Friday, 3 May 2013

Relatives' Relativity

I'm not the only one with barmy relatives. I know.
In fact, I've just watched an episode of a series I like, and there we had neurotic, manipulative mothers mentioned as if they were ten a penny.
This seems to be a quite common trick in series and films. As well, if we just listen to chats around us, it's rather easy to discover that parents and relatives can be nuttier than a hazelnut tree in the summer.
Now, I've got a few chosen heart relatives, and those are really dear to me - then again, we decided to be a family of the heart; there was no DNA twist of Fate involved in this.
My blood relatives on the other hand... Merlin! There really was a time when I was younger when I did wonder if I was adopted (physically, I look too much like my maternal nan to have entertained that idea for too long, but... you know...). However, they're my blood relatives, whether I like it or not (incidentally, I don't like it, and I avoid the lot as much as I can).
This post was prompted by the fact that I had to deal with nasty bouts of family manipulation today, and I started thinking about the reasons for such a behaviour. Of course, there's a good part of habit: my relatives were themselves the victims of adult bullying and twisted manipulations, and they've become experts at it as well.
Yet, there's got to be something else. Something utterly twisted in people - not just in my own relatives.
Why are people belittling others?
Why are they hurting others on purpose?
Of course, I bet that some people are just cruel plonkers who enjoy making people cry, and I bet that others are just complete idiots who follow the sheeple and are doing what their friends are doing.
But... why are mothers and fathers (and their own parents and their entire collection of siblings) hurting one another and targeting their offspring?
Once more, I feel wired differently, because I don't understand that. I sometimes snap when someone tries to bully me because, as I explained in another post, I escaped the lethal claws of a manipulator, but I don't look for soft spots only to target them and use them against other Earthlings.
I view that as a waste of time, and a sin against humanity (I don't mean the whole number of bipeds on this planet, but that little thing that should make us different and that should provide us with higher aspirations, more compassion and greater souls).

Today, I started snapping at my own blood relatives because enough's enough, and they may think that I owe them my life, but, in fact, they should be extremely nice with me, because... well... I never asked to be born, and I'm not their slave, or their property, or their emotional punching-ball who's on Earth just to make them feel better about their sorry lives. It's not my fault if they're not living the life of their dreams, and they (or anyone else on this rock) shouldn't take it out on me.

Empathy and love should really start in families, and then, if people were nicer with their own blood relatives, they could try being nicer with people outside their families.
I find it disheartening that some can be nicer and kinder to strangers (for whatever reasons) than to their blood relatives.
More and more, I have the feeling that a lot of people have left their inner caveman brain "on".
This is the 21st century. It's high time to do better - or to go extinct.

2 comments:

Ruan Peat said...

I think you have hit on some of it, you repeat what you know, my mum who I love has a habit of guilting you into what she wants, I love her and know that's how she was brought up and that's how she brought me up, so I made it a joke at home, over emphasized and made sure that kids know they have the right to say no! That I can ask in a certain way but that isn't the right way to ask and that they must use there own minds. I hope to have good cleaver kind and thinking members of society. I only have them in care not as a right, what ever I get back is reaping what I sow!

Lanor said...

It's really hard to break the circle, but those of us who spotted the "infernal device" can work on changing things.
But, hell, it's tough...
*hugs*