Being Helpful
“Appalling is harder
because of the natural fixation that you can rescue your kids, and
ought to. Your good ideas for them would certainly straighten them
out and help them make healthier choices. These would help you enjoy
your life more, too, so what's the harm in your little suggestions,
demands, funding?...The harm is in the unwanted help or helping them
when they need to figure things out for themselves. Help is the sunny
side of control.”
Anne Lamott (Almost
Everything: Notes on Hope, p. 45)
We all want to be helpers—especially
to our children. We work hard to bring them up in the way we think
they should go, and as long as they trod the well-worn path we have
set for them, we are gratified. Job well done, we tell ourselves.
But, when they veer off the path, or even meander out to see the
sights, we become anxious, and need to bring them back in line.
Whether they are twelve or forty-five, we are still the parent, and
think we know what's best for our children.
If we happen to be codependent, we try
our best to live their lives for them, to rescue them from their
mistakes, or at the very least, to be involved in every aspect of
their lives. We are intrusive into their thoughts and plans, into
their lifestyle, into their child-rearing and their career
trajectory, even into their finances. We see ourselves as being
helpful to them. We constantly tell ourselves they NEED our
help, and we must be there for them. In reality, what we are
attempting to do is reduce our own anxiety by exercising control over
them. As Anne Lamott says, “Helping is the sunny side of
control.” The bottom line: it's all about us, and has very
little to do with our children and their capacity to take care of
themselves, especially if they are adults.
Carl Jung wrote: “When we look
outside ourselves, we dream. When we look inside ourselves, we wake
up.” If we were willing to look honestly at our inner
motivations, at our need to control others in our mighty effort to
reduce our own existential anxiety, we might truly accomplish
something. Taking responsibility for the lives and “happiness” of
our children, usually makes them supremely unhappy, and for us is
like trying to hold an inflated beach ball underwater at all times.
Sooner or later, we lose control, and it shoots off to who knows
where. Better to put our energy into our own lives and let our
children become the persons they are destined to be.
One of the unconscious beliefs
underpinning over-involvement in the lives of our children is that
our own life is somehow meaningless without them. Instead of figuring
out what would make our lives meaningful, we put all our eggs into
their basket—and, truly, we expect them to accommodate by providing
that meaning. Then, we feel abandoned when they move on—to other
places, other relationships, and make it perfectly clear that they
can fend for themselves. In other words, when they behave in a
“normal” way, we feel abandoned. Instead of packing the car and
moving across country to be near them, why not invest in our own
lives, develop our own interests? Happy children, whether young or
old, are most often the product of happy parents. By living our own
life, we become role models for them.
Letting go, and letting God is not
easy. It requires trust and faith in the integrity and capacity of
life to move us, and our children, in the direction we are meant to
go, even though there will be some dark valleys to traverse and high
mountains to climb. We're in the Earth School. The lessons here are
for our soul's benefit. Our children have their own lessons to learn,
and so do we. One of those is how to live our life, and allow them to
live theirs.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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