Saying Hello :)

[Guest guest]

Hello Antoine!

 

Thought you might appreciate this, from the introduction to Eric Berne's

_What Do You Say After You Say Hello?_ :

> A. WHAT DO YOU SAY AFTER YOU SAY HELLO?

>

> This childlike question, so apparently artless and free of

>the profundity expected of scientific inquiry, really contains within

>itself all the basic questions of human living and all the fundamental

>problems of the social sciences. It is the question that babies "ask"

>themselves, that children learn to accept corrupted answers to, that

>teenagers ask each other and their advisors, that grownups evade by

>accepting the corrupted answers of their betters, and that wise old

>philosophers write books about without ever finding the answer. It

>contains both the primal question of social psychology: Why do people talk

>to each other? and the primal question of social psychiatry: Why do people

>like to be liked? Its answer is the answer to the questions posed by the

>Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: war or peace, famine or plenty,

>pestilence or health, death or life. It is no wonder that few people find

>the answer in their lifetimes, since most go through life without ever

>finding the answer to the question which precedes it: How do you say

>hello?

>

> B. HOW DO YOU SAY HELLO?

>

> This is the secret of Buddhism, of Christianity, of Judaism,

>of Platonism, of atheism, and above all, of humanism. The famous "sound of

>one hand clapping" in Zen is the sound of one person saying Hello to

>another, and it is also the sound of the Golden Rule in whatever Bible it

>is stated. To say Hello rightly is to see the other person, to be aware of

>him as a phenomenon, to happen to him and to be ready for him to happen to

>you. Perhaps the people who show this ability to the highest degree are

>the Fiji Islanders, for one of the rare jewels of the world is the genuine

>Fijian smile. It starts slowly, it illuminates the whole face, it rests

>there long enough to be clearly recognized and to recognize clearly, and

>it fades with secret slowness as it passes by. It can be matched elsewhere

>only by the smiles of an uncorrupted mother and infant greeting each

>other, and also, in Western countries, by a certain kind of open

>personality.*

>

> [Footnote: Oddly enough, in my experience, such smiles are most

>frequently seen in girls in their twenties, with long black hair.]

>

> This book discusses four questions: How do you say Hello? How do you

>say Hello back? What do you say after you say Hello? and, principally, the

>plaintive query, What is everybody doing instead of saying Hello? These

>questions will be answered briefly here. The explanation of the answers

>will occupy the rest of this psychiatric textbook, which is addressed

>first to the therapist, secondly to his patients as they get cured, and

>thirdly to anyone else who cares to listen.

> 1. In order to say Hello, you first get rid of all the trash which

>has accumulated in your head ever since you came home from the maternity

>ward, and then you recognize that this particular Hello will never happen

>again. It may take years to learn how to do this.

> 2. In order to say Hello back, you get rid of all the trash in your

>head and see that there is somebody standing there or walking by, waiting

>for you to say Hello back. It may take years to learn how to do that.

> 3. After you say Hello, you get rid of all the trash that is coming

>back into your head; all the after-burns of all the grievances you have

>experienced and all the reach-backs of all the troubles you are planning

>to get into. Then you will be speechless and will not have anything to

>say. After more years of practice, you might think of something worth

>saying.

> 4. Mostly, this book is about the trash: the things people are doing

>to each other instead of saying Hello. It is written in the hope that

>those with training and talent for such things can help themselves and

>others to recognize what I am calling (in a philosophical sense) "trash,"

>since the first problem in answering the other three questions is to see

>what is trash and what isn't. The way people speak who are learning to say

>Hello is called "Martian," to distinguish it from everyday Earth-talk,

>which, as history shows from the earliest recorded times in Egypt and

>Babylonia to the present, has led to wars, famines, pestilence, and death;

>and, in the survivors, to a certain amount of mental confusion. It is

>hoped that in the long run, Martian, properly learned and properly taught,

>will help to eliminate these plagues. Martian, for example, is the

>language of dreams, which show things the way they really are.

