Musings
From The Heart
An
Essay A Day For A Year
By
Roe
Day
160 June 8, 2012
Special
Love Rolls Downhill
When I was a little boy I
really wanted to be special. Everyone
always said, Roe is “special”, but they meant that I was strange and different
and weird. That is not the special that
I dreamed of. I have 4 kids, and my wife and I really enjoy going through a lot
of effort to make our kids feel special, and we do this in many different ways. We make all the year’s holidays joyful
events, and especially birthdays. We
also take turns spending private time with each of our kids where they get
whole days to be with their Mom or Dad, and where they get to do exactly what
they want to do. We both really like to support our kids interests, and we
enjoy seeing that they feel special with our efforts. I really wish I would
have had a dad like I have become for my kids. Nevertheless, I have heard my
kids say that they need more personal and focused attention, or that we are not
listening, or that we don’t understand them.
When a parent makes a child
feel special, the child feels seen and heard, the child feels understood and
appreciated, the child feels like they matter, and the child feels like the parent
really cares. Unconsciously a child feels and knows how much their parent loves
them or not, and how special they are or not, and if this Love is not
fulfilling for the child, this reality is blocked from consciousness of the
child out of the need to survive. If a
child could know that they are not loved like they need or want to be, if a
child could feel that they are not really special to their parents, they child’s
heart would break, or they would die.
The tragedy of growing up as an unloved or unappreciated or unseen or
unspecial child is that your heart breaks anyway, and we die inside anyway, and
we just hide from ourselves that our hearts are broken and unfulfilled, or that
we are largely dead inside.
Kids are really bottomless
pits of need and effort and attention on the part of the parent, and it seems
as if their cups are never full. Most
children, especially me as little Roe, feel like their inner heart cups are not
even half empty. I never felt as a child the feeling of my heart being half
full, let alone beyond half full. When a
child is insatiable and never seems to get enough Love and attention and
approval and acceptance, it is a sign that the parent in deep truth has little
to give themselves, and that the parent in effect also has a heart less than
half empty, and therefore very little Love left over for others, especially for
their own child. The child senses and
knows this on a deep level, and so the child continues to seek and need and want
and crave, but the true need can never be fulfilled since what is being
received is largely lip service and acting on the part of the parent.
When my children feel that
they are not getting enough attention and Love and approval and acceptance and
listening and understanding from me, it is because I don’t give them enough
attention and don’t love them and don’t approve of them and don’t accept them
and don’t listen to them and don’t understand them the way they need and
desire, and I don’t see them or feel that they are special enough to fulfill
their needs, on the level and the way that my children need. And this means that I don’t give myself
attention and I don’t Love myself and I don’t approve of myself and I don’t
accept myself and I don’t listen to myself and I don’t understand myself, and I
don’t see myself or feel that I am special enough to fulfill my own needs. If
this is true it is because my Mommy and Daddy didn’t give me the attention that
I craved, they didn’t love me like I craved, they didn’t approve of me and
accept me and listen to me and understand me, and they didn’t see me or make me
feel special like I craved. As you can
see this generational repeat is a vicious cycle, and yet the cycle is supposed
to be loving and not vicious. They say
that shit rolls downhill, well so does Love, and it is Love that all children
need to roll down hill so that they may roll Love downhill to their own
children some day.
There is no such thing as a
bad child, there never has been and there never will be. There are only bad parents. Many parents have
one child or an only child that is a black sheep or a loser or trouble maker,
etc., etc., and they mistakenly say that, “the others turned out fine, and they
were all loved and treated the same, or I did my best”. This truth is, the parents of any black sheep
or loser or trouble maker are parental black sheep and parental losers and
parental trouble makers, and the truth is any child in pain clearly was not
loved adequately, and clearly the parents have failed their child. My parents clearly failed me, they failed to
Love me and see me and hear me and approve of me and accept me, and they failed
to make me feel special. I am so sad and
disappointed for what happened to me, for what I needed and didn’t get, and for
what I got and didn’t need. I have not
been able to improve my ability to love and care for my children simply by
being aware of my sadness and disappointment and then simply change it, I have
improved my care of my children by improving myself, and to improve myself I
have had to face my pains, face my sadness, and face my disappointments. I had to learn to cry and grieve my childhood.
Nothing I do will ever be
good enough for my children, and I am proud of them for having such pure and
high standards, and for having the courage and strength to tell me so, and for
naturally and deeply desiring to feel special in my eyes. I dream and strive and persevere every day to
someday become the dad for them that not only can fulfill their half full cup, but
some ideal day, actually experience their cup running over. I know that on the
day that I have become their ideal dad, I will have also become the ideal
person, and I will have come full circle to come home to my true and real
childhood and childlike self. In order
to really be special and not just strange and different and weird, I need to
have been really loved, and since I was not loved the way that I really dreamed
of by my parents, I am truly not the loving person that I could be, and I am
not the loving parent that I could be. I
may say that I have done my best, but in the eyes of my children this has
clearly not been good enough, just like my parents may think that they did
their best, but in fact fell way short of how to truly love their child and
make me feel special. My only hope is to
continue to heal myself so that only Love may roll down hill.
I salute all you parents
actively trying to heal your own pains and evolve yourselves so that you may
feel special in your own heart, despite what happened to you as a child, and
then pass this special feeling of self love onto your children, so that they
may feel special. It is the only hope
our world has.
See you tomorrow.
yourpersonalmuse@gmx.com
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