We fight, we strive, we try hard to make it work for us and for the people we love. For the planet. And yet, we are caught in this never ending circle of not being enough or doing enough. When it happens we have two possible directions to follow: pretend to sleep until the winter ends (and it can actually last longer than expected) or we dig deeper in ourselves to find new reasons to keep going, nevermind the path as we have a goal to pursue. The point is that we don’t always know it.
I HAVE TRIED SO HARD BUT I KEEP FAILING. Or I have this feeling that it doesn’t matter how far I go, how deep I dig, how hard I study and how much passion I put in my actions, I am somehow always trying to reach something I don’t get to grab. In my life as parent, I constantly feel this sentiment. For two years now, I am in a profound reshaping of what I am as a person and then as a consequence as a mother and although often I have this feeling of running in circles, today I realized something I didn’t for a long time.
I am 35, turning 36 in a month, and I remember fighting against something for my entire life. Luckily, I didn’t experience any major loss or wars or catastrophic event but I have clearly in mind how much I fought to be recognized for who I wanted to be. Even when I was not sure of who I was turning into, I always saw very clearly who I didn’t want to become. Usually, the term of reference were the generation of my parents, as for all the teenagers out there. To me, they destroyed our future with their insane desire to have everything and to have it right now. They turned our planet into fire, they drawn all the resources, they reached their careers or personal goals easily compared to what my future and expectations on the same level appeared to be.
I wanted to be a different human being and I fought for 30 years against an entire generation. I know it’s easy to just blame the others for our current situation, it saves us from our responsibility. The entire point here is that I always thought it was my responsibility to clean their mess. Familiar, social and economic ones.
Now, I found myself discovering their legacy in me and I have to make a deal with what this generation left in me. And to make sure, in order to avoid the same mistake, to recognize that I am what I am because they are what they are (and were). This shift may seem easy to do but it’s one of the most painful ones.
To recognize that you have the legacy of your mother or father inside of you and it’s haunting you and at the same time it could save you if you recognize it. If you acknowledge it without leave it eating you from the inside. For all of this we are heroes.
I have to learn how to stop fighting and just sit aside, listening to myself and to what my legacy has to tell me. Whatever it is. To learn how to be enough, to feel I am enough, at least for myself. To stop collecting activities to “save things” when the only thing I should save is my mental health. Make this world a better place starts from making me a better human being, free of corrosive thoughts and unbearable guilts. It starts from having the strength to forgive a generation that won’t forgive me to be like I am and not feeling disappointed for this. To stop looking for approval and just do what feels right without fighting against an enemy. Visible or invisible.
“We are the heroes of our times, but we are dancing with the demons in our minds”
Mans Zelmerlow
Vattelapesca 