>

> C. AN ILLUSTRATION

>

> To illustrate the possible value of this approach, let us

>consider a dying patient, that is, a patient with an incurable disease and

>a limited time to live. Mort, a thirty-year-old man with a slowly

>developing form of cancer, incurable in the present state of knowledge,

>was given at worst two years, and at best, five. His psychiatric complaint

>was tics, consisting of nodding his head or shaking his feet for reasons

>unknown to him. In his treatment group he soon found the explanation: he

>was damming his fears behind a continuous wall of music which ran through

>his mind, and his tics were his way of keeping time with that music. It

>was established by careful observation that it was this way 'round and not

>the other, that is, that it was not music keeping time with tics, but body

>movements keeping time with mental music. At this point everyone,

>including Mort, saw that if the music were taken away by psychotherapy, a

>vast reservoir of apprehension would be released. The consequences of this

>were unforeseeable, unless his fears could be replaced by more agreeable

>emotions. What to do?

> It soon became clear that all the members of the group knew they were

>going to die sooner or later, and that they all had feelings about it

>which they were holding back in various ways. Just as with Mort, the time

>and effort they spent covering up were blackmail payments made to death,

>which prevented them from fully enjoying life. Such being the case, they

>might do more living in the twenty or fifty years left to each of them

>than Mort could do in the two to five years left to him. Thus it was

>determined that it was not the duration of life, but the quality of living

>which was important: not a startling or novel discovery, but one arrived

>at in a more poignant way than usual because of the presence of the dying

>man, which had a deep effect on everyone.

> It was agreed by the other members (who understood Martian talk,

>which they gladly taught Mort, and which he gladly learned) that living

>meant such simple things as seeing the trees, hearing the birds sing, and

>saying Hello to people: experiences of awareness and spontaneity without

>drama or hypocrisy, and with reticence and decorum. They also agreed that

>in order to do these things, all of them, including Mort, had to get tough

>about the trash in their heads. When they saw that his situation was, in a

>way, not much more tragic than their own, the sadness and timidity caused

>by his presence lifted. They could now be merry with him and he with them;

>he and they could talk as equals. They could get tough with him about his

>trash, because now he knew the value of toughness, and why they were being

>tough; in return, he had the privilege of getting tough with them about

>their trash. In effect, Mort turned in his cancer card and resumed his

>membership in the human race, although everyone, including himself, still

>fully realized that his predicament was more acute than anyone else's.

> This situation illustrates more clearly than most others the pathos

>and depth of the Hello problem, which, in Mort's case, went through three

>stages. When he first entered the group, the others did not know that he

>was a condemned man. They first addressed him in the manner customary in

>that group. Their approaches were basically set by each member's

>upbringing - the way his parents had taught him to greet other people,

>adjustments learned later in life, and a certain respect and frankness

>appropriate to psychotherapy. Mort, being a newcomer, responded the way he

>would anywhere else, pretending to be the ambitious, red-blooded American

>boy his parents had wanted him to be. But when he stated, during his third

>session, that he was a doomed man, the other members felt confused and

>betrayed. They wondered if they had said anything which would make them

>look bad in their own eyes and his, and especially in the eyes of the

>therapist. They seemed, in fact, angry at both Mort and the therapist for

>not telling them sooner, almost as though they had been tricked. In

>effect, they had said Hello to Mort in a standardized way, without

>realizing to whom they were speaking. Now that they knew he was a special

>person, they wished they could go back and start over, in which case they

>would treat him differently.

> So they did start over. Instead of talking forthrightly, as they had

>before, they addressed him softly and cautiously, as though to say: "See

>how I'm going out of my way to be thoughtful of your tragedy?" None of

>them wanted to risk his good name now by speaking out to a dying man. But

>this was unfair, since it gave Mort the upper hand. In particular, nobody

>dared to laugh very long or very loud in such a presence. This was

>corrected when the problem of what Mort could do was solved; then the

>tension lifted and they could go back and start over for the third time,

>talking to him as a member of the human race, without restraint. Thus, the

>three stages were represented by the superficial Hello, the tense,

>sympathetic Hello, and the relaxed, real Hello.

> Zoe cannot say Hello to Mort until she knows who he is and that can

>change from week to week, or even from hour to hour. Each time she meets

>him, she knows a little more about him than she did the last time, and she

>must say Hello to him in a slightly different way if she wants to keep up

>with their advancing friendship. But since she can never know all about

>him, nor anticipate all the changes, she can never say a perfect Hello,

>but only come closer and closer to it.

[Guest guest]

Hi Dharma,

 

Thank you for this. It is just what I needed this morning.

 

I have one very troubled teenager. I am not sure what to

"do" about it. I have been devising strategies all night.

But.....as Steven Levine suggests and your post caused

me to remember, the braille method, or feeling my way

through moment by moment.

 

It also reminds me of one time when I was relatively

awake and walking through the mall wanting to make

eye contact with another human being. Not one person

would meet my eyes until I found a very tired looking

old man resting on a bench and he smiled especially

through the eyes.

 

Marcia

 

Dharma wrote:

> Hello Antoine!

>

> Thought you might appreciate this, from the introduction to Eric Berne's

> _What Do You Say After You Say Hello?_ :

>

> > A. WHAT DO YOU SAY AFTER YOU SAY HELLO?

> >

> > This childlike question, so apparently artless and free of

> >the profundity expected of scientific inquiry, really contains within

> >itself all the basic questions of human living and all the fundamental

> >problems of the social sciences. It is the question that babies "ask"

> >themselves, that children learn to accept corrupted answers to, that

> >teenagers ask each other and their advisors, that grownups evade by

> >accepting the corrupted answers of their betters, and that wise old

> >philosophers write books about without ever finding the answer. It

> >contains both the primal question of social psychology: Why do people talk

> >to each other? and the primal question of social psychiatry: Why do people

> >like to be liked? Its answer is the answer to the questions posed by the

> >Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: war or peace, famine or plenty,

> >pestilence or health, death or life. It is no wonder that few people find

> >the answer in their lifetimes, since most go through life without ever

> >finding the answer to the question which precedes it: How do you say

> >hello?

> >

> > B. HOW DO YOU SAY HELLO?

> >

> > This is the secret of Buddhism, of Christianity, of Judaism,

> >of Platonism, of atheism, and above all, of humanism. The famous "sound of

> >one hand clapping" in Zen is the sound of one person saying Hello to

> >another, and it is also the sound of the Golden Rule in whatever Bible it

> >is stated. To say Hello rightly is to see the other person, to be aware of

> >him as a phenomenon, to happen to him and to be ready for him to happen to

> >you. Perhaps the people who show this ability to the highest degree are

> >the Fiji Islanders, for one of the rare jewels of the world is the genuine

> >Fijian smile. It starts slowly, it illuminates the whole face, it rests

> >there long enough to be clearly recognized and to recognize clearly, and

> >it fades with secret slowness as it passes by. It can be matched elsewhere

> >only by the smiles of an uncorrupted mother and infant greeting each

> >other, and also, in Western countries, by a certain kind of open

> >personality.*

> >

> > [Footnote: Oddly enough, in my experience, such smiles are most

> >frequently seen in girls in their twenties, with long black hair.]

> >

> > This book discusses four questions: How do you say Hello? How do you

> >say Hello back? What do you say after you say Hello? and, principally, the

> >plaintive query, What is everybody doing instead of saying Hello? These

> >questions will be answered briefly here. The explanation of the answers

> >will occupy the rest of this psychiatric textbook, which is addressed

> >first to the therapist, secondly to his patients as they get cured, and

> >thirdly to anyone else who cares to listen.

> > 1. In order to say Hello, you first get rid of all the trash which

> >has accumulated in your head ever since you came home from the maternity

> >ward, and then you recognize that this particular Hello will never happen

> >again. It may take years to learn how to do this.

> > 2. In order to say Hello back, you get rid of all the trash in your

> >head and see that there is somebody standing there or walking by, waiting

> >for you to say Hello back. It may take years to learn how to do that.

