When people come from an instant gratification culture as we here in America do, it's very difficult to see past our own noses of "need". Where else in the world can a person wake up and decide exactly what they want to eat and/or drink as their own first meal of the day---and then walk, ride, or drive over to where "it" is being sold, made, and/or served---and then obtain it? I can remember an interview with the former lead singer of the rock band "Kiss" that was aired on broadcast television many years ago. In the interview, Gene Simmons said when he first immigrated to the U.S. from Israel, he was "shocked" when he walked into his first grocery store here in our country. Paraphrasing, he stated that he never saw everything anyone could want or need to buy to eat or drink under a single roof. Let alone arranged in neat rows so one could put whatever they wanted into a shopping cart, get in line to pay for it, and then take it home! Yet it happened for Simmons just as it has for countless other immigrants to this country before and since his own introduction to America's "instant" way of life.
As a kid, my mother didn't drive a car, so everywhere she went was either by foot or by bus when my father wasn't home to drive her/us to and from specific destinations. I got used to it, as did my little brother. I can remember entire mornings or afternoons spent to run just one or two errands literally speaking. The grocery and drug store was in one direction approximately 1/2 mile away---and the dentist/doctor and "more" stores were in the other direction approximately 1 mile away. That was our lives back then. I can recall walking through high snow to get to the "Roemer Clinic" because I was sick....or walking to "Cuda's" so I could get myself an Archie comic book on a Saturday for $.25. The idea of going anywhere in a car, with my mother behind the wheel, was like imagining Elon Musk coming over to take me to Mars in his rocketship. Not happening...ever!
And yet I managed to survive all that. I got older, I got a bike. I rode the hell out of that bike before I learned to drive...and then acquired my own car. In this way, my own inner script began to flip when I could see "beyond" the pattern that was established for me early on in my life with my family. Women don't drive cars. Women walk or take the bus everywhere. Women are literally dependent on men to "get around". As this example has to do with flipping my script as pertaining to simple transportation-related issues, can you imagine the work to be done when our own inner script flipping involves so much more than that? For Gene Simmons, coming to America was his family's "big-flip-beats-all" solution to the lives they had in Israel...
We rarely enjoy looking back at the past unless it's "fun" for us to do. Everyone gets a kick out of waxing nostalgic when it can make us or other laugh out loud. "Remember the time when...??" Yes, of course we do remember "that" time that made us laugh like hyenas! But what about the time when you were told that your dad always wanted a girl, but your mom didn't want another baby no how and no way! And yet you still showed up. Or how your older brother told you that you were a waste of space and how much he hated you for living and why don't you just get lost permanently because you shouldn't have ever been born anyway. Dad wanted a girl...but you were born a boy. Mom wanted a boy...but you were born a girl. You should have been aborted. You should have been like the "rest" of your siblings and not this freakish anomaly that you turned out to be with red hair and your grandpa's huge nose.
Don't be shocked. Children are often told what form(s) of "mistake" they are long before they even know what the word "mistake" even means! Imagine the farming families of yesteryear where one or three or five of the kids weren't as "strong" or "hard working" or "resilient" as their sibling co-workers. You think I'm kidding? Talk to anyone who had 9 or 12 or 15 brothers and sisters working "the family farm" as they were growing up and you'll find out more than you ever dared to imagine about children being mistaken for mules on a daily basis!
And now you wonder why we ALL have so much work to do in recognizing the relevance of flipping our own inner script when it's been more harmful than helpful to us? I sure don't!
When we have adopted a shame-based identity due to the "stuff" we have been told about ourselves by whomever and whenever, our inner script doesn't have much of a chance of working for us as much as it will in working against us. Shame as a state of mind is so much more destructive than shame which is based on literal wrongdoing. When we confuse the two and we believe ourselves to be "bad" or "defective" or otherwise "a mistake" before we even do anything rightly or wrongly----we are pretty much doomed. Never forget, we all "make" mistakes....yet we are NOT mistakes as human beings!
What are some of your own earliest memories to do with how "you" were welcomed (or not!) by your own family of origin/family system from the time of your own birth? If you were adopted, what is your adoption "story" as it was told to you? How does that "story" compare to the truth of what you found out since that time? Was it o.k. for you to be born? To be a girl or a boy? To be the "newest" addition to your family in the eyes of your mother, father, sister(s), brother(s), and other extended family members? Who celebrated your existence from among your family members? Who did not? Was it o.k. for you to exist, just as you were at that time? Why or why not?
What happened to you...so you can begin to understand what inner script(s) motivate your decisions "now"? Until we can see what we may have avoided seeing, we still won't see it. And when we can't see it, we can't change it.
Until next post....