SYTB 20: Handsome Return on Investments

And when to cut your losses.

There was a time in my life, I was giving and giving. I kept relying on a Universal Source, a Divine Giver with Infinite potential, but I felt so empty. No, worse. I felt depleted, exhausted. As much as I focused on this pervasive good, I was living in the land of lack.

As a mother of two young children, all I wanted to do was nurture and defend my babies. I wanted to give them the most hopeful chance at a future of complete wellbeing. However, my life looked less and less like the future I envisioned for them. Everything I did to be the giving mother should have felt fulfilling. Instead it felt full taking. I couldn’t see a way forward.

All my relationships outside of home seemed to drain me, but they also seemed necessary. I needed an ear to rely on. It was crucial to talk to someone. Motherhood, particularly early motherhood can be lonely and isolating. I desperately needed to feel less alone. But those people I was relying on, to listen to me and validate me in my struggles and lift me up, they were actually pulling me down. I couldn’t see it, though.

I just thought my mom and dad and sisters and I were there for each other, but just had different philosophies. I thought that shouldn’t keep us apart. I thought family was supposed to be bigger than some differing world views. I thought family was supposed to stick together no matter what.

The funny thing about the historic ideal of family: it was never intended to be or do any of those things. This might sound shocking in our modern age wherein families are extremely divergent in their ideals from generation to generation. Families and villages historically were people of pretty like mind, homogeny. It was people of similar cultures and ideals working together for the common goal of protecting and moreover bettering future generations. If someone was working toward different aims and goals that were counter productive to the family and village, they were often ostracized. Ostracism in early human evolution was death, the end of the lineage. One couldn’t survive without the community. One might comply or get along to secure one’s own survival, but also might break from tradition to secure the survival of the village. You see, the community wouldn’t survive without innovators. If the ostracized person had an ideal crucial for the future of the village that went against their traditions, the ostracism could lead to the demise of the larger village. This is why people learned to stick together, to listen to one another, to be open to the ideas of others, to challenge their old ideals. The foundation of human cohabitation relies upon openness and self-reflection.

Unfortunately, the modern family often relies on neither sharing, nor challenging, keeping one’s new ideals to oneself to stay together regardless of the outcome of their lineage or long term survival. It is based on blood and genetics rather than shared ideals or concern for the lineage. Those things used to go hand in hand. Now, not so. We may not push individuals out of our society today, but we push their ideas out. We push down and suppress progress to hold on to a tradition of staying with blood that no longer secures the survival or betterment of our progeny. That’s just as bad for the outcome to the whole of civilization. As a result of our old programming that once kept us together, society around us today seems to be coming apart. Mothers are more isolated than ever. Children are more isolated than ever. Families that should help, hurt.

The only solution seems to be to go back to the basics. We need to align for future generations based on common goals and ideals. We need to stay open to betterment of ourselves for the sake of society as a whole. We need to once again, learn to revere new and divergent ideas and the nuggets they may bring to the whole. We must remember that rejection without observation can lead to destruction of future generations. We must question the weight of new ideals versus the wisdom of our traditions. We can’t rely on scarcity and thoughtlessness. We must learn to understand the traditions, why they came to be with a respect for their endurance through time, yet with a willingness to test them against modernity.

At first, I only noticed the small ways my family cut me down. I would share my struggles with my children, and I would hear in response that I wasn’t doing enough physically to suppress my children. I never wanted to believe these people. They just had old, untested ideals. But, I wasn’t going to be the one to rock the boat on the topic. I couldn’t afford to be ostracized. I was bumping into my own demise.

I knew it was wrong when I was hit as a child. I knew it devastated me inside and out. I once had bruises, welts and scrapes to prove it was destructive to me when I was the “future generation” once hoped for. I read all the books that said physical action against children was wrong. I was going to be and do better. At the same time, I became more and more desperate and unfulfilled. It was upon me to stay together with my family no matter what. Surely, had I asked them to be there for me in my visions and ideals about intact children who were raised considerately, reasonably without violence, the answer would have been laughter and scorn. I leaned into my primal instincts of survival. Stick together with your family. Respect the wisdom of traditions.

