The mental prison that parents create

Family is the first place where a human being experiences structure. And then on more and more and more structures are imbibed by human beings. Is there some book (fiction) that explores this? There must be some book. I need to know. I want to write something about it. The trouble is that I am so deeply stuck in the prison that I can think/feel just two things - anger and guilt. I have to break free both for personal liberation and for my writing.

Does somebody know a work of fiction that explores this?

I can't think of a particular book, Dark Desire. If I do think of one, I'll let you know. A lot of novels deal with family generally but in all kinds of different ways, as you know. But I really don't know. I hope you're not getting too down. Anger and guilt make a day very hard and the internet's never very much good for making me feel better, but this site is good. :-)

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Originally Posted by dark desire

Family is the first place where a human being experiences structure. And then on more and more and more structures are imbibed by human beings. Is there some book (fiction) that explores this? There must be some book. I need to know. I want to write something about it. The trouble is that I am so deeply stuck in the prison that I can think/feel just two things - anger and guilt. I have to break free both for personal liberation and for my writing.

Does somebody know a work of fiction that explores this?

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That's correct. "The talent of children is in that they have no alternative," Said Maya Angelou and she was on the nail. Children must gain a lot of experience before they can fly on their own. The fact that you realize this is probably a rare gift. I don't recommend any book on this matter because it is a process you have to undergo and tolerate. But I do recomment the writings of Toni Morrison in general. They should make you more aware, with much more precision, of the failures in avenues of communication. The prison is unavoidable at first sight, and there are no magic formulas other than the prison itself. That's the way it is.

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Originally Posted by dark desire

Family is the first place where a human being experiences structure. And then on more and more and more structures are imbibed by human beings. Is there some book (fiction) that explores this? There must be some book. I need to know. I want to write something about it. The trouble is that I am so deeply stuck in the prison that I can think/feel just two things - anger and guilt. I have to break free both for personal liberation and for my writing.

Does somebody know a work of fiction that explores this?

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Im guessing you have yet to leave the nest, trust me when I say this, for the rest of your life, though it may not seem so, you shall look upon this time with nought but nostalgia and longing for it. That structure is more akin to a warm net to protect you from falling. When you escape and experience true freedom then that net is no longer there, and once you have fallen only then do you realize the perfection of that time, the happiness of that safety.

Do you know MGMT the band, they have a famous song called Time to Pretend. It is a song about a man who choose to life the free life, in pursuit of debauchery and wildness, drugs and women and gambling and living fast and dying young, yet it a sad song, the rake which has like magnesium burned himself out in one burst and finds himself left with nothing and extinguished. To use Byron's words "I have spent my summer while twas still may." And all he has left is those fond memories of his home and his great longing for his mothers embrace. The man left alone having wasted his life and potential, with nothing but illusions of the past left to comfort him, yet even those are bitter comforts what that time can never be again, and there are only the flames of a burnt life, which even if extinguished leave nothing but crumbled debris.

Here is the song - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9dSYgd5Elk&ob=av2n

And this is an excellent cover of the song which allows one to hear the true despair and sadness of the lyrics.

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Originally Posted by Alexander III

Im guessing you have yet to leave the nest, trust me when I say this, for the rest of your life, though it may not seem so, you shall look upon this time with nought but nostalgia and longing for it. That structure is more akin to a warm net to protect you from falling. When you escape and experience true freedom then that net is no longer there, and once you have fallen only then do you realize the perfection of that time, the happiness of that safety.

Do you know MGMT the band, they have a famous song called Time to Pretend. It is a song about a man who choose to life the free life, in pursuit of debauchery and wildness, drugs and women and gambling and living fast and dying young, yet it a sad song, the rake which has like magnesium burned himself out in one burst and finds himself left with nothing and extinguished. To use Byron's words "I have spent my summer while twas still may." And all he has left is those fond memories of his home and his great longing for his mothers embrace. The man left alone having wasted his life and potential, with nothing but illusions of the past left to comfort him, yet even those are bitter comforts what that time can never be again, and there are only the flames of a burnt life, which even if extinguished leave nothing but crumbled debris.

Here is the song - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9dSYgd5Elk&ob=av2n

And this is an excellent cover of the song which allows one to hear the true despair and sadness of the lyrics.

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I liked the song.

I think the nostalgia that you talk of has provided more meaning to the other side of the family experience than there is. I think the other side of the story is equally meaningful. You and the world is missing that part probably.

After having heard the story that you are telling innumerable number of times and in worse ways my interest has got heightened in my side of the story. In time I will experience what you are saying if it is indeed inevitable. But that future experience cannot negate my current experience here and now.

I do not believe there in an ultimate truth. Truth is dynamic if at all it is true - irrespective of whether it is comfortable or not. And if ultimately I have to recall this experience with nostalgia, why not to live this experience now in its glorious intensity. Trust me I am deeply frustrated. And I am not trying to run away from it. May be I am struggling too much with it.

