“He was an irresponsible man. He left her to work two jobs to support her family.” My dad took a bite of his lunch as he spoke about a friend.
“I don’t think things are as simple as you think it is.” I said cautiously.
“What do you mean?” My dad asked.
“This is a world where everything is co-created, we cannot negate the possibility that your friend is also responsible for her own predicament.” I said.
“How could this be her fault? He was the one who was irresponsible, leaving her with no choice.” He insisted.
“I can understand why her kids were having problems with school.” I said.
“What does this have to do with anything?” He asked.
“Well, didn’t you say that you heard her yelling at her son once when he took home the report card?” I asked.
“Yes.” He said.
“She was no less abusive on an emotional level.” I said carefully.
“It was not her fault, he (her ex-husband) didn’t give them any money. He was the one who was irresponsible. I can’t believe her kids would not testify in court against their dad for being such a irresponsible father!” He said.
In the middle of the Chinese restaurant where we were having our lunch, I could no longer control the tears that were flowing down my face. I was beginning to cry and I couldn’t even say a word as I sobbed into my hands. All I could do was mutter a “sorry” as I continued to cry leaving my dad sitting there, dumbfounded about my emotional reaction. “Can’t you see that you were that man?” I said after I regained my composure. “You left us without giving us any money, leaving mom scrambling to find ways to take care of us. Did you understand how sad I became as a child, as a teenager because of the fact that you had repeatedly abandoned us? And now you have the audacity to criticize another man who did the same things you did and expecting his children to testify against him?”
He face fell as he sat there silently. He did not say another word about how awful the other man was for abandoning his family. He had no compassion for her kids failing at school, he thought that her kids simply didn’t work hard enough. But how can he know the struggles of these children who were abandoned by their father and left to deal with a crazy mother who is likely depressed herself? I felt liberated to be able to share my thoughts and feelings in a very vulnerable way. I am lucky to have a father who was willing to listen to me. While he did not apologize for what happened, he didn’t reprimand me for criticizing him — something Chinese kids are not supposed to do to their parents. For that, I am truly grateful.
It is possible to also be too responsible/caring as in being overly responsive/caring.
The mother has the signs of being too responsive/caring and that could have put off the husband as the wife could have been over-criticizing towards the husband. So the husband balances that out by leaving a person that is too responsive/criticizing.
The husband was doing what was good for him, but he wasn’t seen as being responsive/caring enough towards his children, perhaps he was using the kids to punish his wife by leaving her with the burden of looking after them, as a way to balance out her over-responsiveness. It is not quite possible for him to forget about the kids. It is also possible he wanted to take along the kids or was prevented from doing so by the wife. But I think there is a huge possibility he left them with his wife in order to balance out her over-responsiveness.
And then the wife still did not realize her over-responsiveness as she still continues to be too responsive/criticizing towards her children, perpetuating a similar situation.
Punishment is a wrong thing to do because no one has the right to force others to change their ways no matter how right this may seem to be, the right thing to do is simply to accept the person or leave the person after explaining the wrongness experienced.
People have the instinctual need to balance other people’s perceived short-comings by punishing them in various ways(especially for Chinese people), as seen as how the doctors make people wait a long time if they are late for a medical appointment. But they sometimes don’t understand the situation and wrongly practice punishment on others. Sometimes, certain things should not be dealt with punishment or they would simply be made worse, the ones doing the punishing would also be seen to be no different from the factors that caused the person to be late. The patient might be already late, but then the doctor caused the patient to be even more late by punishing them to wait a long time. So in this case, making the patient wait a long time only causes the patient to be more late, is a wrong kind of punishment/correction. The doctor is not even attempt to correct lateness, he simply wants the patient to experience waiting for others as he was waiting for the patient. But he forgot that the patient was already waiting while being on the way to see him.
In fact, there should be no punishment at all since the patient might have the effects of their illness that caused them to lost track of time that caused them to be late in the first place. So the doctor is being short-sighted in practicing punishment on already-sick people when he should not.
In the end of the day, punishment does nothing to correct other people’s faults since punishment does nothing to raise people’s perspective and clarity. It only gets them fearful and practice a forced kind of behaviour. The person would not be punctual because he is more aware of the time, but becomes punctual because of the fear of facing the repercussions.
Punishment is a wrong thing to do because no one has the right to force others to change their ways no matter how right this may seem to be, the right thing to do is simply to accept the person or leave the person after explaining the wrongness experienced.
The people doing the punishing are also at a lower level of perspective and clarity, so they should not be punished as well. Everyone does what they think is best but it is not always the case.
As an ordinary human being, I live with fears and doubts. Over the last few years, I have become increasingly aware of how much fear can run the show. I began to understand how fear ran the show for my parents, and their parents.
Punishment comes from a point of fear. Sometimes, when a child falls down the stairs, he is punished by his parents for playing on the stairs. However, the source of punishment is the parent’s fear for the child being hurt.
In my own life, I had pay attention to the behaviours stemmed out of fear. For example, I wanted to insist my kids eat at the table for the fear of having moldy food particles all over the house. If I was to examine this further, I would find that this was a form of control that stemmed from the fact that I had no control over my life and my environment when I was a child. My mother was a obsessed with cleanliness and imposed her standards on me. Now, my children still have to sit at the table when they eat, because I still don’t feel like cleaning up the whole house after every meal. It is much more manageable if I just have to clean around the dinning table.
Where I am willing to release control is how dirty they can get when they play. It really bothers me when they have sand all over them (I think this must be some fear I still feel from my mother nagging me as a child), or purposely showering their head with little rocks they find on the ground and I have to will myself to hold back, close my eyes and take a deep breath and let them be children.
I now have more compassion for everyone, parents, children, wife, husband…I know that we live in a co-creative reality where everyone is accountable for everything they create in their lives. Which means that people can’t really blame someone else for the problems they have manifested in their own lives. This is how I live my life too. If something happens and I don’t like it, I would often examine why I have manifested this into my life.