Don’t Let Me Down

What is one of the strongest emotions we instill in ourselves? “Disappointment”. We live our life with a constant fear of letting someone down starting from parents, siblings, spouse, children, teachers, colleagues, society and even our own self. Our every action, every thought revolves around the fact of proving something or pleasing someone. This is initially a thought-out behavior but over a period of time it is engraved into our subconscious mind so deeply that we never realise we are running behind this emotion so strongly that all other emotions are racing to catch up with this.

My mother always told me: “I know what you are capable of”. She never allowed me to assess myself. So, my judgement was always against her standard of assessment for me. When I studied for exams, she felt the time I spent was too little and so the marks I received could have been better if I put a little extra effort. So, I always disappointed her with my result. I let her down and I could never satisfy her because she compared my ability to her capability and expected something which was not relatable to my personality. As a kid, I never understood this, and we always had clash in our opinion. Now when she sees the same situation around her, she realizes what she did in our younger days. Though our relationship had a very strong foundation of love when such disappointment surfaces, momentarily love did fade away.

Consistent recurrence of any emotion can build the path of that relationship which can define the destiny of that journey.  We hear people saying “don’t have expectation from children, it will lead to sorrow”.  This always comes from someone who is disappointed in their relationship. When you are happy and getting what you expected, you don’t get into the philosophical mode of judgment. We expect our children to excel in everything they do and for doing so we give all the support they want: financially, emotionally and morally. We make them focus on their life so much that we forget to teach them to value ours. We become the best teachers because we tell them don’t think about us and they listen to us obediently. We will do everything possible to support their dream because at that time we are young and want the best for our kids and don’t realise that in this journey we are making ourselves invisible to them. Kids do see the effort parents put but they only hear one thing: “you have to be the best”. So, kids think their goal in life is not to let their parents down. Emotions and values take a side stand here and relationship becomes transactional. Conversation becomes question and answer; Communication becomes a routine checkup.

Increased number of old age homes, lonely adults, depressed teenagers and anxious individuals are all result of over focused and fantasised self-worth. We miss assessing ourselves in the journey of developing our life. When relationship has a very strong foundation of love, we find courage to share the story behind letting down someone  but when that love is overpowered by fear and authority we lose confidence and  not just kids, even adults divulge into lying, escapism, addiction or even detachment.

During my school days, we had one annual day for the whole school and the kids who were interested in participating were picked for stage events. Now during my daughter’s school days, there are annual days for specific grades and parents expect all kids have to be on stage and also every kid should be in centre stage because only then they feel important. Schools can’t let the parents down by not giving enough importance to every kid. Children get on stage not for themselves but for parents to feel special. The journey of pleasing someone who is important in life starts from the very beginning. Do we parents ask our kids if they enjoy being on stage? No, we don’t because we think what will a 5yr old know about the importance of overcoming stage fright. How important it is when he grows up. If my parents would have pushed me, maybe I could have become a better orator and our imagination never stops. On the other hand, the kid who sees the joy in his parents’ eyes when he says I got selected for the event to play this role in annual day thinks, how can I say not to something which makes them so happy. They do so much for me so I can do this for them.  But no matter how much you convince yourself to overcome that fear which you chose to make someone else happy, the moment hijacks the battle within yourself, and we see our tiny kids freeze on stage and teachers and sometimes even parents dancing for them off stage.

As we grow this pleasing and proving battle keeps continuing at every phase and the feeling of not letting them down keeps growing. This growth of disappointment distances the relationship because then we start to hide our true emotion and put on a mask to display what others want to see in us.

When a kid has board exams, parents say no phone, no TV, no relatives visiting home, no attending family functions, no vacation, no disturbance because board exams are the most important thing in life. We tell when something is very important then you have the license to ignore everything and everyone. When the same kid applies the same logic later in life during an important project in work, no one understands why he is doing that. Ignoring family is what parents are teaching their children. So one day if a son doesn’t answer his parents phone call because he was busy in a very important part of his work, that son is only trying to follow the preaching his parents asked him to adapt so he can prove himself by not letting anyone down. Parents taught him that even for more than a year it is okay to ignore everyone and everything in life and focus on just one thing which they thought was important to him. Instead if we teach our kids to balance between studies, entertainment, family and friends, they will know that every aspect of life is equally important and focusing on only one thing is not how we should lead our life.

Showering everything on our kids is building the pressure of disappointment. As parents we want our kids to share everything they experience with us but instead they are building boundaries around that relationship and choosing to share only those aspects which they think won’t let us down. The main reason for this is we as adults don’t share our failures and dissatisfaction with our kids. We only want our kids to experience everything happy, pleasant and what is comfortable. They start to feel that if we share our failure, we are disappointing our parents and hence they cage the negativities within them and share only the positive. This makes even the real world feel like a digital platform where only the happy moments are shared thus making social media dictate our life.

When a statement like: “Don’t let me down” constantly lingers in our mind, our every action revolves around “how do I justify myself”. We start debating our own action to feel accepted. When love defines our relationship, we focus on people but when our achievements define our relationship, we focus on disappointment which accompanies our every action and every discission.