– The deepest relationship we have in our lives and that we have to have until death is the relationship with our parents. In fact, the relationship that religion tries to establish with the divine is nothing more than a projection of the love and devotion that we have for them. This primary relationship defines our personality and determines, to a great extent, how we will relate to the world. "Childhood is destiny" Freud stated categorically.
– And the people who did not have one or two of their parents?
– They are also marked by that absence. All their lives they will unconsciously search for what they lacked in childhood. And in a way that's what we all do.
– We seek what we do not receive from our parents.
– We seek attention, love and recognition that they were unable to give us. Unless you had enlightened and fully realized parents, these three basic needs went totally unfulfilled in your childhood.
If you are reading this book, I can be sure that your parents never saw you as you really were, but as they thought you should be; I can assume that they did not have enough time to give you the attention you needed and that the love they gave you was scarce and conditioned.
– I don't like to judge my parents, I'm sure they did the best they could and they gave me life...
– First of all, we are not judging them. We're just seeing what it is so you can act on it. In second place, they did not give you life. And it is precisely this misreading of reality that produces neurotic reverence and loyalty on the one hand and terrible arrogance and mistreatment on the other.
– How's that? You say the strangest things.
– Look, you came to this world through your parents. Even if they "chose" to have you, they were just the vehicle that life used to bring you here. They simply responded to the social and biological programming that keeps us here.
Your mom found herself pregnant one day and agreed, at best, to happily allow life to use her body to create you. In the worst and not uncommon of cases, he reluctantly accepted it and reluctantly resigned himself to fulfilling the role that was imposed on him.
Your father, in the best of cases, happily agreed to help your mother and patiently observe the miracle that took place inside the womb of his beloved. In the worst case, he left terrified without wanting to participate in this event that was totally out of his control.
– Very well, and the neurotic reverence and loyalty?
– For a boy these two people are everything in life. For him, his father is God and his mother a wonderful Goddess who not only gives him warmth, affection and care but "feeds him from her own body!" It is enough to observe the look of a child when he is with his parents to understand the fascination that both cause him.
This boy knows that his life depends on them, so he will do whatever it takes to please them and avoid at all costs anything that might alienate them. He will do it in spite of his own being and his own needs. You have no choice.
This childlike bow is normal and necessary. The problem is when we perpetuate this exaggerated devotion for the rest of our lives and go to great lengths to ignore or excuse the terrible mistakes they made in raising us and continue to seek their love and appreciation to the grave. We look for them in our bosses, in our partners and in our leaders.