> > 3. After you say Hello, you get rid of all the trash that is coming

> >back into your head; all the after-burns of all the grievances you have

> >experienced and all the reach-backs of all the troubles you are planning

> >to get into. Then you will be speechless and will not have anything to

> >say. After more years of practice, you might think of something worth

> >saying.

> > 4. Mostly, this book is about the trash: the things people are doing

> >to each other instead of saying Hello. It is written in the hope that

> >those with training and talent for such things can help themselves and

> >others to recognize what I am calling (in a philosophical sense) "trash,"

> >since the first problem in answering the other three questions is to see

> >what is trash and what isn't. The way people speak who are learning to say

> >Hello is called "Martian," to distinguish it from everyday Earth-talk,

> >which, as history shows from the earliest recorded times in Egypt and

> >Babylonia to the present, has led to wars, famines, pestilence, and death;

> >and, in the survivors, to a certain amount of mental confusion. It is

> >hoped that in the long run, Martian, properly learned and properly taught,

> >will help to eliminate these plagues. Martian, for example, is the

> >language of dreams, which show things the way they really are.

> >

> > C. AN ILLUSTRATION

> >

> > To illustrate the possible value of this approach, let us

> >consider a dying patient, that is, a patient with an incurable disease and

> >a limited time to live. Mort, a thirty-year-old man with a slowly

> >developing form of cancer, incurable in the present state of knowledge,

> >was given at worst two years, and at best, five. His psychiatric complaint

> >was tics, consisting of nodding his head or shaking his feet for reasons

> >unknown to him. In his treatment group he soon found the explanation: he

> >was damming his fears behind a continuous wall of music which ran through

> >his mind, and his tics were his way of keeping time with that music. It

> >was established by careful observation that it was this way 'round and not

> >the other, that is, that it was not music keeping time with tics, but body

> >movements keeping time with mental music. At this point everyone,

> >including Mort, saw that if the music were taken away by psychotherapy, a

> >vast reservoir of apprehension would be released. The consequences of this

> >were unforeseeable, unless his fears could be replaced by more agreeable

> >emotions. What to do?

> > It soon became clear that all the members of the group knew they were

> >going to die sooner or later, and that they all had feelings about it

> >which they were holding back in various ways. Just as with Mort, the time

> >and effort they spent covering up were blackmail payments made to death,

> >which prevented them from fully enjoying life. Such being the case, they

> >might do more living in the twenty or fifty years left to each of them

> >than Mort could do in the two to five years left to him. Thus it was

> >determined that it was not the duration of life, but the quality of living

> >which was important: not a startling or novel discovery, but one arrived

> >at in a more poignant way than usual because of the presence of the dying

> >man, which had a deep effect on everyone.

> > It was agreed by the other members (who understood Martian talk,

> >which they gladly taught Mort, and which he gladly learned) that living

> >meant such simple things as seeing the trees, hearing the birds sing, and

> >saying Hello to people: experiences of awareness and spontaneity without

> >drama or hypocrisy, and with reticence and decorum. They also agreed that

> >in order to do these things, all of them, including Mort, had to get tough

> >about the trash in their heads. When they saw that his situation was, in a

> >way, not much more tragic than their own, the sadness and timidity caused

> >by his presence lifted. They could now be merry with him and he with them;

> >he and they could talk as equals. They could get tough with him about his

> >trash, because now he knew the value of toughness, and why they were being

> >tough; in return, he had the privilege of getting tough with them about

> >their trash. In effect, Mort turned in his cancer card and resumed his

> >membership in the human race, although everyone, including himself, still

> >fully realized that his predicament was more acute than anyone else's.

