'?

MY INDIGO CHILD
where are you going my indigo child? I cant keep up the pace any more. I'm wild with worry
following footprints I dont even recognize. I waited for you, wont you slow down?
you held my hands, now it's me that's afraid. you're too far off the beaten path,
going the wrong way. What lies in store for you now that you've been exiled?
atlas shrugged, jesus wept and satan smiled on the day you were born.
I misread all the signs in the skies. you were never meant to save the world.
who could expect you'd live long enough to undo our mistakes?
a man has time to learn life sucks, and then he dies.

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@salima,

I haven't read many of your blog entries, I have some difficulties reading long texts in english on the computer, but you writings are great.

salima;84341 wrote:

poetry comes from pain

Totally agrees with you. It easiest to write on the edge of tears

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@Lily,

Lily;84343 wrote:

Totally agrees with you. It easiest to write on the edge of tears

I agree with that too, I wrote that poem in Catch's blog to my work.
Lovely post Salima.

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@salima,

i would really like to hear from my generation (baby boomers) if they felt the way i did about parenting, and from the next generation (25-35?) if they feel we screwed them up.

what is the attitude of the present generation towards life in the majority of its members? are they lost? what do parents think...have we lost them?

in my day we had what we called the 'generation gap'. is it still there? i know my contemporaries were most upset at the hypocrisy we saw in our elders-and we swore we would be honest. i believe i was...were we? what was the result of what we tried to do to make things better? did we make other things worse?

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@salima,

Hello Salima,

Paradise doesn't come easy my friend. If we only knew what it was, we would understand more clearly what it takes to get there. The pain, suffering and agony would all make sense in this eternal journey we call life. It is forums like this, thinkers all, in which we pose the questions in search for the answers that have eluded us and those that have deluded us. It could be the very yourg are not as young as you think as they now experience what is that life they created; it is a part of that eternal journey. Paradise is not lost, we just haven't found it yet and it will take us all helping each other in finding those hidden caches. Like pieces of a beautiful puzzle of which we all are as we join and create that picture of what life will be forever evolving as that journey will never end as we become so very grateful to be along for the ride. It is always the darkess before the dawn as the sun also rises each and every day to guide our way, for it is always there only hidden behind the clouds of our fear. It is that star that is our guiding light that warms our home and it could be one day you could have one of your own. :a-ok:

William

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@salima,

hi william-
but what were your thoughts when you were raising your children? did you feel your own parents and their generation had failed miserably and vow not to make those same mistakes? do you now feel that we managed to make new mistakes and it is the same old thing again and again?

i remember reading something i think socrates wrote about 'the youth of today' and that it sounded like any generation in any land, that they never understand their kids. and the kids dont understand the parents. i really think i understand my parents and those of their contemporaries and what caused them to be the kind of parents they were and i forgive them. i realize they couldnt have done anything differently because they didnt have enough awareness and perspective. they dont know what they did.

but do our children recognize something that we did wrong that we are unable to see? i mean, i am addressing that to the generation that is following us in time...what i heard from my son and his friends was complaints against government rather than parents. do they see the government as being people or parent age and take a less personal view of criticising them? in other words, do they fault us for social mistakes other than parenting?

i think the fact that i dont know the answer to this is a fault in itself...

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@salima,

salima;84498 wrote:

hi william-
but what were your thoughts when you were raising your children? did you feel your own parents and their generation had failed miserably and vow not to make those same mistakes? do you now feel that we managed to make new mistakes and it is the same old thing again and again?

i remember reading something i think socrates wrote about 'the youth of today' and that it sounded like any generation in any land, that they never understand their kids. and the kids dont understand the parents. i really think i understand my parents and those of their contemporaries and what caused them to be the kind of parents they were and i forgive them. i realize they couldnt have done anything differently because they didnt have enough awareness and perspective. they dont know what they did.

but do our children recognize something that we did wrong that we are unable to see? i mean, i am addressing that to the generation that is following us in time...what i heard from my son and his friends was complaints against government rather than parents. do they see the government as being people or parent age and take a less personal view of criticising them? in other words, do they fault us for social mistakes other than parenting?

i think the fact that i dont know the answer to this is a fault in itself...

To answer your question let me refer you to thispost. I was not one to "obey" my parent's though I loved them dearly. Yet I was tremendously influence by them. I was a holy terror in that I could not be "told" what to do as I had my own mind and became extemely angry when anyone try to "boss or control" me. I related that in another thread, but it eludes me as to where it is at present. Perhaps the post I am linking you to will better explain what my thoughts are as it addresses exactly what you are expressing here, IMO.

