These thoughts come fresh from a family visit where my 90-year-old mother, four sisters and I rented a house for a long weekend in the small town of Eagles Mere, Pennsylvania.
Have you ever visited your family as an adult and resorted to behavior and antics that you thought you’d given up years ago? Even when we resolve beforehand to do things differently, it can happen that we only recall the resolution after the trip ended. On the other hand, we might be proud to be one of the lucky ones who successfully follow through with trying on new behaviors only to have our family soundly reject the new me.
If any of these scenarios sound familiar, you’re not alone. Most of us either succumb to the family patterns we played so easily or go overboard in our efforts to forge new ways of behaving with our families. In the first case, we might leave feeling guilt about defaulting to the familiar. In the second case, our efforts at differentiating ourselves are rarely appreciated by those who count on us to act a certain way. Rarely does either scenario satisfy us. We then feel justified in shrugging our shoulders and trying to postpone another trip back as long as we can.
Confusion originates when we don’t know which inner voice to listen to. If we obey our good boy/girl voice, we’ll reinforce the implicitly agreed-upon family dynamic. If we speak from our contrary voice, we’ll upset that very dynamic. Most of us have adapted either some variation on “doing the right thing” or being rebellious. Many of us play both roles at different times or even from moment-to-moment. (I played the good boy through my first marriage then became a rebel once I divorced.)
There comes a time in our lives, however, when we realize that neither of these parts is a genuine expression of who we really are. While both may have aspects of truth that ring somewhat true, from neither part can we make authentic choices. To speak with our own adult voice and truly make authentic choices requires finding a voice that’s beneath both.
During this family vacation, my oldest sister, Jane, started spontaneously calling me Charles. This shocked me since I’d never been anything but Charley in the family. Around about the fifth time she said it, I asked her about it. She hadn’t even noticed the switch herself, but quickly added, “Well, I guess you’re an adult now.”
It wasn’t that I hadn’t been an adult—after all, I’m in my fifth decade—but calling me Charles may have marked another voice. This voice differed from the nice guy that did the right thing. This voice also differed from the one that readily—and almost gleefully—stood smugly apart from my family to claim a precious uniqueness. This Charles voice came from somewhere beyond either role. While it may not sound so different in our own throats and mouths, the truth lies inside others’ spontaneous response to it. We may scratch our heads wondering not only where it came from, but how it got here. And yet, with committed practice, I believe that this more authentic voice can be cultivated to be a regular part of our daily being, doing and choosing.
For those of you interested in exploring this concept further, here are some questions to consider: Which of these voices is your primary default in your family, the pleaser or the rebel? Where did each of them play out? Beneath either of these parts, what does your deeper, more authentic voice sound like? What does it say? What reactions have you received from expressing it?
Sunday, October 19, 2008
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