How I lost myself

I’ve been slowly noticing a change in me over recent years. In a lot of ways, I am coming to an understanding of why my parents did what they did, how I felt, and why it's important I do the same as well. I am also understanding society a lot better, the reason why certain things happen like they do and how we ultimately reached this status quo. For example, I understand why I felt the way I did about my dad, uncles, aunties, and society as a whole, and even though I was hoping to be different and not walk in their footsteps, I came to understand why they were like that and also the reason why I need to be the same as well.

They all had character flaws I hoped to amend in me; as an example, growing up, I always felt disrespected and disregarded despite being very mature and wise. I wasn’t a rowdy child who would go all crazy, causing a rucus all the time, but I’ll admit I didn’t like chores, and I could be a handful, especially when asked to do something I didn’t like, but through all this, I believe I could be taught discipline and inspired to be hardworking. Instead, all I received was punishment and the disrespect given to every kid by adults.

So just in this sense, I hoped to be different from my parents, with my goal being to respect every child and strive to educate them without resorting to violence. I’ve come to the understanding that children can be very difficult to educate; like adults, they are full of ego and strong ideas, which push them to do what they like. Even as an adult who understands the importance of discipline, it’s still hard for me to adopt it, What will I say to a kid who has no understanding? The only thing that interest them are games and doing what they want, Putting discipline in them is an uphill battle which can’t be achieved while pandering to their emotions. Then, when you add to that the stress of multiple responsibilities, kids, problems, etc. you eventually become mean to kids out of the frustration of their disregard for instruction. With this, I ended up becoming like my parents, mean and disrespectful to kids.

Similarly, I’ve evolved in other aspects: obsession with work and leaving no time to family, authoritative character, little social skills, being stern, strict, etc. Slowly and steadily, I feel myself transforming to become just like my dad and I understand the pattern of choices and events which led me here.

The question on my mind is whether this is a good thing or a bad one? If I should strive to be a different person from him.

Obviously, my parents weren’t bad people; in a lot of ways, they were just products of their environment and circumstances. They became what they had to be in order to ensure things moved smoothly; that meant being strict parents, not having a lot of family time because of constraining jobs, having discipline for themselves and everyone around them, etc. none of which is a bad thing. I can’t be exactly like them because I don’t live in the same times as they did, things have evolved, there are better ways of doing certain things now, there are much more resources and opportunities today; and the world is a totally different place today.

The fact of the matter is that the environment we live in might compel us to become a certain way and to live a certain lifestyle, which might not necessarily be what we want in our hearts so we have to make a conscious decision to strive to be what we want to be. To put this in perspective, you might want to be a socially active parent who is always present for his kids but due to the nature of your job, you can’t, Without a conscious decision to get a less constraining job or to work harder to be more present, you are eventually going to become the type of parent you dont want to be. The same logic applies to other aspects of my life: my social circles, my ambitions, my way of reasoning, walking, talking and my overall perception of the world. So its easy to see what we become just from looking at what our parents were. I know I might be generalizing here but I’m desperately trying not to, These might apply just to a handful of people. Unless there is an event which changes our character drastically, we are pretty much headed down the same path as our parents because sharing their DNA often leads us to thinking in the same manner as they did.

Change in mentality

Perception isn’t stagnant; it can change or evolve into something totally different. Ultimately, I think this is what distinguishes us not just from our predecessors but also from our siblings. When you have a set of identical twins with pretty much every single feature being the same, it would have been hard to tell them apart if they shared the same perception of the world. Since perception (how you view the world) guides your action, the set of twins would find themselves doing exactly the same things, liking the same things, dressing the same way and performing the same actions exactly the same way. What instead happens is that their perception of the world deviates through their experiences; they might live through the same things but they’ll become totally different people, which eventually makes them unique. I say all this so you understand that what sets us apart is our perception of the world and this can evolve, While our parents had their way of perceiving the world based on their circumstances, we nowadays also perceive it differently since the circumstances are different.

Even more so, we have a certain level of control over our perception of the world, You can choose to perceive it negatively or positively, and this in turn will guide our actions.

There is a certain level of control we have over our perception of the world, While some might choose to just become whatever their circumstances lead them to, others choose to challenge their perception of the world and strive to become anything they want. A good example are the innovators of the world, who could have imagined us going to mars on vacation, who would have thought instant communication over long distances was possible, who would have thought africa could compete with developed countries, etc If you limited yourself to the status quo and the normal perception everybody has about the world around them, then none of these would have been remotely possible, but people had to push their perception beyond normal confines to imagine the impossible and find their way to it, which proves to you that it is possible for a normal person to change their perception.

When you change your mentality and perception, you can change your destiny.

The way I get away from becoming like my parents is by changing my perception of the world around me while taking into consideration the realities I am faced with, because the goal isn’t just to be different but rather to do things differently and hopefully better.

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