In order to continue with my adult sensitivity training we will first need some historical background. My specialty.
What we are dealing with here is a mind-set. People emigrated to America looking for a better future for themselves and their families. Basically, this means money, ergo, financial prosperity. Nothing wrong with wanting that. The tenth commandment says thou shalt not covet thy neighbors house etc.. It does not say thou shalt not covet a house of your own.
So most of the early immigrants were not prosperous home owners in the old country, which ever that was. The largest part of them were from comparatively poor backgrounds and that means they had an underdog mentality. They viewed themselves as less than their more prosperous neighbors and all their efforts in life in the New World were directed to eradicating this difference. This mentality became the American Dream.
These lower class immigrants saw that their more prosperous neighbors owned their own homes and sent their sons to college and they felt socially intimidated by them. They also told themselves that since these more prosperous neighbors did not work mainly with their hands, they really did not work at all. This is not true of course. Having to work with your head is even more difficult than having to labor with your hands, but those who had to work with their hands bolstered their self-respect mainly by ignoring this fact of life. So the American Dream became a muddled mix of these three lower class ideas—if you work hard and go to college, you will be able to own your own home, thus you will become upper class yourself. This notion is based on a lack of self-respect and represents the very muddled thinking of the have-nots’. Any man or woman who lives decently with their families and neighbors and has consideration for the needs of others is a wealthy person—regardless of their income.
You see, poverty is not really about money. It is about emotional destitution. Emotional destitution cannot be cured with either money or college. People are poor because they have no self-respect, not because they do not have a six figure income and a diversified stock portfolio. Slopping four years of college over such people will not eradicate their poverty-stricken mentality and standing by while they ram college down their children’s throats has not produced a stable, wealthy, upper class population. Almost all of you who may happen to read this are victims of this muddled have-not agenda. It won’t do any good to find fault with your parents at this late date but it will help you enormously to admit this to yourself. Here is what your parents should have done for you. If they did not do these things, you will know why your adult years have been so hard even if you did graduate from college.
It is a responsibility of parents to provide for their children and to do what they can to give them a good start in life. It is also their responsibility to tell their children what they are doing for them and why, especially when they are old enough to understand some of the work involved. This is how you teach children to be good parents themselves. Telling children the what and why of how you have provided for them is far more important than the amount of the provision itself. It is not necessary to leave them independently wealthy. It is necessary that they understand you have done what you could. This is solid proof that you love and care for them. This more than anything else will send them into their adult responsibilities with a sense of wealth behind them, irrespective of material things.
It is also a parental responsibility to aid you in selecting a partner in life. Did your parents do any entertaining for you when you were in your teen years or did they just send you out, alone, on “dates” where all the responsibility fell on you? Did your parents have a nest egg saved for you so you would have something to start your adult life with? Or did they just yak about going to college and expect you to go into debt for it yourself? Did they leave you the family home when they passed on so that you would not have to pay a mortgage yourself? Did they even consider doing so? Did they ever discuss with you in your later teen years what they had put by and how they hoped it would make your life a little easier? Did they explain to you why it was usual for the husband to be the wage earner for the family and the wife to devote her time to caring for the home and children? Did they tell you why the wife was to be respected and acknowledged for her efforts and the husband for his? The family is the major source of emotional fulfillment in our lives, not marriage. Marriage is a sexual relationship, an adult responsibility and although it has a fulfillment of it’s own to offer, it is also a chore. If your family did not provide you with any sense of loving care as a child, you will be ill prepared to support a marriage emotionally. How well did your family provide for you so that you could go into a marriage with something to offer your spouse? This is what parenting is all about. And as strange as this may sound, acknowledging these things now will provide you with a sense of emotional wealth although your parents did none of them for you. You can start with your own children. Even if they are adults.
The reason I have called this Adult Sensitivity Training is because as adults you need to be sensitive to the fact that most of you were left totally alone as children. Emotionally, financially alone. This is the reason for the divorces, the multiple “relationships” that “didn’t work out,” the fear of commitment that so many of you have. Your parents did not even dimly consider their responsibility to you and this set up a legacy of emotional poverty. That hurt you back then but because you were just children, you could not articulate that hurt. The healing process will begin when you acknowledge the reason for the big black hole of your childhood years.
Now that you are adults, you need someone to be sensitive about your needs and to understand how hard your adult lives have been because of that parental lack and even though there are literally millions of you and only one of me—I’ve got you covered.
A. Farwell
The Longest Journey Begins... 