"Your child, in fact, is not your child,
They are the children born of life's desire for itself.
They came into this world through you,
But it is not because of you,
They are around you, but they don't belong to you.
What you can give them is your love,
But it's not what you think.
Because they have their own thoughts.
What you can shelter is their body,
But it is not their soul,
For their souls belong to tomorrow,
It belongs to tomorrow that you can't dream of.
You can do your best and become like them,
But don't let them become like you,
Because life does not go backwards, nor does it stay in the past.
You are the bow, and the children are the arrows that shoot from you.
The archer looks at the arrow target on the road to the future,
He pulls you away with all his might,
Make his arrows shoot fast and far.
With a happy heart,
Bend in the hands of an archer,
Because he loves arrows that fly all the way,
I also love the incomparably stable bow. ”
—Gibran, "Your Child Is Not Your Child"
Gibran told us the truth about kinship a hundred years ago, but a hundred years later, parents still regard their children as a continuation of their lives. Your children are not your children, not your child's protection against old age, they are the sunrise of new births, they are babbling streams, they are running lambs.
They are not your children, they have long since left you and become an independent individual.
A few years ago, the TV series "Ode to Joy" was popular all over the Internet, and one of the protagonists, Fan Shengmei, was beautiful in appearance and stable in work, and her life should have been ordinary and stable. But she has a blood-sucking family, her parents are eccentric, and her brothers are squeezed. Her parents regarded her as the hope of the family, the guarantee of life, and she had to take on the responsibility of a child.
How many people's nightmares are it to become a child, to be a child who is not yet independent? Happy people can't empathize, and unfortunate people can always find resonance. As a child, you have to pay for the emotions of your parents, and you have to bear the hopes of your parents. The internal friction of a family is that we all think we love each other very much, but we always stab each other back at a moment.
Parents in front of the screen, do you think you really love your child? Or the hope of loving you, hoping to love your bloodline?
Intelligent beings on the planets begin to think about the truth of their own existence before they are truly mature. Think about how your child loves you? When did they stop loving you?
There is a sentence in "The Selfish Gene": "What is the purpose of a selfish gene?" Its purpose is to try to expand its own ranks in the gene pool. Fundamentally, it does so by helping the individuals in which it inhabits to organize the procedures by which they can survive and reproduce. "Think about it, are you the same way?" The child is the object of your expanding team, and reproduction is your unconscious program.
Maybe you wonder how you can describe parental love as selfish, it should be the greatest thing in the world. The title of our essay from elementary school is "Great Mom/Dad", so you go to the psychiatric department of the hospital and take a look.
As a good friend who suffers from depression, two-way emotional impairment, and insomnia, I write this article with these failed and painful experiences.
The faces of the psychiatry department of the hospital are getting younger and younger, and these young and vivid lives, with gray and defeated faces, are endless. Have you ever seen a smart child who becomes unable to utter a complete sentence? Have you ever seen a scarred arm? The overall prevalence of depression is 4.40%, and fresh people turn into cold numbers.
Obviously, this is not the most terrible. Most people who can go to the hospital have their parents, who at least know you're sick.
The scary thing is that some people are really gone.
When I was in high school, a junior schoolgirl committed suicide by burning charcoal at home. Before she died, she was the proud child of her parents, and she was a sensible sister.
If you love her, she shouldn't just be your child, be your brother's sister. She is your friend, she is an individual you should respect.
If your parents give you 0%, you probably have 100% courage to leave.
But most parents are always acting love. How much parents love their children, they can get up early and work in the dark, they can buy a house for him with all his life savings, cool him in the summer, and warm him in the winter.
We always recognize the love of our parents, but we also have to face the internal friction of the family. Giving up everything for the child is the self-pity mantra of many parents, for the parents of the child is the superior, they can easily manipulate the child's life and thoughts, in China to stifle the child's thoughts is the nature of many parents. Many parents do not want a good child, but an obedient child. We can never say that parents don't love, but what children feel is distorted control.
We tend to take 50% of our love and sacrifice 90% of ourselves.
Parents always like to ask: How will you repay me in the future? The child always has to answer: Then why did you give birth to me?
Who is the harder parent or child? Are they parents who use their work to escape their responsibilities or blame their failures on their children, or are they children who are repressed by their parents and have to respond to their expectations?
I think the hardest thing should be those who don't love each other, but compromise for blood.
Go and hold your child, admit that his life should not be for your life, and admit that he is not just your child. You don't have to be a great mother/father either, and your life should be for you.