Few of us had perfect parents. None of us, I reckon.
Even the ideal parent who makes you feel seen and whole and able has distractions enough to make growing up a trial, the need for love a need indeed.
Because, as Freud says somewhere, there is not enough love in the whole world for even one child.
And are all of us that child.
Lucky you if find a partner or a friend. Lucky you if you do not need, as do the tyrants, to murder the world rather than grow up. Lucky you if you can let go the partial solutions we all invent as comensation: needing the corner office, chasing the limelight, desperaton for the world’s gold stars.
Lucky you as well if you can write the thing or ask the person out or follow your own path without the resistance that comes up whenever we fight our own battles rather those our parents gift us, the ones we invent as a form of compensation for not having all the love in the world.
Mom and Dad had to navigate their own craziness, their own crazy world. It is as if they deal us a hand of cards from a deck they cannot help but make incomplete. And we play those cards as best we can.
What if we put them down?
We would be no less crazy if we had been born first. And someone would have to raise us after all. But it is a thought experiment to wonder what we might need if we were not solving for mom’s love, and dad’s attention, if they did not hold the jack we seek, as if the queen of completion were still in the deck somwhere.
What if the world that made them crazy had been yours first?
How might you then play your cards to win rather than for what you think you need?
Great post — I just get lost at the cards metaphor. Especially "winning." I assume the deck is missing many cards, maybe we'll get one we want, but focusing on winning might be losing. A game that teaches needs and desire for "completeness" might not be a good one to play.