> > This situation illustrates more clearly than most others the pathos

> >and depth of the Hello problem, which, in Mort's case, went through three

> >stages. When he first entered the group, the others did not know that he

> >was a condemned man. They first addressed him in the manner customary in

> >that group. Their approaches were basically set by each member's

> >upbringing - the way his parents had taught him to greet other people,

> >adjustments learned later in life, and a certain respect and frankness

> >appropriate to psychotherapy. Mort, being a newcomer, responded the way he

> >would anywhere else, pretending to be the ambitious, red-blooded American

> >boy his parents had wanted him to be. But when he stated, during his third

> >session, that he was a doomed man, the other members felt confused and

> >betrayed. They wondered if they had said anything which would make them

> >look bad in their own eyes and his, and especially in the eyes of the

> >therapist. They seemed, in fact, angry at both Mort and the therapist for

> >not telling them sooner, almost as though they had been tricked. In

> >effect, they had said Hello to Mort in a standardized way, without

> >realizing to whom they were speaking. Now that they knew he was a special

> >person, they wished they could go back and start over, in which case they

> >would treat him differently.

> > So they did start over. Instead of talking forthrightly, as they had

> >before, they addressed him softly and cautiously, as though to say: "See

> >how I'm going out of my way to be thoughtful of your tragedy?" None of

> >them wanted to risk his good name now by speaking out to a dying man. But

> >this was unfair, since it gave Mort the upper hand. In particular, nobody

> >dared to laugh very long or very loud in such a presence. This was

> >corrected when the problem of what Mort could do was solved; then the

> >tension lifted and they could go back and start over for the third time,

> >talking to him as a member of the human race, without restraint. Thus, the

> >three stages were represented by the superficial Hello, the tense,

> >sympathetic Hello, and the relaxed, real Hello.

> > Zoe cannot say Hello to Mort until she knows who he is and that can

> >change from week to week, or even from hour to hour. Each time she meets

> >him, she knows a little more about him than she did the last time, and she

> >must say Hello to him in a slightly different way if she wants to keep up

> >with their advancing friendship. But since she can never know all about

> >him, nor anticipate all the changes, she can never say a perfect Hello,

> >but only come closer and closer to it.

>

[Guest guest]

Hi Marcia,

>Thank you for this. It is just what I needed this morning.

 

If this interested you, you might want to read the book. Eric Berne was

the founder of Transactional Analysis or TA therapy. In this book he gives

an overview of the system, but it's mainly a book on scripting... the life

script that we get in our heads in our earliest years, how we get them, and

how we can change them, be freed from them. He says most people are like

player pianos, where the music has holes punched for the notes, and that's

the only music the piano can play. He says he wrote the book so you can be

free to make your own music.

 

TA therapists work with people in groups. I think they have some terms and

models and methods that are really very easy and quick to use. When you

join a group, the first thing to do is make a contract with the therapist

to do something. If you don't know what you want to accomplish or what you

want him to do, you work on figuring that out. When you make a contract,

then you know exactly what you're working on... and when you accomplish

that and solve that problem, it's time to leave the group. If later on,

you decide you have another problem that you need some help with, you can

go back or go to any TA group in any city you're living in... since they

all use the same terms and models. And make another contract.

 

It's fast... they don't want to hear your whole life history, so you don't

spend years on that. They deal with the present, though they might get into

something from the past when it's relevant. Most people handle their

problems and leave the group in a matter of months... a year would be a

long time. I've joined groups a couple of times, and they were a great

help to me. Sometimes you can get in a group with a therapist who's still

in training... and that's much cheaper. I figure it's pretty safe...

they know pretty well what they're doing by that time, and they're working

closely with the supervising analyst/teacher.

>I have one very troubled teenager. I am not sure what to

>"do" about it. I have been devising strategies all night.

>But.....as Steven Levine suggests and your post caused

>me to remember, the braille method, or feeling my way

>through moment by moment.

 

If you can talk to him/her, you're way out ahead. But I do believe in

getting help if it's needed... it's like with medical doctors... you

don't wait until a condition becomes terrible to go to a doctor, you go

when you see you need some help. If you can't talk together... if there's

a problem between you, then you might want to see a counselor or therapist

together.

 

You might know someone who can recommend good therapists... many ministers

know about the local people, what kind of work they do and what their

reputations are. When I had trouble with a teen-ager, I consulted an old

friend who was the Inner-City Minister hired by a group of about a dozen

churches in our city. When he first took the job, he said he planned to

spend the first year or so getting to know everyone and every agency in the

area, so he would know all the resources. He recommended that my son and I

go to a therapist at a certain counselling center, which turned out to be

free.

