As a therapist, I see clients with many different diagnoses. Over the years, I learnt one thing – that we humans always seek control and predictability in our lives and, when we don’t get it, we become distressed. This goes for ourselves, as well as for others who we care about. A person with ADHD or bipolar disorder is unpredictable and beyond control (both of others and of themselves), and we start being concerned of their overall functioning.

I then began wondering – why would we seek predictability and control when we KNOW our world is unpredictable and uncontrollable? A couple of days ago, it struck me – our brain makes ‘rules’, or heuristics, for EVERYTHING. Following heuristics makes it easier for our brain to understand our world. In the process, our brain creates heuristics for our daily functioning.

Following a “if x, then y” thought process doesn’t really work, however, in the real world. “If he’s in school, he will be focused”, “if I ask for help, I will get it”, “if I give to others, I will receive from them”. Can you see how that speaks to a need for control and predictability?

So, why would our brains nurture our dysfunctional thought and emotional patterns? Because our heuristics change – “if he’s in school, he’s never going to be focused”, “if I ask for help, I’m never going to get it”, “no matter how much I give, I’ll never get anything back” OR “I don’t have to give to get”.

OK, so what are we meant to do about it? First of all, be aware of it as an unconscious and automatic process. Know when you are seeking control or predictability, and realise that it is, perhaps, your brain’s way of making life easier to understand.

And then, use our wonderfully evolved capacity for executive functioning. Pay attention to the one place that you DO have control over – the here and now. Come back to “I may not know what’s going to happen in the next minute, but right now, I am doing/feeling/thinking…”. Let this guide you to what you do/feel/think next, and don’t let that be the source of an attempt to predict our control the future. It’s not easy, and it is an intentional lifestyle that we put in place every day.

This is just a thought – I haven’t looked for research or clinical backing for it, so don’t quote me. But do think again – do you think this could affect you?

We haven’t evolved, really. Evolution has been based on survival of the fittest. Humanity has forgotten what it means to survive. We do not know survival. All we know is hedonism. And where does it come from?

“My child shall never want”.

The pain of seeing one’s child desire something they cannot have is painful. It engenders envy, desire, jealousy. But it is only by going through the tunnel that one reaches light. And there is no dearth of tunnels in this life.

So, two children stand at a tunnel’s entrance. They both think, “here’s another tunnel”. One goes through the tunnel, thinking “Heck, I’ve done this before. I just have to get through time the other side, and I’ll be alright”. Meanwhile, the other either turns around and stays in the light without ever crossing the tunnel or waits until someone takes his hand and guides him through it. Delayed or aborted, the second child’s growth is needlessly slowed.

We are, in effect, helping our kids to be like the second child. We take upon ourselves the negative emotions and cognitions that would be exceptional learning experiences for them. We ensure their every whim is fulfilled, excusing it by saying they will not suffer as we have. But neither will they develop the grit, the strength of character – the very will to survive – that our struggles have afforded us.

Ironically, those who face such struggles want the ease that the others have. At what cost? Being wealthy is not being rich. Being strong, being resilient, being able to cope with a harsh world, THAT is richness. Facing the tunnel and not fearing it’s darkness knowing it is temporary, THAT is richness. And it is those people who have, and will, evolve. For they know how to survive.

Last week, I was on a bus. Traffic was slow, and I was struggling to keep myself awake by listening to music. At some point, I heard voices over my music, a thing that I felt was rare in the US. I took out my headphone to hear a woman arguing with another with a child. The child had apparently touched the other woman on the knee, which had aggravated her.

As I put my headphone back into my ear with a sigh, I found myself wondering once more about children. Or rather, about our reactions to children, be they our own, our friends’, or those of complete strangers. We see infants and we think, “oh, how cute.” Sometimes, we don’t even think that. Every act of the child is assessed on adult standards – their crying, their movements, the things they say – and then hold the child’s elders responsible for when the child does not fit what we expect. Children cry when they’re hungry or upset. They LEARN to control it, but that doesn’t mean that they can do so all the time. We adults can’t, so how do we expect them to?

Yet a baby crying in the subway or on a bus is unacceptable, earning many dirty stares – and, sometimes, harsh comments – to the adult accompanying them. Children like to explore. They enjoy their expeditions in all those activities that we find mundane and boring. And yet we get annoyed at the boisterous little boy who touches things we think he shouldn’t (even if doing so would not lead him to direct or indirect bodily harm). We give stern glances to the little girl who asks us innocent questions and then for clarity about those questions. Few of us have taken a flight where there hasn’t been a child on board. And yet, when we do, we grumble about the sound of the baby crying or the ‘hyperactivity’ of the little girl excited about taking the flight. Flights are difficult sometimes, and if they can make us uncomfortable, how do we believe that a baby won’t cry, or that a child won’t run up and down the aisle to relieve his or her boredom?

On the one hand, we encourage children to be curious. And on the other, when a child asks us questions, sometimes embarrassing ones, we give them the cold shoulder or even a sharp look. Why? Because they asked such a question. Because they actually wanted to know something. They dared to want to learn from a complete stranger. How could they.

In all honesty, they absolutely can – that is what we encourage nowadays, independent thought built on asking questions, learning something new and incorporating it into an existing knowledge base. I can still recall a time when a young preschool student of mine asked a heavy-set woman, “are you going to have a baby?” I was terrified about her reaction, but she laughed and said, “No, that’s just my belly”. I went to her to apologize, but she smiled at me and said, ” well, at least he learned that not all big bellies are a sign of being pregnant!”