For me it is not a matter of leaving the nest. I have done that and then I had to return. More than once. I know how to fly and yet things are missing - flying high! making a dive! I crave to experience those. What in my past makes me so attached to the resentment and guilt I feel, I want to know. What exactly goes wrong? Because something does.

By the way as for debauchery and women are concerned, Henry Miller did the same thing. And his writings are considered to be highly liberating. I am yet to read him.

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Originally Posted by Declan

I can't think of a particular book, Dark Desire. If I do think of one, I'll let you know. A lot of novels deal with family generally but in all kinds of different ways, as you know. But I really don't know. I hope you're not getting too down. Anger and guilt make a day very hard and the internet's never very much good for making me feel better, but this site is good. :-)

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Yeah this site is good! And I like the subtle way you say things. Thanks for your concern. I recently went home and have not been okay ever since. My parents always ask me why don't I like it at home. Although they generally ask this question thinking that I will realize my 'fault', many times I feel compelled to get to the root of this. Obsessive thinking does not help, actually it harms but that is the point of obsessive thinking. It is obsessive. You can't get rid of it willingly!

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I think the nostalgia that you talk of has provided more meaning to the other side of the family experience than there is. I think the other side of the story is equally meaningful.

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Depends how you live the other side of the story. If you work hard, and live a constant and descent life I am sure it gives much happiness. All I am saying is enjoy your family while you can, because once you leave it, you shall miss it, it is the only place in love were the people around you love you. The rest of the world will always want something from you, and once they have taken it, your worth is gone with it. There is a sacredness of family love that cannot be replaced.

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You and the world is missing that part probably.

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I think me and the world have tried that part in abundance and have learnt what it truly is, and once you have you realize that your great fear is not missing out on freedom and idleness, but never being able to escape from it.

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After having heard the story that you are telling innumerable number of times and in worse ways my interest has got heightened in my side of the story. In time I will experience what you are saying if it is indeed inevitable. But that future experience cannot negate my current experience here and now.

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All I am trying to do is give friendly advice. I will put aside the obnoxiousness of your tone for a second and say this - when I was in higschool I hated the dullness of my life and wanted to escape from a constant routine of family and what was in my eyes a slavery. And I was in love with the whole glitz and glamour of living free and doing as I please, and never forgetting Milton's protagonists words - I will not Serve. But there is an emptiness in most of it which makes one realize how perfect that once perceived slaver was. Now if you wish to go away from home to go to university, I would say do it, but if you wish to run away and experience some perception of discovery and freedom I would suggest otherwise.

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I do not believe there in an ultimate truth. Truth is dynamic if at all it is true - irrespective of whether it is comfortable or not. And if ultimately I have to recall this experience with nostalgia, why not to live this experience now in its glorious intensity. Trust me I am deeply frustrated. And I am not trying to run away from it. May be I am struggling too much with it.

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It is all great to be theoretical when one is detached from reality, but your whole truth statement looses a lot of credence, when you have to call home to your parents because you can't make it anymore or because you have formed a debt which you cannot pay and need to call your parents asking for money. That is one of the moments in life were you truly feel pathetic, and all the reasoning about the truth and "Carpe Diem" and the man who speaks them, appear almost as pathetic as oneself. Yet not more pathetic, for nothing is more pathetic that oneself at those moments.

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For me it is not a matter of leaving the nest. I have done that and then I had to return. More than once. I know how to fly and yet things are missing - flying high! making a dive! I crave to experience those. What in my past makes me so attached to the resentment and guilt I feel, I want to know. What exactly goes wrong? Because something does.

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What exactly do you want to experience, you can't expect to just go out there and then you will know what you must do. That is one of the worst possible things to do. Experience, what do you mean - if you mean taking a bicycle and going cross-country sleeping by the road at night and only having enough money to buy some bread and fruit and cheese for sustenance, I would say yes do it. If you mean drugs and wild living and gambling and whoring, all I could say is that those things are rather pathetic and once you get caught like a rat in the wheel it is hard to get out, and there is nothing worst than knowing you are a rat in a cage, because a true man could walk out, but a rat is a beast and can only follow it's beastly instincts, and that is horrible, making yourself a beast, a pathetic beast.

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By the way as for debauchery and women are concerned, Henry Miller did the same thing. And his writings are considered to be highly liberating. I am yet to read him.

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I find Byron's and Fitzgerald's and D'Annunzios works highly beautiful, especially because of that great sadness which they know of having wasted their chance of happiness by pursuing false idols. When we see the rake in the play, we are not meant to aspire to be him, that is only what the childish mind see's, we are meant to pity, it is a tragedy of men who pursue freedom and weave her flag turning themselves into slaves while shouting her name.

I want to know what made you think I am being obnoxious. May be I am being so and I'd like to work on this.

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Originally Posted by Alexander III

Depends how you live the other side of the story. If you work hard, and live a constant and descent life I am sure it gives much happiness. All I am saying is enjoy your family while you can, because once you leave it, you shall miss it, it is the only place in love were the people around you love you. The rest of the world will always want something from you, and once they have taken it, your worth is gone with it. There is a sacredness of family love that cannot be replaced.

