Standard Deviation

Picture: My daughter and I had lunch at The Brass Bell (in Kalk Bay), sometime this month, and this was the view right next to where I sat. I feel incredibly alive when I'm this close to the ocean.

Friday morning, 09:45, 15 April 2011

Slouching in my bed, laptop on my knees, four pillows behind my back, determined to laze my way into this day, after what feels like at least two weeks of running around like a headless chicken.

It’s funny how we can go through life believing that A is A, B is B, etc. and that everything we’ve ever “known” is fact, truth, the way it is, the way it’s supposed to be, and the way it always will be. And then we grow up, and things start to look very different. Sometimes we gain new insights through the natural processs of maturing from childhood to adulthood, and sometimes we find ourselves, at different ages and stages of our lives, learning such huge lessons, that we start to realize that much of what we accepted as fact, as unalterable truth, was just perception, or often, misperception.

I am learning, anew, how, when I live consciously, when I strive to live authentically, and not just as a carbon copy of everyone around me – particularly in my family of origin – there are layers and layers of things I need to unlearn, as part of the journey towards discovering and uncovering, setting free the person I truly am. Setting oneself apart and choosing a career, a lifestyle, a path that is different, that doesn’t appear on the list of family-approved options, is not the easiest route to take. In fact, if you’re not ready to be unpopular and risk annoying or offending your close people, I don’t recommend it. Families have their own precious ways of showing their disapproval of behaviour that deviates more than a certain degree from the standard. Interesting how these same people would fiercely allege that they support independent thinking and innovation, initiative.

What I also find interesting is how important it seems to be for people to be able to say, “My daughter/son/sister/brother is a teacher/doctor/lawyer (pick one from the approved list)”, and how much personal investment there is in that kind of statement, as though the speaker is sewing on a Girl Guide badge of achievement for having a family member that’s turned out “right”.

Life is full of ironies. I am not as sorry for disappointing my family of origin as I am happy and excited about the choices I’m exercising and the amazing lessons and gifts I’m able to pass on to my new family, my two beautiful children, now aged 12 and 16. What better legacy could I leave them than the lesson that they have the power and freedom to be whatever they want to be in life, and that I’d be okay with their choices as long as they’re living authentic, fulfilled lives? No greater love can we as parents display than to release our grip from our children, and to release them to the wide world as the free spirits they were born to be. I’m by no means negating the importance of guidance in the early years, of formal education and all the rest that goes into the rearing of children – I’m talking about the expectations we have, as parents, and the uncompromising way we have of dealing with choices our children make that don’t fit neatly into our little box of possibilities.

I pray for wisdom as my children continue to grow and to exercise the choices they were to born to make, and I pray for enlightenment, love and peace, humility, tolerance, and, till the day I die, a sense of humour - asseblief!!!