Your friend,
William

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@salima,

Generation reckless

I think there is more reason to be disappointed at the baby boomers. (Of course, I am speaking in vague generalities.) They chose (in the 60s) to be carefree, which like any imprudence, works great for a while until you are reckless toward what you shouldn't be reckless about. And that about sums up the baby boomers. A few years in the sixties of great artistic achievement and civil rights' advances, until they had had time to likely have been reckless toward something like drugs or sexual depravity. By the mid seventies, the artistry had become poor taste, and when failure and age brought a disillusion that led many of that generation to become conservative Reaganites, they were more prone to blame their having loved too young than to blame the nastyness they did not want to move away from. As teens they fought for free love, but as adults they decided to fight against teen pregnancy. But as for the right to sodomize, that's what they always believed in and what they fight for now just as much as ever. The same carefree abandon they used in their sexual practices, they employed in overseeing our financial institutions, changing the affluence of their parents into the poverty of their children. How could anyone respect them? If young adults now don't feel they have enough money or safe feelings about sex to feel ready to have their parents' grandkids, it really is no wonder.

Of course, I'm not saying you were particularly this way, Salima, just that a few more percent of the people in your generation tended to be this way, which especially in a democracy is all it takes to have a large effect on culture.

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@step314 phil,

step314;84641 wrote:

Generation reckless

I think there is more reason to be disappointed at the baby boomers. (Of course, I am speaking in vague generalities.) They chose (in the 60s) to be carefree, which like any imprudence, works great for a while until you are reckless toward what you shouldn't be reckless about. And that about sums up the baby boomers. A few years in the sixties of great artistic achievement and civil rights' advances, until they had had time to likely have been reckless toward something like drugs or sexual depravity.......... The same carefree abandon they used in their sexual practices, they employed in overseeing our financial institutions, changing the affluence of their parents into the poverty of their children. How could anyone respect them? If young adults now don't feel they have enough money or safe feelings about sex to feel ready to have their parents' grandkids, it really is no wonder.

Of course, I'm not saying you were particularly this way, Salima, just that a few more percent of the people in your generation tended to be this way, which especially in a democracy is all it takes to have a large effect on culture.

ouch.
no, i wasnt qyute that way-i dropped out of the scene and got married, didnt go to college or participate in any of the movements except in my thinking and attitude. i shared many of the ideals of the times. i have come to see a lot of what we believed was wrong-harmful, stupid, etc etc.
but then there was a split i think-one of my brothers, two years younger, is one of those reaganite fellows-if they also voted for bush, then yeah, that's him.

but what i resonate with from the times was the ideals of honesty and authenticity, antiwar and civil rights...i never got to try drugs, i probably would be dead. (cant handle booze, something must be wrong with me allergically) the people i knew in those days wanted to be honest with their kids, wanted to keep the lines of communication open. but i guess some of us copped out by doing a 180* like my brother, some of us were too stoned to do anything (like my baby brother) and some of us dropped out (that would be me).

thanks for your honest answer.

---------- Post added 08-21-2009 at 11:56 AM ----------

"changing the affluence of their parents into the poverty of their children."

and this really rings true. i was disgusted with my parents' money, didnt want any part of it-and now i am living off it and supporting my son who is penniless.

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@salima,

salima, I am of the older generation, as I have pondered long on the vagaries of life I am now of the opinion we come into this life to awaken to who we are.

To do this, it is only through the traumas that we start to question 'but why me'. I have now found that I am the creator of all that is, there is nobody out there to blame.

So I take full responsibility for all that happens in my life, I have now found that I can change the world out there by changing the way I see things, this really works. Richard

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@Richardgrant,

Richardgrant;8467077 So I take full responsibility for all that happens in my life, I have now found that I can change the world out there by changing the way I see things, this really works. Richard[/QUOTE wrote:

i know richard. but i want to see things the way they really are sometimes no matter how much it hurts. there may not be anything i can do about it, but i still want to know what mistakes were made. i may not want to buy into blaming myself but i certainly dont want to shake the responsibility. maybe i can make amends, though in this case i doubt it.

history will speak of what this new generation is all about (assuming there will be any more people to write it) and it is easy to look back on the past and make analyses about how this or that happened and why. but it is different to hear from the people who are living through it. i was looking for eyewitness accounts, like 314's, like mine. obviously some will be biased including my own-maybe all of them are to a certain extent. in this case i wont be around to read the history books so this is the best i can do.

of course the issue in particular that relates to me is an american one. i see issues here in india between the present and prior generation too. it is also very sad.

1 Reply

@salima,

salima, I am in no way critical of how you are experiencing life, I see you as a clear expression of Who I Am. I have applied this philosophy to my every day living, this guides me on my way.

I have been studying Walter Russell's philosophy now for 14 years and have applied it to my life with remarkable results. He has discovered the secrets to life and published in many books.

I have combined his teachings with the Sermon On the Mount, and the teachings of Jesus. The result of this I am now noticing what I see out there is changing because I have changed the way I see the world. Rchard

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@salima,

Hi salima. I am 28 years old, and I am from Ohio. Your post was a treat, I really enjoyed it. The ideas I form of the sentiments you express are elevated to become those very sentiments in myself through your eloquence.

However, I'm having trouble drawing connections between such personal experiences and such large groups of people as entire generations considered as a whole.

The first step I take in trying to arrive at some relevant response is to run my mind in succession over; what I know of my own parents relationship with myself and my brother, that of my generation of family members with their parents, and likewise of my friends. As I do this I am presented with so much diversity of character, parenting methods and results that the sentiments that were roused in me by your post are destroyed by the contrariety I encounter between these examples.

As I know so little about you I may be over-stepping my bounds to suggest this, but perhaps this is something that is relevant to your personal experiences more than it is a reflection of an entire generation, and therefore any relevant answers would pertain more specifically (but still somewhat generally) to you and the people you know.

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Perhaps if this chain of reasoning doesn't seem too abstruse it may help in some way. I don't know if it will bear personal relevance to you, but as you mention trying to avoid the mistakes made by your own parents (or the parents of the generation before yours,) I thought that it might.

We humans have natural tendencies which guide our behavior in many of our activites, especially those relevant to our survival.
Parenting is one such activity that is guided by these natural tendencies.
We can of course oppose these tendencies where we perceive sufficient reason to do so.
We are not naturally posessed of an understanding of why such behaviors are beneficial. Indeed, the subtlety with which they operate, and how far the consequences of deviating from them extend, is surprising. Example.

Bearing these things in mind I assert that people who, by a consideration of what they perceive to be their own parents' mistakes, seek to modify their own parenting methods to compensate, very easily run into error. Such reactionary behaviour, based on an incomplete understanding, may at times contradict our natural tendencies to act as parents with consequences that we cannot hope to predict.

For example: Someone who feels that they did not receive enough attention as a child, and so endeavors to give their child more attention than their parents gave them, might surpass what would be their natural inclination on the matter, and by the common manner of speaking "spoil" their child.

I guess you could think of it as tampering with forces that are beyond our ability to understand.

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@salima,

thanks al-
i am also from ohio, left there about six years ago. my son is still there, both my parents are dead.

i agree that i may be the only one who feels the way i did and perceives the things i did, and that is one of the things i would like to clarify for my own sake. i thought it might be that we were giving our children too much freedom and maybe responsibility for choice before they were ready, but i dont know how to check it. i was 34 when my son was born so i had time to think about things, but i certainly didnt understand a lof of what my parents did until later. however, i never found any of it to be what i would consider proper parenting. i suspect we as a species have strayed far from the mark on what is
actually the natural inclination. maybe we thought about it too much.

i read books such as Your Child's Self Esteem and authors like Alice Miller, and i had only one hope or goal for my son, and that was to see him happy-happy with himself most. he isnt...

but what i see of he and his friends is that they are on hold, as though waiting for something to happen. they dont work, they dont marry, they dont have children. many of them seem to be very intelligent and they vary as far as their level of compassion to others and interest in the world. but they may be a small segment of the generation, i dont know.

so this is what i have been wondering about, and i thank you for your contribution, i appreciate it very much.

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@salima,

I am familiar with the state of being on hold you describe your son to be in. I have been in a similar disposition for the last 10 years of my life. Some differences apply. Although I have worked, it has been in the family business, and I have been living above the business in a space I helped renovate, so I haven't ever felt that I was making it on my own.

Its not surprising that his friends are like this as well, as I myself used to only seek friendships with people who were similar to me, since for the most part I, and we, only sought to pass the time with various diversions.

I have been content all this time, comfortable. For a long time I equated contentedness with happiness. About two months ago I reached a point where I was no longer content. In fact, since this time I have been downright miserable. It was the effect of sympathy on the mind that unsettled me. By chance I ran into quite a few people I used to know, and two things happened.

