Paternal Muster
I get it from my father, of course. Where he got it, or if it's his own version of life's rules, I don't know. We've never talked about it, and I don't see much percentage in raising the subject with him now, though it would certainly be propitious, since I'm heading for the East Coast, and he's getting on in years. I have never bought into 77 being young, and he's not a young 77. Actually, he never expected to reach 70, or even 60. He thought he'd pop off with a coronary when he was 55, since that was his father's route.
What little I know about my father's own path, has mostly come through my sisters, who, irony of ironies, don't get along with him nearly as well as I do. As I live 3000 miles away, and have for the past two decades, my relationship with him has developed through distance and absence. I think in his own mind he thinks I've changed, and perhaps I have. He has mellowed a little, and isn't as tightly wrapped as he used to be. There's no overt animosity between us, and I think he feels as close to me as he can or really wants to, which is fine with me.
My father was a psychoanalyst. He had been ill-treated by his father, and apparently his mother did not handle her role well either. That's what induces people to become shrinks. I think it's about power and understanding. If you can't understand AND you don't have power, you're in deep ca-ca. As a shrink, you kinda understand, and you have enormous power. Of course, if they really understand, everyone would be fixed by now. But would they still have the power?
Anyway, my father didn't beat me, as I remember, but he did browbeat me, with stern and unyielding silence. My goal from first awareness to lately was to please him. I don't remember being tremendously successful. Square peg, round hole; I wasn't made of the kinda stuff that molded easily.
But I did pick up some bad habits from growing up under him. For instance, I have to be right, and I expect other people to hold to the same criterion. I don't mean right as in just the label, "right", but rather, I have to do it and be it right. Which I think is a marvelous standard. I only wish I didn't have such high expectations of myself that when it turned out that I wasn't right, I would not be so harsh on myself.
I would also like to let everyone else off the hook. Let them forget to put on their blinker. Make it okay for someone to have more than ten items in the express lane. Allow someone to mispronounce harass or grimace. To forgive them their trespassings. Or perhaps not even notice.
It's true that most of the work I've been doing on myself over the years has been about permission and approval. It's tough sledding in the gravel of life. I know it shouldn't be this tough, but I don't want to let myself off too easy. My father wouldn't approve. Neither would I.
And that's SetonnoteS...I'm Tony Seton.