In my least proud moment, I buckled to tradition- just to try it out. I thought my sense of self-worth couldn’t get any lower. I thought if I just tried spanking, maybe it would bring me at least a temporary sense of control in a life that was spiraling out of it. I was wrong. It gave me no sense of control. Quite the opposite. My kids who never thought of violence started attacking each other, following my lead. There’s nothing worse than attacking and destroying future generations physically to preserve oneself, to preserve the elders. Nothing, no cause or action can make one feel lower or more useless or deserving of destruction. It’s particularly disconcerting when it doesn’t help anything or when it exacerbates the initial issues: more loneliness, more isolation, more self-loathing and a greater sense of hopelessness.

The tradition of punishing children for being children is based on people not questioning it. It assumes there are no other ways. It presumes that anyone who doesn’t practice it is worse off without any examples around to prove such a thing. Very few challenge the tradition. What’s worse, when it doesn’t work out, when the pain creates more pain, the only prescription from the elders is ever more pain. “You just didn’t do it hard enough to really teach the lesson.”

I’ve heard it. I have been there. I understand the deep need for connection, the primal need to not get tossed out of the village, the willingness to destroy oneself in the deepest, darkest ways to preserve tradition and “honor” my elders. Been there, done that. Wrote the book about it.

I needed a clean break. I got a dirty one. However, I learned to get better with my breaks over time. As I allowed those relationships to fall away, I no longer felt the isolation and depletion I felt struggling to keep people in my circle with my dreams that they never shared. I realized, that’s where my loneliness and fatigue came from. It came from trying to force things together which were not only mutually excusive but mutually destructive. It was my destruction. I have certainly made enough of a mess to warn others away from so doing. “The wise man learns from the mistakes of others” and all that. You’re the wise ones.

There’s a better way.

There is a limitless energy. There is a place from which one may give much and gain fulfillment. There is a way to focus all your energy on something and be infinitely replenished. I have been there, too. I am there more and more as I can achieve alignment with my purpose and can progress offensively in play toward that end. In so doing, even the confrontations with old paradigms and the people who I feel uncertain should they or should they not support me work out in an empowering fashion.

Give those in your current village a chance to make a return on your investments in them. Stop putting desperate necessity inside your boundary. Again, what do you desire? What’s your dream and vision?

Many people in visionary communities suggest keeping your vision to yourself to protect them. If you can’t share your visions with those closest to you, what good are those closest to you? If your visions aren’t bigger than the criticisms and condemnations of those who are too small to recognize the benefit of challenging tradition, what good are those visions to you? You must share your visions and plans. The sharing is a tool in itself. Of course there is a risk and your dreams should be big enough to risk everything. You need bigger people and bigger visions. There’s a way to give them both a chance. I am saying there’s a chance.

Enlist your friends in coming to the aid of your visions. Share your visions. Share how you plan to get there. “A dream without a plan is nothing but a wish.” Maybe you don’t have the whole plan. Maybe you only know the first steps. Share those. Ask for help with future steps. Enlist your friends and family. Your visions are the future once held sacred and supreme by primitive civilizations. If there is no common regard for these sacred ideals for the future, there is no family. If your relations are currently taking resources from you that could go toward your end goal, share the goal. Allow them the opportunity to step up and serve the end goal, to return your investments toward the vision for the future. One way or the other, you are giving them something. You are allowing them the opportunity to be a part of the village and the dream and your shared triumph in the future.

You are also allowing them, should they have need of another dream, to chase their own. You are no longer standing in the way with your petty handouts to keep them in your village, afraid of ostracism. Modernity demands we let them find their own village. We no longer live in a disconnected world. This machine which you are reading this on, you can type your ideal into the search bar on top of this very page and 100’s of people will appear who are working toward your common vision. It’s no different for the people you care for, those who have their own dreams and goals. Family in this age is who we make it, those who support us and stick by us, not for fear of ostracism but out of our shared boundary defending a common vision for the betterment of future generations. With a dream, you are the future. Without a dream, there is nothing to defend, no need for boundaries. Nothing you own or no one you care about, none of it matters.

Find your family. Expand your circle. Allow those who need to diverge from you to find their own. That’s unconditional love. No clinging, no clawing. It’s a new world and the opportunities are more aligned with potential for your future than they’ve ever been.