 

The man was very good! We only saw him a few times, and he got right to

the heart of our problem. The main problem with our communicating was that

we had two very different rates of becoming angry. My son would fly into a

rage and slam out of the house. I did a slow burn... it would take me

about half an hour to be really furious. So my son thought I was cold and

unemotional... and by the time I was really angry, there was no one there

to yell at! The therapist saw that, and once he pointed it out, we could

see it too. And that made all the difference in the world! I won't say

that all the problems were gone... my husband and I were going through a

divorce, so there were problems... but the difference was that my son and

I could talk about them. We understood each other so much better.

 

Love,

Dharma

[Guest guest]

Dharma wrote:

 

<snip>

> You might know someone who can recommend good therapists... many ministers

> know about the local people, what kind of work they do and what their

> reputations are. When I had trouble with a teen-ager, I consulted an old

> friend who was the Inner-City Minister hired by a group of about a dozen

> churches in our city. When he first took the job, he said he planned to

> spend the first year or so getting to know everyone and every agency in the

> area, so he would know all the resources. He recommended that my son and I

> go to a therapist at a certain counselling center, which turned out to be

> free.

>

> The man was very good! We only saw him a few times, and he got right to

> the heart of our problem. The main problem with our communicating was that

> we had two very different rates of becoming angry. My son would fly into a

> rage and slam out of the house. I did a slow burn... it would take me

> about half an hour to be really furious. So my son thought I was cold and

> unemotional... and by the time I was really angry, there was no one there

> to yell at! The therapist saw that, and once he pointed it out, we could

> see it too. And that made all the difference in the world! I won't say

> that all the problems were gone... my husband and I were going through a

> divorce, so there were problems... but the difference was that my son and

> I could talk about them. We understood each other so much better.

 

Hi Dharma,

 

We are in therapy together so we are getting help.

Amazing what the third party outside observer can do.

 

Two things I have noticed. One is that both of us tend

not to express anger and hold things in. The last time

we got a little heated, I said to her that I just wouldn't

say anything then if this is what (getting upset and emotional)

was going to happen. She said...."Mom, don't do that."

I came to understand she did not want me to back down

and disengage.

 

Second thing is twice now when I felt that the situation

was hopeless and I gave up (internally) and just let

go of trying to understand and make it okay, she came

round. It was painful but liberating. Now I have to

be careful not to make THAT my current strategy. :-)

 

Marcia

[Guest guest]

Hi Marcia,

>We are in therapy together so we are getting help.

>Amazing what the third party outside observer can do.

 

Yes!

>Two things I have noticed. One is that both of us tend

>not to express anger and hold things in. The last time

>we got a little heated, I said to her that I just wouldn't

>say anything then if this is what (getting upset and emotional)

>was going to happen. She said...."Mom, don't do that."

>I came to understand she did not want me to back down

>and disengage.

 

That's good!

>Second thing is twice now when I felt that the situation

>was hopeless and I gave up (internally) and just let

>go of trying to understand and make it okay, she came

>round. It was painful but liberating. Now I have to

>be careful not to make THAT my current strategy. :-)

 

Right.

 

Well, I'll make a couple of observations, but I'm really just speaking

generally, not knowing your exact situation.

 

A psychiatrist friend once told me that if we could be perfect parents, it

would be the worst possible thing for our kids. She said kids need to

rebel in some way... or at least see some faults in their parents...

because they need to separate from them and become their own people...

grow up. She said if we could be perfect parents, they would find nothing

to rebel against... and they would never be able to match us... never be

able to be as perfect.

 

She also pointed out that if the parent is very strong about one thing,

that's the thing the child is likely to pick to rebel with. If the parents

are teetotalers, the kid will probably drink, etc.

