Fear is something everyone has to face at some point in their life. Whether it is something as stereotypical as a spider crawling out from underneath your bed or being afraid of crashing while on an airplane. Every single person has their own personal fears and some people can overcome it and move on while others have to deal with it for the rest of their lives. My greatest fear would be to disappoint my parents again. I say ‘again’ because this is a fear I have come face to face with in the past. Disappointing my parents is one of the worst feelings I have ever felt in my entire life. After what I put them through, they started to believe that they were doing something wrong with raising me. I have never seen my parents so upset with me that they have cried. Having my parents not talk, look, or even acknowledge that I was present was something I wish I never had to experience. Not only would I sit in my room alone and think about my life, which would result in crying, I would regret every choice I had made prior. Even though I know that I learned from my mistakes I still had to go through my most dreaded fear. Nothing would ever change the way my parents felt at that point in time and what they thought of me. That is why I can say this is something that scares me into being much more careful and making smarter decisions. I hope I never have to feel that way ever again in my life and more importantly, never have to put my parents through it again.
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ReplyDeleteHey Marena,
ReplyDeleteIn reading most people's blogs, I have realized that the fear of failure is often many of our classmates' challenge. The reason they fear failing is they don't want to disappoint their parents, exactly like the overall idea of your post.
Yet, if to avoid failure is to avoid disappointing your parents, are you then living their life? Understandably, parents raise us up and take care of us. They are always there to support us from our first steps as babies to our first challenges as teenagers. Nevertheless, I feel that wishing too much to please our parents can result in a hollow motivation in our daily actions. If we were to study and succeed to make them smile, and not necessarily for our own satisfaction, is it a life worth living? In your post, the voice of your parents appears all throughout, while your voice seems hidden. I don't mean this in a negative way, but your sentences generally resemble "never having to put [your] parents through it again". They focus less on your own opinion and more on your parents'.
Perhaps there can be a shift in focus--more attention on your own happiness, and less on other's. After all, you are living YOUR life, not somebody else's. Ironically, I think being selfish, in this case, helps.
In Gr. 9, I remember reading a short story called "Two Kinds". The main lesson is to live our own lives. The narrator is subjected to do what her mother wants: without fighting back, she is forced to memorize countries and practice piano. For many years she obeyed her mother. Her voice, though, explodes in the end when she no longer cares about what her mother thinks. She no longer wants to follow orders and be oppressed.
If your biggest fear is to disappoint your parents, I think conquering this fear starts from your mind. Once you focus on yourself, and make morally correct decisions, you can soon avoid worrying about your parents' opinions. The only disappointing and troubling actions are the ones that are morally unjust. After all, if your actions are correct, your parents will most likely support them. To my understanding, all parents support positive and reasonable decisions.
Teddy, I think that this is a fear of a different kind. There is fear of failing to achieve something, then there is the fear of doing something to agitate and agrieve.
ReplyDeleteHey dude,
ReplyDeleteI had a feeling you were going to write this as your fear and to be honest I was going to write pretty much the same thing. I was going to say I have a fear of getting caught again but then I realized that I'm not afraid of that and I shouldn't be afraid of my parents. I compeletly agree with what Teddy is trying to say to you. Since I am your best friend and I've known you for so long now I can say that it is the voice of your parents in your blog and yes, yours is hidden. It's funny to me how Teddy, who barely even knows you, can tell by your blog post that it's written in your parents voice. The thing is, that he's completely right. Since the last incident of being "caught" you have completely changed. You are more like your parents now, but why do you need to be that way? Your only 16, you are allowed to make mistakes. The biggest reason for why I know you've changed is because you completely abandoned someone who I thought would be around forever. We've talked about him so many times now and how we miss the amazing times we had. So when you say "I would regret every choice I made prior" I know your saying that because you want your parents to be happy but deep down I know you don't regret EVERY choice you've made because the times that the three of us bad are irreplaceable. We were the three amigoes and he was like our older brother.
In a way your post is saying that you are actually afraid of your parents. No one should ever have to be afraid of their parents. I understand how you feel and I know you always tell me, "no you don't get it, you don't know what I had to go through" but yes I do. What I've learned is to let it go and move on. To learn in life, you have to make mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. Sometimes doing stupid things makes us smarter because if we never did them then we would not know as much stuff as we know today. I'm not saying you need to go back to the way you were, but I do think you don't have to be so uptight about what your parents will think. Like Teddy said is life worth living if your living it how your parents want you too? Now you can think about it, because now you can see I'm not the only one that says that.