It is one of life’s ironies that we have deep conversations with strangers while we only engage in small talk -- and remain strangers -- to the people dearest to us.
The comedian Aziz Ansari does an insightful caricature of the superficial exchanges that ensue when grown kids visit their parents. Relationships with our parents are complicated even when they are alive; how much more emotionally confusing it can be when we contemplate their passing.
With the current coronavirus epidemic, many of us will be spending a lot more time interacting with our parents, either in person or on the phone. This represents a significant opportunity for us to deepen our relationship with our parents and to rediscover who they truly are beyond the images and stories we have constructed about them from our childhood.
Unless we heal from the unfinished emotional baggage in our relationships with our parents, it will contaminate our other significant relationships unconsciously -- if not consciously.
Psychologically, we tend to inhabit one of two extremes: either of glorifying our parents, seeing them as flawless superheroes; or demonizing them, seeing them as extremely flawed. This tendency to either worship or demonize our parents leads us to view them through rose-colored glasses or through jaundiced eyes.
One of the deepest human needs is to be “seen” and to be unconditionally accepted for who we are and for who we are not.
It is only when we can accept our parents without seeing them as either heroes or as villains that we are able to love them for the ordinary people they are and to heal our relationship with them.
As the Indian mystic Osho reminds us, it is a lot easier to love perfect people and much harder to love ordinary people, and yet a truly loving person is capable of loving ordinary people for who they are and for who they are not.
For this to happen, we can make the shift from the ritualized small talk we engage in to the “big talk” for our relationships to grow in intimacy. Although it may feel uncomfortable to suddenly engage our parents at a deeper level, the fruits in terms of deeper connection will be felt by all and heal everyone. How wonderful to give our parents the gift we might have wanted from them -- the experience of being truly “seen” and loved unconditionally.
My effort at engaging in “big talk” had to be put into turbo mode, because my parents lived in India and I lived here and I knew that given the illnesses they were suffering, there was a good chance I would not see them alive again. So I borrowed a video camera and went down to visit them, hugged them and told them how much it would mean for me to know them more deeply.
I asked them questions that really got them talking:
- What are some of the most memorable moments in your life as you look back?
- What has given you tremendous joy?
- What has been hardest for you in your life?
- What have you felt appreciated for and what have you felt unappreciated for?
- What are you carrying that you never expressed to anyone?
- What dreams of yours were fulfilled and what remain unfulfilled?
- In what ways have you felt understood and misunderstood?
- If there are three precious lessons that you would love to share with your children and grandchildren, what would they be?
When they finally passed away, I had a deeper peace in my heart for knowing them beyond their parental masks.
Perhaps you may consider sharing this article with your parents and with your children as a way of inviting deeper conversations during these times when you will all be probably spending a lot of time together as a family.