WHAT ABOUT THE PARENTS? In a myriad of cases, parents are unnecessarily held responsible for their children behaving in a very natural way. We somehow expect them to have become superhuman, and capable of watching their children 24/7. We cannot believe that there may be circumstances unique to them that force them into a situation of having to control their children more than normal. People would not have been so mad at, say, a mother and father of twins boys who were on the autism spectrum, who could not control their them on a 17-hour flight, but had no choice but to take the flight to get specialized treatment for the two preschoolers.

It is impossible to say all parents are good, that all of them are not to be held responsible. In certain cases, they are. When they neglect their children, or punish them so harshly that the children no longer know what is right or wrong, what is good about them and what they can rectify, then we all can say that they aren’t doing right by their children. But until we know the circumstances, can we really point fingers? We were all children once. Why begrudge them the freedom that we once had or desired ourselves?

It’s been more than a year that I arrived in the US.  Today, I received news that an childhood friend of mine was coming to visit tomorrow.  “What’s so big about that?” I hear people wondering.  Well, you’re right, it isn’t a big deal…in itself, at least.  But what made a big deal is what feelings it elicits.

Meeting an old friend, for the longest time, was a wonderful concept to me – to catch up on old times, to reminisce over the crazy, fun and entertaining life we had together as kids.  However, that seems to be a rare phenomenon. I have always been in search of that one relationship – the one which continued to have value even over the years.  It appears, on a daily basis, that such a persevering relationship does not exist.  People do forget others.  And there is nothing that changes that.

Indeed, not even blood can keep two people close.  Sure, if you’re immediate siblings, then there is no question.  But as soon as one speaks of first cousins, or aunts, or uncles. things change drastically.  A cousin you have grown up with may have already forgotten all about you, and you feel it painfully when you stay with them for a week. In some cases, not even that long – my erstwhile best friend from back home (whom I believed closer to me than my very own sister) was so different when I saw her, just for lunch, that I realized then and there she had become the kind of shallow people that we once used to make fun of.

Why the change? To fit in.  Children yearn to be what they are not, and then become exactly that as adults.  We mocked the superficial, uncaring world of the ‘popular’ kids, but that did not mean that we did not want to be one of them.  We laughed at those people who had drunken sprees with one another on the weekends, but that did not mean we did not wish to be asked to those selfsame events.

Being part of the ‘in’ group DOES mean the world to a person, even if they appear unaffected by the very existence of the group, or show a blatant dislike for it.  And this is what changes many of them as adults.  We become that which we weren’t in childhood with the belief that this is what will make us happy in the future.  and along with that comes a very sad situation – we unwittingly let go of those relationships that could have meant something even more valuable than that which we are now receiving.

Take for example the cousin I had mentioned.  Right now, the cousin is very popular, with many friends that he goes drinking with almost every weekend.  But at the same time, he competes relentlessly with my sister, who is the least interested in such trivialities, and disregards my existence as well.  And yet, as a young man, he was the most warm and considerate relative I had ever had.

Sure, on our own, he may revert to the ‘old’ person, although I must admit that’s only with me.  And yet I have seen the other side of him, which has altered our relationship irrevocably.  No longer can I trust him to be the person that I once admired and looked up to – the person I loved with all my heart.  That person has been hidden so deep within him, that I can’t find him.  And even now, I wonder whether the change was worth it.

My sister, I guess, has changed, too.  But her very essence remains the same.  She is as independent, as confident,  and – yes – as headstrong as she ever was.  At times, this distresses her.  But she never let go of who she was, and – to me and to all her friends that she kept since we were kids – that was her most irresistible trait.

I have to say that I changed, too.  I tried to become one of “those” kids – the popular, the favored – and yet my own, inborn naivete and unawareness of the pitfalls that befell those who were popular led to me reverting back to the person I once was.  But there was an unexpected boon from all that I suffered after my change…I became unintentionally popular. Question is, did I already have to the skills to do so, or did I gain them through the trials in my life?

But that is another matter altogether.  I will not say change is a bad thing.  Quite the contrary, it makes life worth living.  But how much is the question.

In school, it hurts to be grouped as geeks, nerds, losers, rejects, jocks or bimbos.  So we strive to remove ourselves from the group, and in the process we lose our own essence. 

At times I wonder, maybe those nicknames in schools – geeks, nerds, losers, rejects, jocks, bimbos – could actually be used for the benefit of the students.  The geeks and the nerds are the brains in the school. The losers and the rejects are the last word in  individuality and genuineness. The jocks and the bimbos are the social leaders.  And each of them are a bit of the other – don’t the nerds and geeks, the losers and the rejects, band together in their own way?  Don’t the jocks and the bimbos show their intelligence and skills in some way or another?

Should children feel that the way they are is “not good enough”, or should we engender in them a love for who they are?  We weren’t just members of those groups because of the stereotypical definitions of them.  We were ourselves within them, and we lost ourselves as we grew up fighting against our own nature to become something we never were in the beginning.  We buried within ourselves those very qualities that would have, perhaps, made us as loved as we wanted to be in the first place.

As a counselor, I often found myself telling kids, “You may think you don’t want to be a certain way right now.  But believe me, once you’re out of here, there will be no other way you want to be”.  Of course, no one believes it at the time.  But it is the truth – who you are right now is who you want to be.  If you weren’t meant to be that way, you are better off not being that way.

I just hope someday we can get this message to all kids…maybe then we won’t have another or Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold, or Jaylen Fryberg.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton