Me and my mother
My mother loves me. She rings me if I do not call her. She asks about me and gently tells me off for not calling her and letting her know my family and I are. She asks about my work and how it is going. She wishes me a safe journey when I travel abroad and she asks how my trip was…
If I am ill and my mother finds out then she is on the phone asking me how I am doing. And what I am doing to take care of myself. She goes further and starts telling me what ‘medicine’ I should be taking – she is not a doctor. She can be very insistent on what I should be doing to take care of myself!
My mother is old. She is losing her memory. And she finds it hard to stand up, to walk, to go up/down the stairs. Yet, when I arrive at her home she gets up and starts fussing over me (if she is not out cold). She will get up to make me a tea. She will ‘run’ to the kitchen to cook me a meal. She will struggle up the stairs to make the spare bedroom so that it is just right for her eldest son
It is when I am visiting my mother that I lose it. Why? For two reasons. First, I end up getting angry that I am there to help her and yet I end up creating work for her – making her life harder. How/why? She will not let me help. You see I am a man and men simply should not do housework. Second, she is constantly telling me what to do – what to wear, what to eat, how much to eat, how to live my life….. And I end up saying “I am not a child, stop treating me like a child!”
Seeing her hurt I feel remorse and say to myself “Why can’t you keep your mouth shut!”. Yet, a part of me does say to me “She brought this on herself. How many times have I told her not to treat me like a child. Not to boss me around. And she never listens. She brought this on herself.”
What have I done? I have invalidated my mother and justified myself! Put differently, I am in the right (for making the effort to drive 4 hours to see her and help her out) and she is wrong (for not accepting my help and for treating me like a child).
Me and my eldest son
I have been and am being really busy: thinking-formulating-writing a strategy for a client. The deadline for the strategy document and the presentation to the directors is fast approaching. Despite feeling the pressure I volunteered to drive my eldest son (17 years old) to the train station for the first day of his new job.
I notice it is cold. And I notice that he has no overcoat over his suit jacket. I think he has got to be cold. He gets into the car and turns the heating up to the max. I say to myself “Yes, he is cold”. So I suggest that he goes into the house, he refuses, telling me that he will do without the overcoat. I drive.
Whilst driving I find myself asking my son why he did not get an overcoat given that it is cold and clearly he is cold. He tells me that he does not know if there will be anywhere suitable to store it and he does not want to make a fuss on his first day. I assure him that employers expect employees to come in with overcoats in winter and there will be somewhere to store it. I say this calmly and occur to myself as loving/caring/helpful.
He loses it with me. He tells me to stop telling him what to do, how to live his life. He tells me that he prefers taking the bus rather than have me drive him to places because when we are together I boss him around, I tell him how to live his life.
I notice that hurt is present. I notice that anger is present. I catch myself saying “How ungrateful! I am simply looking out for him – making sure that he does the right things, avoids the wrong things so that his life works out.”
I have got myself caught up in justifying myself, invalidating others!
Suddenly a bolt of insight hits me. When my mother does what I do and I am in the role of son, I justify myself as the son and make her wrong as the mother. Yet, in my relationship with my son I invalidate my son in his role as son and I justify myself in my role as father.
Yes, it hits me that I am caught up in ‘justifying myself and invalidating others’ – my mother, my son. And it hits me that when I get hurt I take it personally and point the finger at my son. Yet, when I hurt my mother, I do not point the finger at myself. No, I point the finger at my mother and make her responsible for my behaviour and the hurt that it causes her!
How inauthentic! As the author of my life, I own how I show up in life, I own my interpretation and thus experience of my life. My son does what he does. He cannot cause me to do/feel/speak what I do/feel/speak – that belongs to me. My mother does what she does. She cannot cause me to do/feel/speak that which I do/feel/speak.
What is the insight for you and me?
Be mindful. And grant others what we expect them to grant us.
If I expect my son to listen to me, to treat me respectfully, to use kind words, to show gratitude then surely I should call myself to be that kind of son to my mother! To do that you and I need to be present to the traps that are always there for us because they go with being human. The traps are ‘I am right, you are wrong’ and ‘justify self, invalidate others’.
And finally, it occurs to me that it is time for me to let my son simply be. To make his choices and live his choices. It occurs to me that being loving does not have to mean that I have to look out for and protect my son. It occurs to me that I can choose to manifest my love for my son as ‘trust in him’ to make his choices and handle the consequences of his choice. Put differently, I can simply be a stand for my son as a highly capable young man who can make choices and live with their consequences.
It occurs to me that this latter way of manifesting my love set us both free - free to own our lives: choices, consequences, responses, learning, growth…
And finally, is it possible that love is only love when it shows up / is experienced as love?
