Still faced with the question and the burden of inner fear, of some essential unease with our self, we looked again at the forms of perception, the meaning perspectives that we can derive from our early life with our caregivers.
We asked, "What did our parents and/or caregivers do for a living? What did they do for us and our becoming self?" Many answered that such people offered love, support, nurturance, and guidance. We all agreed that sounded wonderful, but not everyone felt sure that's what happened to them, that these descriptors represented who and what they faced as they began to become a self.
We, as a becoming self, learn from our environment and especially from our interactions with others. Our parents and/or caregivers serve as the primary actors and focal points of such interactions and such learning. They teach us about the world and about ourselves. Many of us said they did that teaching mainly through language, but many also questioned that. Many said that whatever their parents said, they did something else. English even expresses that thought in a very old cliché: "Do as I say, not as I do." We all looked at that phrase which we all knew, and we realized how often the phrase pertains to parent/child relationships. Indeed, how it relates to the relationship between authority figures in general in their relationships with others.
My father told me, for example, in no uncertain terms not to smoke while he was smoking. He told me that even when the house we lived in reeked from smoke, and I accepted smoking and its smell as the norm from him and the world around me, even on television, in magazines, and in the movies. That made for very a confusing double bind. The voice and words of my father said, "Don't smoke." That came as a truth from my father. He smoked himself at the time, and that also came as an instructive truth about good behavior from that same source. As a child, what could I do with that? In my case, I followed the actions and not the words. Actually, most of us in the interview class agreed that as children we heard what they said, but we saw what they did. Most agreed they acted at some point on what they saw. One student said she knew just what we were talking about. She remembered that her mother came up to her at some point, grabbed her by the arm to turn her around, and said, "I'll show you what you get for hitting your brother." Her mother hit her—hard she remembered. She also remembered her confusion. She heard that hitting her brother was bad. She felt her mother hit her to show her the error of her actions. But the actions were the same. Her mother hit her, so what did she do with that? She said that she learned that hitting was good when you had the power to do so, and you felt you had right on your side. Of course, when she hit her brother, she had the power and felt she had right on her side. The question seemed to involve who had more power and when and in what sequence. Ultimately, she learned hitting was justified in some circumstances which the hitter got to define when the hitter held sufficient power.
Blaming children for exhibiting our behaviors might make very little sense when we take a careful look at our own behaviors. To paraphrase Gandhi, we can choose to act in the ways we want our children to act.
She thought it was a powerful lesson, and she felt very embarrassed because she still hit her children—not enough to really hurt them, she said, just to make her point clear. She also admitted that every time she hit a child, the child felt bad and she felt bad. We wondered why when everyone in a situation went away feeling worse for some interaction, they would also feel the interaction justified and worth doing again. Even though it didn't make sense as we looked critically reflected on it from a distance, it still formed part of that student's, and most students', meaning perspectives about relationships with children and others as well. That perspective came by way of thinking that we all have to learn to face up to the consequences of our actions. That's not just a meaning perspective. That's just true.
That's the nature of meaning perspectives—they go unquestioned and therefore feel true. They are always "just true."