That edge we are all walking along

We are all walking closer to the edge than we realize.  We never know when some event in our life will push over that edge.

What in your life caused you the most pain, what in your life still haunts you? From the time we are born who we are and how we react is being formed.  This starts when you are very young even before you are even able to speak.  You are starting to learn, reacting and adapting to everything around you.  Your life becomes a game of survival. 

It starts with how you are comforted, how you are fed, how people talk to you. 

 

Did your parent give you a bottle when you were crying, did mom give you a cookie every time you were upset.  Did your parents buy you that pony when you got bullied or tease to make up for it?  Did your dad tell you to stop crying and grow up?  Or did they say stop crying or I will give you something to cry about? 

All of this started to shape you for the future, develop your emotions and how to deal with them.  It began to form you understanding about how to handle relationships.  

Today when your wife or girl friend is upset with you do you rush out and buy her flowers or even better diamond earrings.  Who learned or was taught this behavior? Did she learn it or were you taught it?  Has it become expected?  On the other side of that coin, when your wife cries because of something that happened do you say oh just get over it it's not a big deal?  Or do you comfort her?

Women, when your husband or boy friend comes home from work and it is obvious he has a had a bad day, because  he snaps at the kids, snaps at you.  Do you say how was your day and he says it was fine, I don't want to talk about it, don't worry I can handle it.  Where did he learn this behavior?

Where did we get this behavior, these responses, this way of feeling and communicating?

Think about your life and look back at what happened when you were four, when you were ten or even sixteen.  Look around you and remember what you saw, what you were told about how you should respond.  For me I can trace me and my sibling’s behavior back to things we heard and were told as a kid.

For my sister she was told she had to be responsible for me and my brother and even to this day she talks about my brother’s crib being put in her room within days of his birth.  As an adult she became the fixer and co-dependent member of the family, she felt like she had to fix everyone's lives.   

My brother he was told he was worthless and was called the baby of the family and coddled.  He became just what he was told, he never held a job, was completely dependent on my parents until the day he died from the long term effects of drug and alcohol.

Me, I became the one who had to try to prove everyone wrong and could do anything and never ask for help.  I had to go out and conquer the world to get the approval I missed out on.  My mom would say "stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about".  My dad would say " I skinned my lip worse than that and never quit whistling".   I broke both wrist and drove myself to the hospital and thought that was something to be proud of. As a consequence of this I never asked for help and always waited for the disappointment to happen, never looking at my part in all of it.  We all know where that got me.

Now we raise our kids the opposite way most of us were raised.  We hold their hand when they cross the street until they are too embarrassed to be seen with us.  We don't discipline them for bad behavior instead we on reward for what we were expected to do.  Every kid gets a trophy for showing up for baseball or soccer.  When kids get bullied we make more rules and the bullies never get their butts kicked like they should.  The parents protect the bullies, oh Johnny would never do that or they lie to cover it up.  Just look at the recent example of the girl who committed suicide after being bullied, after the suicide the bullies were back on FB telling the world they just don’t care another human died because of what they did.  Who is at fault here, the parents, the girls, society for coddling this type of behavior?

Look at the school in Kentucky who just stopped the post-game handshakes because of fights.  What about teaching them proper behavior?  Did they learn that behavior from the parents in the stands?  Come on we have all seen it.

Look at what this is doing to our kids.  Are we doing them any favors?  Where is the respect for their parents, for other adults?  They grow up to think the world owes them something; they get paid for showing up.   They want to start at the top at any job; the boss is always an idiot, they say “I am not working for minimum wage”.  “I am worth more”.   What happened to earning your way, showing you deserve it? 

 

Why is it we seem to have more people just snap?  Are there more or do we just hearing about them more often?  I think people are snapping more often because of the new way society operates.  It is just like we are now raising our children, without accountability or purpose.  If people lose hope they lose everything; there self-respect, value for human life, and the sense of right and wrong.  They simply fall off that edge. 

That edge we are all walking along.  How close is someone you know to the edge and who will save them from going over?  How many have to go over the edge before we do something?

I hope someone is listening