Instructions for living a life: Peas in a pod or what?

Peas in a pod: the same, yet distinct 

The larger world is fraught, very fraught, these days. I pay attention, yes, and I ground myself by standing firm on the foundation of my daily living, the roots of which run deep. . . 

In my early university days back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I fancied myself a budding intellect. I loved sitting around with my friends talking, talking, talking with coffee or beer in hand — solving the problems of the day and debating the politics of the moment. The secondhand bookstore just down the block from the coffee shop we frequented held endless fascination for me, and I spent many a happy hour browsing the shelves and exploring the big world of ideas they held. I discovered the unusual art of Aubrey Beardsley, and somewhere along the way I found the poetry of Kahlil Gibran. Neither was being taught in any of my classes, but each captured my imagination, and opened my eyes and my mind to the world around and beyond me.

Gibran’s poem “On Children” has stuck with me through all these years: —

    [children]
    They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
    They come through you but not from you,
    And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

I don’t have children, so I have no leg to stand on when I am tempted to offer advice to actual parents. But I do have my own experience of being a child to my two parents — an experience I describe as having been born into freedom.

My mother’s father believed his job was to raise his children to be independent and self-reliant. Judging by my mother, I would say he succeeded in spades. My father’s parents were loving, and they supported their son’s move across the ocean in 1953 to start a new life in Canada. My parents raised their three children to be each their own person. And we are that. Singularly so. While we look alike and would be spotted as siblings, the lives we lead are quite different. My older sister puts politics at the centre of her life, even running for office. My younger brother works big jobs in far flung places to secure a good life for his family. I worked in corporate communications and as a college teacher; I have knocked on doors for local politicians; and I use my creative energy on the page and in my community.

Place us three on a spectrum and we would span it from one end to the other. But look more deeply, more carefully, and you will spot what connects us and makes us more similar than different.

Of course, our parents connect us by having raised us to be what we have become: Our own individual person. We are not shy. Each in our way, we want justice and dignity for all in this world. We each walk through the world with the confidence that our views are worth talking about — usually loudly. We each love cats. We have each found a life partner with whom we have built our version of a good life.

• We understood our parents’ instructions the same way: Be your own person.
• We saw the same thing in our parents: Unconditional love
• They produced the same result in each of us: An independent individual, capable of living a good life.

We are different from each other, and yet we are, in essence, exactly the same — raised by two parents, who both understood that, while they made us, their job was to build the foundation and to nurture the roots that would enable us to build our own life.

Away from them, yet, in every important way, of them.

***

This piece was sparked by these thoughts: 
We don't understand instructions the same way.
We don't see the same thing.
We don't produce the same results. 
And by the (above) cartoon by IndieTheIntrovert, found on Facebook.
I especially love the cat's take on the obvious instructions to draw the ball...

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.

Photo of peas by Jean-Michel GARCIA on Unsplash