 

On trying to understand... it's good to understand each other, but I found

out, when I started doing astrology professionally, that I can't understand

everyone. I understand best the people who are most like me. I've

learned to describe what I see in a chart, even if I don't understand it

myself. I may see two things that seem contradictory to me... they

couldn't both be in one person. But if I just say that... the person

usually says yes, that's so! And then tries to explain to me. ) So I

think we understand as much as possible... but sometimes you just have to

accept that someone is different, even if you don't understand it.

 

I know you want to make everything right for her, but you can't always do

it. I couldn't always do it for my kids. Sometimes they didn't want me

to... they wanted to do something themselves. And sometimes it just

wasn't possible... but we could cry together.

 

Love,

Dharma

[Guest guest]

Dharma <fisher1

 

> Hello Antoine!

>

> Thought you might appreciate this, from the introduction to Eric Berne's

> _What Do You Say After You Say Hello?_ :

 

Hello Dharma,

 

I did appreciate it, thank you. I must personnaly say that I have absolutly

no idea of what to say after saying hello...

 

They are so many ways of saying hello. One of them is just to wake up each

morning, fell the cells of the body wake up, and fell gently the town and

the planet waking up to the sun. A bit like on this picture showing this

magnetical field that wakes up and says hello to the planet in a cyclical

pattern each morning.

 

http://pages.infinit.net/carrea/tree/osho/earthsun.jpg

 

The picture in a way may represent the path Samekh from Yesod to Tiphereth,

in tarot also called Integration or Art.

 

Been looking for a picture to represent the path of the High Priestess,

Gimel, from Tiphereth the heart to Kether the crown. There is a nice

sensation in the one of the heart saying hello to the crown.

 

Enjoy,

 

Antoine

[Guest guest]

Dharma wrote:

> A psychiatrist friend once told me that if we could be perfect parents, it

> would be the worst possible thing for our kids. She said kids need to

> rebel in some way... or at least see some faults in their parents...

> because they need to separate from them and become their own people...

> grow up. She said if we could be perfect parents, they would find nothing

> to rebel against... and they would never be able to match us... never be

> able to be as perfect.

>

> She also pointed out that if the parent is very strong about one thing,

> that's the thing the child is likely to pick to rebel with. If the parents

> are teetotalers, the kid will probably drink, etc.

 

Well my kids are certainly lucky then cause they did not get perfectparents.

Hindsight is so good though.

 

What I find interesting and it goes both towards my parents and

towards my kids (my father just died and I am sure this is making

me very reflective), is that it seems to me that my kids are working

out my, my husband's and our (meaning relationship issues) unfinished

business. It almost seems from one angle to be happening simultaneously

or synchronistically. It almost seems as if that as I work on something,

it gets cleared up for one of the kids. This sounds much more intentional

than it really is. I should say; as something gets worked out in me.

 

The rebelling part is most certainly true. My husband comes from

a long, long line of Lutheran ministers. He and I met in a Gurdjieff

commune and married in the Work. Now our middle daughter

has marched out and joined the Mormon Church and became

president of the young women's group. She is super adamant.

No sex till marriage, no drugs ever. We look at her and wonder

if it is our kid. This is not the one I am in therapy with. This one,

being the Mormon one,

says she feels like the mom and I am the kid. I am too lenient.

She is right.

> On trying to understand... it's good to understand each other, but I found

> out, when I started doing astrology professionally, that I can't understand

> everyone. I understand best the people who are most like me. I've

> learned to describe what I see in a chart, even if I don't understand it

> myself. I may see two things that seem contradictory to me... they

> couldn't both be in one person. But if I just say that... the person

> usually says yes, that's so! And then tries to explain to me. ) So I

> think we understand as much as possible... but sometimes you just have to

> accept that someone is different, even if you don't understand it.

>

> I know you want to make everything right for her, but you can't always do

> it. I couldn't always do it for my kids. Sometimes they didn't want me

> to... they wanted to do something themselves. And sometimes it just

> wasn't possible... but we could cry together.

 

Yes, the heart connection is the important one. Something about being

a mother is really all there is. It is a heartbreaker but also so meaningful.

The crying together is so important. I know it hurts her, she knows I

know, she knows I care. The three things that matter. Even with

my Mormon. :-)

 

Marcia