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I envy your experience of your family because mine has not been so. I really want to tell you how and I am not finding words. My experience has been that while family holds a high place in cultural myths, in reality there is a limit to their tolerance exactly like that the rest of the world. It is more complex than your model that gives you happiness. I do not want to generalize this but I have found love and given love outside of my family and it has been appreciated as well as responded in a better way than family. As a matter of fact nobody in my big family has ever talked to me as candidly as you are talking to me. (It makes you feel like a freak when a lot of people do that for a long period of time without exception; problems escalate when you pursue something that the culture does not sanction)

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Originally Posted by Alexander III

I think me and the world have tried that part in abundance and have learnt what it truly is, and once you have you realize that your great fear is not missing out on freedom and idleness, but never being able to escape from it.

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This is true.

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Originally Posted by Alexander III

All I am trying to do is give friendly advice.

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I do not know if you see this or not but I am more than appreciating your effort here. I am grateful for it.

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Originally Posted by Alexander III

I will put aside the obnoxiousness of your tone for a second and say this - when I was in higschool I hated the dullness of my life and wanted to escape from a constant routine of family and what was in my eyes a slavery. And I was in love with the whole glitz and glamour of living free and doing as I please, and never forgetting Milton's protagonists words - I will not Serve. But there is an emptiness in most of it which makes one realize how perfect that once perceived slaver was. Now if you wish to go away from home to go to university, I would say do it, but if you wish to run away and experience some perception of discovery and freedom I would suggest otherwise.

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There is an emptiness in what you are defending here too. It looks beautiful only from a distance.

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Originally Posted by Alexander III

It is all great to be theoretical when one is detached from reality, but your whole truth statement looses a lot of credence, when you have to call home to your parents because you can't make it anymore or because you have formed a debt which you cannot pay and need to call your parents asking for money. That is one of the moments in life were you truly feel pathetic, and all the reasoning about the truth and "Carpe Diem" and the man who speaks them, appear almost as pathetic as oneself. Yet not more pathetic, for nothing is more pathetic that oneself at those moments.

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I don't understand what made you say that I am away from reality. I can blame you for condescension as well. I do not need to spill out details of my personal life here but I see no other way out. I ask money from my parents, not to pay a debt or to lead a comfortable life but for minimal survival. Is that really so pathetic given that I want to pursue literature - a pursuit that has no head or tail in my culture? I have tried doing jobs but the mental exhaustion did not allow me to pursue literature.

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Originally Posted by Alexander III

What exactly do you want to experience, you can't expect to just go out there and then you will know what you must do. That is one of the worst possible things to do. Experience, what do you mean - if you mean taking a bicycle and going cross-country sleeping by the road at night and only having enough money to buy some bread and fruit and cheese for sustenance, I would say yes do it. If you mean drugs and wild living and gambling and whoring, all I could say is that those things are rather pathetic and once you get caught like a rat in the wheel it is hard to get out, and there is nothing worst than knowing you are a rat in a cage, because a true man could walk out, but a rat is a beast and can only follow it's beastly instincts, and that is horrible, making yourself a beast, a pathetic beast.

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We are on the same note here. Yes I do want to go cross country sleeping by the road at night living even more minimally than now. After living frugally for many years now while my classmates earn wildly, possession of money charms me too. :P

It will always be a torment to live in civilized society (You will agree here) but it also provides the possibility for a defined self in stark contrast with the culture. The other possibility is to lose oneself to one's instincts - I call that living in Paris or California. My choice will be living in a structured society but I do not see the other choice as an inferior one.

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Originally Posted by Alexander III

I find Byron's and Fitzgerald's and D'Annunzios works highly beautiful, especially because of that great sadness which they know of having wasted their chance of happiness by pursuing false idols. When we see the rake in the play, we are not meant to aspire to be him, that is only what the childish mind see's, we are meant to pity, it is a tragedy of men who pursue freedom and weave her flag turning themselves into slaves while shouting her name.

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I pursued a false ideal too - being a good progeny. :-) Now I want to write about it. That is why I put this post on. This long conversation with you has given words to insights that I always had but had never expressed. That is the reason for which I am grateful to you.

I have something that you can think about - You find the sadness of pursuing false idols great, meaningful and beautiful but one finds the courage to rebel against all established ways of life, its struggles, its sadness, loneliness, its tragedy you find childish! Why?

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Originally Posted by dark desire

Family is the first place where a human being experiences structure. And then on more and more and more structures are imbibed by human beings. Is there some book (fiction) that explores this? There must be some book. ...

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Of This Time, Of That Place

I've never read this story by Lionel Trilling: Ronald Laing cited it in his first book, The Divided Self, as an example of an existential position of ontological insecurity, whereby one contrived a false self in place of the real self.

Philip Larkin -

They **** you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were ****ed up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

Thank You folks! I got what I was looking for. Especially the Lionel Trilling story.