One, I was reminded of many things that I had forgotten about myself from the time that they had been my friends. Including all the things that I used to want out of life, things which I hadn't thought of in years, yet which I found I still wanted once having been reminded.

Two, I received a great displeasure by sympathizing with the disapproval that others felt when they saw how I have spent my time untill now. Though I had been perfectly content, stress and care-free, from the outside my contentedness looked more like despair or depression, and the force of sympathy caused my idea of their disapproval to be elevated to an impression of disapproval in myself.

So for the last two months I have been initiating huge changes in my life, including applying to go back to school. From my point of view, this was not a positive thing. My motivation was the anxiety and unhappiness that was threatening to undo me. I was pushed into action by a desperate need to find some relief from it. I conceived my life for the last 10 years, and when I looked ahead and imagined spending the next 30 to 40 in the same manner I thought that simply ending myself would be preferable. (Not because it would be unbearable, but that it would be so boring and uneventful.) It was funny to me then when my parents asked me what caused me to have my "epiphany."

I tried to explain but it fell on deaf ears. They saw me leaping into action, in their mind I was motivated, driven by desire, out to conquer the world. Ridiculous. And yet once again sympathy caused me to conceive of their idea of me, and to view it in a stronger light, and the idea of how they saw me was elevated to the impression of how I saw myself.

Yet then my anxiety was greatly diminished, as well as my motivation, and I once again languish. Nothing is there to push me foward but what is left of that initial impulse, and the arrangements I have already made. That will only carry me so far.

I was kind of at a stand still, but this thread has made me think about it more deeply. Now I conclude that my motivation for leaving behind what is comfortable to me, to struggle through doubt and uncertainty to achieve my goals, is the approbation of others. As they view my actions, they will conceive of them in a positive light, on account of the esteem they place in the dedication and courage it has taken to pursue them. They will imagine me to be happy, and then by sympathizing with their view, I will be.

It seems to me that those who find themselves in a less comfortable position, and take strong measures to enact changes in their lives out of necessity, still receive this approbation and receive the idea of their own happiness through sympathy with others, without having to specifically
seek it out or even understand what it is.

---------------------------------------------------------

About your situation. I am certain of at least one thing, that you are not and cannot be responsible for your son's happiness. It sounds like you did the best that you could raising him. There is then nothing to regret, although it is natural that you should be sad if he seems unhappy. The only thing you can do, that I can imagine, is to let him know it makes you sad to see how he is living his life, and why. And to let him know what sort of things he could do that would make you happy for him.

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@salima,

thanks again alcazor-
you have certainly clearly and eloquently described more or less what i thought all of us go through, once we break away from the route we are expected to follow. that is all that kept prior generations from wondering about these things-they never thought of any alternatives.

i keep thinking about that tv commercial about mj. this young boy was talking about his big brother, and how 'everybody said he was going to get into trouble, he was going to get hurt, he was going to die-but they were all wrong. he never did any of those things-in fact, he never did anything.' and then they show the brother sitting on a couch in the basement looking at the tv but clearly staring into space.

i didnt want him to feel he had to be a doctor or a lawyer to be successful or happy, which is what i was told by my parents' generations. they came out of the depression, their fear of poverty was their driving force i think. but i dont think i ever offered my son any substitute. not having been able to really reach the goal of being an integrated and fully functioning human being myself, how could i? i guess i thought he would find the right way himself.

i cant imagine how anyone could live their whole lives without ever having the kind of crises or epiphanies you describe, but they certainly do. my mother was one and my oldest brother and my first husband. yet i can remember when i was 14 and my youngest brother was only 4 we used to have serious conversations about life and its meaning. so what happened? the older one followed the route you describe-went back to school, became CFO in a big company, and says he is happy or satisfied, i find it hard to believe. if he is i guess that is ok. the other brother? he lost something like 20 years of his life to substance abuse, finally went to aa and has been sound for almost ten years. he is one of the finest human beings i know.

maybe you can start a new thread in self help or anywhere you think appropriate on this subject-the way you see the issues to be for you and your generation. we have a limited view here i think. maybe ideas from other people your age would help you, and my reading them would also help me.

it is very interesting what you are saying of seeing ourselves as others see us and then possibly changing our own ideas of ourselves or our entire strategy and goals. i actually lived my life isolated from everyone but my husband for almost 20 years, and his opinion was all i had for a mirror. it was scary.

