Let's start with examples.
I'm in the kitchen, My friend Ruth and I are rustling up something to eat. I leave both sauce pans on the stove with the handles sticking out where they can be bumped. Ruth gives me a warning about the handles sticking out. She means it as a care taking response. I take it as a interference, as if what I'm doing is not good enough. Ok, Here I was not actually aware of the potential problem but with my physical handicap neither was I interested in the extra effort required to to set myself up to turn the pan handles.
I'm at a group meditation, I start closing a door by grabbing the back end where the hinges are and twisting. A nearby lady, immediately jumps in and tells me to be careful I'll smash my fingers. This is meant as a caretaking response. In me, sets off a trigger, I respond forcefully. Please stop trying to mother me. With my physical handicap I was saving a few steps and consciously aware of what I was doing.
I'm at home, I'm replacing a shade with a blanket to see if it blocks out the sun better. All my mom sees is me taking down the shade and she tells me if I leave the shade down that room will get hotter. This is probably genuine caretaker concern. But I notice that it is her impatience that causes her to inject her concerns into the process before she understands the whole process.
And then I noticed this is what's common on all three experiences. A projection of fears of what might happen causes each of these three women to engage me without first understanding what I'm doing I am doing, or what I am doing it, or waiting patiently to see what will happen.
In all three cases I end up feeling, like they think I'm incompetent and still a child that needs monitoring. Worse is the fact in all three cases I do not feel a sense of connection in fact what I feel is the opposite disconnection. In each case I feel like I want to get farther away from the other person.
As I step back from these experiences I wonder what's the cause of my responses. I wonder if my mother's inability to let me go and be a grown-up has set a pattern of reaction that I now carry forward to interpreting the responses of all women.
I remember all the times watching mothers with children on the playground. They hover and call out constant warnings to the children to be careful about this and careful about that. I compare that to the men on the playground who say nothing but are physically present and will engage as soon as something does happen. Women seem unwilling to let any injury come to pass. The men seem to see injury as something normal not something to prevent. I see what I considered to be inpatients in the mothers.
From my point of view, I see the mothers as people who don't wait to see if the child is actually capable of doing it by themselves.
I see this response as a mother's inability to let go of her child's old way of being. As if she constantly sees the limited abilities that her child had yesterday. I wish I could wave a magic wand and create for her a new perspective where instead she would imagine all the confident new abilities her child was learning to be successful at.
Sure as I look at the dad's, (including me) many of them were too hands off and too un-observant to help their children avoid the biggest risks and worse injuries. They're almost, devil may care attitudes were an opposite extreme got also seems unhealthy to child-rearing. These fathers seem to be too disengaged, too uninvolved, too unattached to be an appropriate playground presence.
Is the feminine so preoccupied by safety and security that she is overly protective of everybody else's safety and security? Is the masculine so preoccupied with freedom and free will that he is overly protective of everyone else's freedom and free will?
Both sides of this equation have a purpose and useful place in child-rearing and our culture at large.
I'm becoming more aware of my own preoccupation with freedom and free will. And I see that I could nurture more of an awareness for safety and security.
I have tried to change my deep ingrained respond to the Feminine's attempts to caretake. I have not had much luck care. I have had much better luck restraining my own attempts make free will and freedom an important issue the others need to learn.
Admission, my mother was not good at letting go,.... not good at letting her 4 boys grow up and be independent from her. In fact, the last example with my mom is this week (3-24-2017) she is 90 and I'm 55, so neither of us is "growing" out of it. If yours was you may not have this issue like I do.
Looking inside is your path to spiritual development. If what I found in me assists you in seeing yourself more clearly, Great. If not. Be well, Be happy and make new friends.
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