Parents - Edouard Kock

I think about how many articles have been written about kids, 
and how screwed up we are. Our fashion trends, our need to be 
unique, but yet we all wear the same things. Our striving to be 
accepted into our groups of friends. The periods we go through, 
in which we are rebels, and generally "bad" kids. I think about 
how the first thing parents ask you, if they find out you have 
been stealing money, is "Do you do drugs?". About how they assume 
everything for the worst, and generally act like... parents. 
Parents always say "we know whats best for you". How could they? 
They are NOT us. They may give the age-old excuse "We were kids 
once too!", but so what? They were kids, 50 years ago. Times change. 

The world is a diffrent place every month, with new ideals and 
ethics in play. "The world is not much diffrent now than it was 
back then." What a load of crap. Of course it is different. When 
we complain about homework, they say they had more than we have 
today. But so what? There is a new idea every second, someone 
once said. If thats so, then don't we kids of today have a 
billion more things to know, to learn and to think about, than 
they did at their time? With every generation comes new morals 
and ideals, new things to try to understand, new cultures to 
get along with. Somewhere between "kid" and "parent", something 
goes horribly wrong. A person looses his ability to understand, 
to relate, to be able to see all sides of the story. Compassion, 
fades away into the obscurity of pride and responsability.

But all the angst and the buildup of conflict aside, what is 
the burden which a parent must bear? A child is born, out of 
the pain and suffering of a mother. After the fire of anguish, 
she holds in her hand life, an entire life which must be lived. 
It is filled with choices, with pain, with love, with the myriad 
of emotions that play in the grand act of an entire life lived. 
When parents raise childern, they have the greatest task before 
them. To make sure, that what they have created, does not lead 
a wasted life. They do not want their creation to go to waste. 
So much so, that it may badly influence their choices that 
directly influence the life of that child. They sometimes forget 
that this child of "theirs", is a life, which has its own ideas 
and paths that it may wish to take.

I choose. It is something that is granted to me, upon birth. It 
can be taken away, by authority, by parents, by myself. It has been 
taken away, several times, in my life. But the chances I had, 
where I could choose, and was allowed to do so, are the points in 
my life, where I steer it down the path I want it to take. Life, 
is a possession. It belongs to someone. My life, belongs to me. 
Nobody can tell me what to do with it. They do not have the right, 
no matter what laws are created, no matter what people say. But 
parents, having given you this gift, think that they, can also do 
with it what they please. They create rules, which they say are 
best for you. But in reality, they are nothing more than rules 
of comfort, created to make life easier for them, not for you. 
The wonderfull joy of creation that they once experienced, has 
degenerated into the burden of caring for something which should 
be independant.

As much as a child wishes to be independant, there is a time in 
our lives where we cannot be. I had my first apartment of my own, 
at 17. I had just barely finished college, and was already out on 
my own. I finished highschool at 16, not due to intelligence or 
achivement, but due to sheer blind luck, fluke, and circumstance. 
This has caused a lot of unnessisary hassle in my life. I sometimes 
wish I had led a normal life. But I haven't. Part of my existance, 
is to adapt to the situation I am in. But parents make this kind 
of situation difficult. 

As I rant on about parents, what am I actually getting at? As I 
mentioned much earlier in my rant, there are so many books on Childern, 
Child psychology, How to raise childern, How to be a good parent, and 
so forth. But where are the books on How to be a good child, Parent 
psychology, How to manage parents and so fourth? Mabye Im bitter 
because of my own experiences with my parents. Mabye I don't know 
what its like, to be a parent, and as a result do not have all the 
information that would change my view of parents. I will never know 
what its like to be a parent, because I will never have childern of 
my own. I made a choice in my life, one of many, to never have childern. 
My reasons, are mine alone. I do not need to justify them. 

And as I sit here, with my contemplations about parents, I start 
to wonder. Did my parents, have thoughts like these? Did they 
also wonder about life, about the cycle of existance? Did they 
vow, never to become like their parents, to always stay the way 
they are? If so.... when did it change? Will I myself, go through 
the unavoidable ascent into the mindframe of what I consider the "parent"?