If your mom had a farm and worked hard in her youth and planted many crops, and no calamities came t
If your mom had a farm and worked hard in her youth and planted many crops, and no calamities came to her or her farm, you would grow up with a full belly. . If my mom had a farm and didn’t work hard, or a tornado came and destroyed her home, or thieves took everything, I would grow up hungry. My mom would be ashamed, or broken and mean, and in her brokenness, maybe she would hate me and herself. . Either way, you and I didn’t earn our beginnings. You didn’t earn a successful mother any more than I earned an unsuccessful one. We were fated to them. . You, the well fed child, would be strong and perhaps with enough leisure time to develop other skills, ones that make you competitive. You would assume your childhood is what all childhood is like. . I would be frail and looking for food. My mom may be frail too. I may have to look after her. I may be hardened by the meanness of my fate. I may distrust, and therefore repeat her cycle of meanness. . You may meet me on the playground (though unlikely because we wouldn’t go to the same school) and ask why my clothes are dirty. I would be ashamed. . You are kind and successful. I am hard and sad. Both are a self-affirming spiral. . Now imagine this cycle over ten generations. . There is a paradox in our thinking: to believe that the efforts or misfortunes of our parents greatly determine our lives (this is logically true), while simultaneously believing that we come into life on equal footing, and that our successes are ours to boast about. . This seems responsible for the spiritual tension in the air, from sea to shining sea. The sins of the father, the abuse and wealth and crookedness and goodness, all commingled into history. We wake up into life profiting by, or disadvantaged by, the events of our ancestors… we’re proud of some of the things, we ignore others. We stand on the shoulders of great humans and the backs of the enslaved or cheated… and yet, . Here we are, responsible for our own lives, taking credit for our hard work and our careers, blaming the junky for his weakness, praising the entrepreneur for her work ethic. Ignoring the puppeteer of history and consequence. . : @sampepke -- source link