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Originally Posted by onesnowyowl
Generally, the normal behavior in trying to accept the unacceptable is just coping until a person reaches acceptance. If a person is unable to do that, it's not your responsibility to adjust your life situation so that they don't have to--in fact, quite frankly I think it's worse. Life is not a bed of roses, and things do not go the way we would like them to, period. We just have to do our best to muddle through it.
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Thank you, Snowy. You're right, of course--and I am more aware of the situation with my mother, and setting boundaries there, due to my time in counseling. The problem here in Iceland, though, has less to do with my mother and more to do with my Icelandic family not accepting my father's death almost 30 years ago... or at least, my perception of them being that way, from various comments they make to me about him and myself. And yes, I know that it's still the same answer: it's not my problem. If they cannot accept that accidents happen, and that people die every day--good people, people like their son/brother/my father--even after 3 decades--well, what the hell can I do about it, right? It's just annoying. I don't like being around people who believe so strongly in these things (almost like reincarnation), to the point where they can't let themselves accept events for what they are, and to embrace the new reality.
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Originally Posted by punkmusicfan21
On the other hand I find the things that I'm presented with, like opportunities, far more daunting. I can't understand how I am in this position, I don't understand why I was given the chance, etc. And even though the more I try to force my mind around the fact that I might be succeeding, and the more I own it, there is still a little voice in the back of my head. I don't know if that voice is a good thing; perhaps it'll propel me further.
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Dude, we seem to have a lot in common.
Fear of success--something that Cyn could tell us more about, too (he's good at this stuff). I've talked a lot about this before on TFP (not sure where--journals or some thread)--about not accepting the fact that I am privileged for whatever reasons, and that I have so many choices in front of me--I can never let myself believe that I deserve it. I just let myself feel "lucky," and that's as far as I can go. Because I sincerely don't believe that the billions of other less-fortunate people in this world are less deserving than I am--they were simply born into different circumstances, and for those reasons, they received less opportunities than I did. And that is the little voice in the back of MY head, and it's often what does propel me, so that I don't let the opportunities go to waste.
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Originally Posted by punkmusicfan21
That was scattered and lacked cohesion. hahaha sorry.
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Join the club, lol. I think it's just one of those kinds of threads.
-----Added 1/8/2008 at 12 : 47 : 09-----
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Originally Posted by jewels
As parents, we must prepare for the day our children grow up. We do, after all, raise them to thrive on their own.
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Strange thing is, I have seen all too many parents (once again the stereotype, but it is often with my Asian family) who raise their children to be dependent on them as parents--far into their 20s and 30s, even. At some level, these parents want their children (or at least one child--typically female, and younger than the others) to always remain at home, particularly attached to the parents as they age and need more care, and the emotional bonds are tight enough that the child can be expected to never declare its independence.
Surprisingly, this is not the case for my mother, mostly due to the influence of my American stepfather raising me to be independent--and my immersion in American mainstream culture--I WANTED to be on my own, as soon as possible. She has never liked it, but she has begun to accept it (mostly after I got married, since in her cultural mindset, a female can never be independent of a man--go figure!).
But I have seen it in my own family, somewhat in my in-laws' family, and in many of my friends' families. It's less strong among the children of immigrants in the US, for obvious reasons... but with my relatives in Thailand, yeah, it's nuts. There is a very strong culture of codependence, and no expectation for children to ever be truly independent of their parents.