The Greatest Tragedy

Photo by Belinda Fewings on Unsplash

Carl Jung said that the greatest tragedy for any child is the unlived life of his parents.

I don’t know if there are many of us who haven’t been impacted by those words, in one way or another. Whether it’s related to what we do for a living, to how we behave with others, to who we associate and spend time with. 

Did you choose your profession, or was it chosen for you? 

Do you put yourself out there, or do you hold back in an attempt to protect yourself? 

Do you aspire to specific goals or are you more wary of the risks and problems that come with it?

And I don’t just mean how we’ve been brought up by our own parents, but also how we convey our own thoughts and ideas (and fears) to our kids. 

So many of our more material life decisions have some sort of stamp from the way we’ve been brought up, what we’ve been told are the important tradeoffs and what the implications will be for the choices we make. 

In other words, we’re a product of the insecurities we’ve been taught as a result of how we’ve been raised and, while a good amount of that is handed down to us, we wrap it up with our own personal lessons and dole it out right down the line. 

(Of course, the funny thing is that this isn’t just about parenting, it translates into other “authority” roles we might take on in life, for example, at work. Do we trust or not? Do we give the freedom to operate and to what extent? There are often very clear correlations.)

It’s a highly complex, multivariable stew, and I’m not going to pretend that I can suggest any relevant, universal answers. 

The only thing I will suggest is that it is worth analyzing, worth spending the time on. 

So much of who we are - and who we want our kids to be - depends on it.