02-14-2010, 07:34 PM
Thank you, Peregrinus, Lorna, and Norral.
Peregrinus, is that driving direction situation a typical interaction with your mother? I think that in a way, having to try to figure out ever-changing rules helped increase my intellectual alacrity as a kid. That speedy, connection-searching thought process ("what do I have to figure out and do next?") helped my technical career. No mess of tangled spaghetti code was as full of contradictory, incomplete layers of meaning as what I was told as a kid! I wonder if maybe that intellectual process helped your engineering work as well?
But for me, it's been tiring to not be able to easily turn off that ever-investigating mind when the subject is nothing of any depth. I'm now working through some of these issues with an excellent therapist. More about that later.
I'm the youngest. The oldest, 10 and 13 years older than me, got the hell out as soon as they could, when I was just a few years old. That would put them as teenagers, around the same age as when you left home. My parents stayed together.
I admire and commend your taking parenting classes to learn better ways than what you were subjected to.
Lorna, I think you're right, I have had unrealistically high hopes. But just the basics of some kind of emotional balance would have helped a lot. I recently read this at another forum: "Don't expect logic or reason to change a decision that wasn't made with their help in the first place." This puts some things into perspective, doesn't it? At least it did for me.
For both your gran and my Mom, the whole "young soul" theory actually makes a lot of sense. As I've mentioned elsewhere, I really like the Michael teachings and think I'm likely in their mature soul/old soul range - not that this means I'm always mature in my behavior and thoughts!
The biggest challenge I face is to discard justifications and excuses that I took as sincere statements of fact. These were just nothing more than what people blurted out to try to soothe their own feelings. It wasn't until I was about 30 that it ever occurred to me that this is how many people live much of their lives. Realizing this has gradually helped free me somewhat of the urge to analyze some deeper meaning and truth to words blurted haphazardly.
Norral, thank you for the abundance of warmth, hugs and smiles. This means so much to me.
I've been a member of Unitarian congregations before. For many years I've been in complete agreement with their principles. I'll discuss more about that a bit later. I've done some independent study of Hindu thought. I like a lot of the metaphysical side of Shiavism. Yoga vasistha is new to me. From a quick browse of the Wikipedia article, it looks useful to me.
For now, I'll continue my story here with a discussion of the cult that damn near killed me. This will take a while to figure out how to put into words, since some of it happened before I had words to work with. I hope to post that part soon.
Peregrinus, is that driving direction situation a typical interaction with your mother? I think that in a way, having to try to figure out ever-changing rules helped increase my intellectual alacrity as a kid. That speedy, connection-searching thought process ("what do I have to figure out and do next?") helped my technical career. No mess of tangled spaghetti code was as full of contradictory, incomplete layers of meaning as what I was told as a kid! I wonder if maybe that intellectual process helped your engineering work as well?
But for me, it's been tiring to not be able to easily turn off that ever-investigating mind when the subject is nothing of any depth. I'm now working through some of these issues with an excellent therapist. More about that later.
I'm the youngest. The oldest, 10 and 13 years older than me, got the hell out as soon as they could, when I was just a few years old. That would put them as teenagers, around the same age as when you left home. My parents stayed together.
I admire and commend your taking parenting classes to learn better ways than what you were subjected to.
Lorna, I think you're right, I have had unrealistically high hopes. But just the basics of some kind of emotional balance would have helped a lot. I recently read this at another forum: "Don't expect logic or reason to change a decision that wasn't made with their help in the first place." This puts some things into perspective, doesn't it? At least it did for me.
For both your gran and my Mom, the whole "young soul" theory actually makes a lot of sense. As I've mentioned elsewhere, I really like the Michael teachings and think I'm likely in their mature soul/old soul range - not that this means I'm always mature in my behavior and thoughts!
The biggest challenge I face is to discard justifications and excuses that I took as sincere statements of fact. These were just nothing more than what people blurted out to try to soothe their own feelings. It wasn't until I was about 30 that it ever occurred to me that this is how many people live much of their lives. Realizing this has gradually helped free me somewhat of the urge to analyze some deeper meaning and truth to words blurted haphazardly.
Norral, thank you for the abundance of warmth, hugs and smiles. This means so much to me.
I've been a member of Unitarian congregations before. For many years I've been in complete agreement with their principles. I'll discuss more about that a bit later. I've done some independent study of Hindu thought. I like a lot of the metaphysical side of Shiavism. Yoga vasistha is new to me. From a quick browse of the Wikipedia article, it looks useful to me.
For now, I'll continue my story here with a discussion of the cult that damn near killed me. This will take a while to figure out how to put into words, since some of it happened before I had words to work with. I hope to post that part soon.