A Baggage Called Past (Part II)

Childhood. We are all born the same: sweet little babies, dependent on those around us, namely on our parents. We open our eyes and the first person almost all of us see is our mother. The outside world is now introduced to us. The mother is to become the symbol of love and warmth. In happy cases. We don’t know, we don’t remember how our mother spoke to us: in a calm and soothing voice, with harsh words, did she want us or not, did she absorb into her being our little bodies with all her heart while lovingly looking at us in our very first moments in this world, as if she might have wanted to make sure she would have our sweet and innocent face forever stuck on her retina?

We continued to be what we had and knew best to be: sweet little babies, dependent on those around us, without yet knowing what hatred, envy, comparison or sadness meant. We simply were what we were. Perhaps some reached the loving arms of other parents, others the cold arms of orphanages.

Years pass by. Some might have been given love and warmth. Others might have been physically, psychologically, emotionally or even sexually abused. Whatever the atmosphere was where we grew up, we created a normality of it. For it is only normal for a child to do so. When we are born, our brain is a brand-new hard-disk, which is programmed by what we live and what we are told when we are children and thus, as children, we live with the well founded impression that it is the same in all families.

If you are a child who is told off all the time, you will surely end up believing that other children are told off all the time. You will not understand that the sadness you feel inside and cannot understand is not normal. You will understand when you are an adult, but your wings will have already been broken and, if you’ve grown up believing you were not worthy, if this programming occurred in your brain, you will not dare go beyond your limits either when you’re an adult, unless you fight and choose to swim, daring to reprogram your hard disk. As an adult, you have this option.

We often hear of teenagers or young people who use drugs. Or steal. Or who are harsh and mean to their parents. Many times these children come from so-called “good” or “respected” families. Parents blame them, wondering why their own children embarrass them, why they behave that way, when they have done and offered everything for and to them. People also judge and label them with harsh words, marginalising them using phrases like “look at the loser, how he takes drugs, embarrassing his/ her respectful parents!!” But why doesn’t anyone stop for a second and wonder “what did such respectful parents do wrong for their poor children suffer so much and became victims of drugs or alcohol? Why don’t their parents do anything for them, be there for them?” Children are the result of their parents’ education. And even their parents refuse to stop for a moment and wonder “where did I go wrong?” I’m telling you, dear parents, in your crazy chase for success, career and money you forgot that your children also have a soul needing to also be “fed”, you forgot to listen to them when they had something to say, to take out from their system, you only “fed” their material needs, you were too deafened by the jingle of money and too blinded by the power you falsely thought money gives you! Too thirsty for the beer around the corner, grinning your mouths up to your ears with your drinking mates! Too busy with your own egos! When did you last speak to your child? An honest, a friendly dialogue, so the child had the possibility to open up before you, without the fear of being told off? When did you last listen to their sadness, when did you let them tell you about their first kiss? When did you let them make mistakes and didn’t judge them, but instead, to speak nicely to and encourage them? Or did you rather make them feel bad and punished them for each small mistake, telling them how much they embarrass you, that people laugh at you and at them? When did you last wipe their tears and told them, caressing their cheek that it would pass and life is beautiful and an amazingly beautiful future spreads before them? So, what do you say now, is it still the fault of only teenagers and young people they take the wrong paths? I’d say no! So, my dear reader, next time you see a teenager taking drugs or drinking alcohol, please don’t label them, don’t look at them with superiority, don’t judge them, don’t pity them, as pity is an infamous, unconstructive feeling that is of no help to anyone. If you can’t or don’t want to help such a teenager, just move on, better ignore them. But don’t put salt onto their wounds, please!