Thicker than Water
“A happy family is but an earlier heaven.”
Having reviewed the most basic needs in Maslowe’s hierarchy, we now move into examining love and belongingness needs. Once we have satisfied the physiological needs necessary for survival, and successfully created an adequate sense of safety, the theory goes, we will long for love, affection, and a sense of belonging with family, friends, and other social contacts such as those we make through work and religious affiliations. The family is the first set of social contacts we have in life, so we’ll start there; the relationships we build at home will lay the foundations for the habits, beliefs and expectations of a lifetime. The experiences we have at home when we’re young will resonate throughout the rest of our experience in ways both pleasant and upsetting, such that no matter where we are in our development, we are likely to be contending with the memories of these formative times.
It is a natural human desire to feel loved by one’s nearest relations. We yearn to feel that we’re valued and have a place in the family structure. And yet, there is just so much that can go wrong here! My mother always said that when you have more than one child, you notice that they just come out different. I know I’ve noticed in the course of making friends in life, and growing to understand them more deeply as an adult, that people can be much more different from me than I would have thought possible when I was younger. We don’t choose our family members, and depending on the luck of the draw, we can find them baffling and endlessly frustrating. Despite the fact that we all want very much, on some level, to give and receive love, the true connections that make this possible are often missed as though we’re out-of-control freight trains speeding through the night, driven by conductors behind locked doors. And yet, our family will have more opportunity to know us better than most others ever will. This can all create webs of complex dynamics that defy resolution. It takes an enormous amount of work sometimes to move beyond their ability to continually press our buttons. After all, they co-created those buttons.
“Insanity runs in my family. It practically gallops.”
Every person I’ve ever spoken to who has become a parent has echoed the sentiment that one can never be really ready to have children—it’s such a deeply challenging experience that it cannot be adequately communicated, and that’s probably for the best. If anyone fully understood the reality beforehand, they’d be unlikely to do it, and the human race might be in trouble! Given that, it shouldn’t be surprising that most of us feel dissatisfied with some of what we experienced at home. Most people get no useful instruction in the art of parenthood. They make it up as they go, and the younger they are when they embark on this adventure, the less likely they are to have worked out the recipe for their own peace and happiness beforehand. One cannot pass on what one doesn’t have.
“The other night I ate at a real nice family restaurant. Every table had an argument going.”
To complicate matters, Nature seems to have set up human development to support the most rapid possible learning of the young in order to ensure their survival. In Spontaneous Evolution, Bruce Lipton and Steve Bhaerman note that until we’ve reached the age of six, our brains are most often in either delta (sleeping/unconscious) or theta (imagination/reverie) states, meaning that they are basically operating in a hypnotic trance. Children this young are unable to analyze the information and programming coming at them from all sides. They just absorb it directly into the subconscious for good or ill. This helps them to quickly get up to speed with the requirements of their environment, but it also makes it possible for anything they observe to be written into their deepest psychology. I find this to be a stunning revelation, and an incredibly strong argument for bringing the most awareness and care you can to your interactions with children—you are, quite literally, creating their worldview with your input into their experience. Sadly, most people have no idea that children are quite this undefended, and children become products of carelessness. Later, when we’re old enough to reason and make decisions for ourselves, we can clear out the jumble of unsupportive programming and experiences, but most of us have a lot of detritus to deal with, and the process of sorting through it is not fun. That’s why we often avoid it and just live with the original stuff!
Giving and receiving love in the context of family dynamics often requires complex skills and a great deal of maturity. Doing this well can be one of the greatest challenges we face in life. Since the desire for love and belonging in the family is not going anywhere, one of the foundations of a happy life is to continue trying to rise to the call of what is necessary in your case to improve your relationships with family over time. One of the skills we all need to build in order to do this is the ability to take over as parents to ourselves; this is an essential element in the development of real maturity. We must learn to give to ourselves what we wish we had gotten from our own parents, whatever nurturing and care was missing in our early days, so that we can feel less needy in the presence of family in the moment. In order to do this well, it is necessary to find a way to accept and let go of the past, which is a tall order for many, I know, especially for those who experiences trauma at the hands of close family members. I’ll write more on how to do that in later posts. It’s also necessary to become emotionally observant enough, as well as courageous enough, to learn when you need to create boundaries, speak up for yourself, and bring behaviors that are problematic for you to the attention of family members if you want to improve relationships that are challenging. There is a world of books written on the development of these skills, and no shortage of professionals who can assist you with instruction, perspective, and coaching here using any number of great methodologies and tools. As galling as it can be to have to do all this work, if you want to live a truly happy life, I think you’ll find it’s necessary, and it does get easier as you learn. You deserve a happy life that’s full of love, connection, and harmony, and your family members deserve the chance to be in loving relationship with you. However far the distance may seem that you need to travel, just start with a small step, and start building momentum.