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@alcaz0r,

alcaz0r;84901 wrote:

The only thing you can do, that I can imagine, is to let him know it makes you sad to see how he is living his life, and why. And to let him know what sort of things he could do that would make you happy for him.

I would concentrate just on letting him know that his getting free of addiction would make you happy for him. People struggling with addiction tend to feel they need things perfect. And as regards addiction, that is true, the right approach is to avoid addiction completely. Feeling that moderation is appropriate with addictive substances will just leave one vulnerable to falling again. But perfection in any life, much less in a life that has wasted much feeding an addiction is not possible. My advice, Salima, would be to not risk making your son feel gloomy and hopeless by giving a sense that you would be displeased if he can't improve other areas of his life. If he can free himself from addiction, he'll have his own natural tendencies back to help lead him back to caring for himself and others.

That said, there is no harm in trying to understand the other areas of life your son might fail in, so as to give positive advice or other types of support. Indeed, having a sensible parent able to quite generally help him might make him feel less gloomy. Here, I'd suggest concentrating on the reasons you believe things, i.e., make sure all advice is constructive. Preferably, it wouldn't even be advice, just something that might occur to your son after having a discussion with ideas in it that he hadn't thought of before.

The tendency of certain people of his generation to be "on hold" is something I can relate to. Though I am more in between his generation and yours, it is something people might accuse me of. I have so much to say about it I shall have to organize my thoughts a little before beginning. In this post I'll just say that, indeed, it is not something characteristic of all young adults, and indeed, to a certain extent it is a reaction, largely forced upon us, to the consumerism of yuppies on the one hand and to the biases of academia against reflection on the other.

Alcazor's comments about people reacting against their parents is also very interesting. I can see that in my own family (mainly against particular traits that are patently excessive and ridiculous compared with normal behavior), but even more I can see the opposite phenomena, namely traits that get passed down from generation to generation just because daughters tend to copy mothers, for example. For instance, there is just something screwy about my mother's attitude toward how to encourage people to do domestic work, and I really believe it is just something that has been passed down by imitation from what my mother's mother's mother's mother's mother adopted when she discovered that the Civil War had caused her slaves to be freed. Even though probably most of my Mom's ancestors of that era didn't have slaves, because these things get passed down mother to daughter, it doesn't matter much, I am (moderately) cursed. Southerners would do well to rebel against their attitudes toward domestic work, inasmuch as many of them probably were created the last time circumstance caused a new approach to be essential, namely right after the American Civil War, when the American South was probably one of the most screwed up places in recent history (it takes a very screwed up place to fight a massive killing war from a vague threat that someone might free your slaves.) Not to shame myself too much, let me say that on my Dad's side my relatives include important abolitionists and a Union general, and my mother's dad's family were Southern hill people mostly probably against the war. Of course, I put myself at risk saying all this, because another thing my mother's mother's mother's mother's mother probably believed is the importance of "honor", the excuse the Southerners used to fight the war. Not a Yankee version of honor based more on doing right, but a Southern version that people making you feel ashamed of your family or culture create a dishonor that is always wrong, regardless what your family or culture did.

1 Reply

@step314 phil,

step314;84940 wrote:

I would concentrate just on letting him know that his getting free of addiction would make you happy for him. People struggling with addiction tend to feel they need things perfect.
The tendency of certain people of his generation to be "on hold" is something I can relate to.

but even more I can see the opposite phenomena, namely traits that get passed down from generation to generation just because daughters tend to copy mothers, for example. For instance, there is just something screwy about my mother's attitude toward how to encourage people to do domestic work, and I really believe it is just something that has been passed down by imitation from what my mother's mother's mother's mother's mother adopted when she discovered that the Civil War had caused her slaves to be freed.

Not a Yankee version of honor based more on doing right, but a Southern version that people making you feel ashamed of your family or culture create a dishonor that is always wrong, regardless what your family or culture did.

i am afraid i dont think anyone or anything can help until he is ready to seek help. mainly i was wanting to find out what will happen going forward-how bad will it get, how soon, and how will it end.

i saw things like that in my parents-although they were off the wall in a lot of ways. my mother would say things like 'so and so's daughter married such a wonderful man, he makes x amount of money and their house cost x gazillion dollars'. if i told my father i wanted to be a beautician (hairdresser) he would expect me to own my own shop not work in one. because that was their values, and they did come out of generations of dysfunction.

thanks for the feedback!

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paradise lost again

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