TITLE UNKNOWN PART 3
...third and closing of this story...
Me: “Really, pray tell what else we fall into?!
Dad: “Don’t be like that! We are only telling you stuff that we have learned ourselves. Some may say too late but learned none the less.”
Mama: “You will understand when you have kids to talk to, be they your own or nephews and nieces. It is a privilege to be able to pass on knowledge and experience. This way the next generation can get to where its meant to faster and then push further.”
Dad: “A bit like that bird story before. You know, enabling the next generation to Eagle it up.”
The gall of the man! He was Inceptioning me! A story within a story! A lesson within a lesson. I genuinely remember having to bite my lip to stop the smile of admiration at what he was pulling off. Git!
Me: “….”
Mama: “Anyway, yes there is another fallacy that people find themselves in. The anchor.”
Que the hands…
Dad: “Yeah, some people cannot get away from a past event. No matter what they do they always bounce back to that point in their life.”
Me: “What? Like being born?”
Dad: “Not quite, more some experience or event or thinking that a person cannot escape from. Like a childhood experience, or parenting, or great achievement or something else that fundamentally shaped / shook the person. (He now anchored his Left hand in the air). Then no matter what they do or experience (moving his Right hand along and away from the Left anchor hand) they always rebound to that anchor (snapping his Right hand back to the Left).
No matter what they do they always bring themselves back to this anchor.”
Me: “So what?!” Clearly not getting the point…again, recall I was half asleep at the start of this experience!
Mama: “What’s that thing called when you can jump off a bridge and bounce around until someone pulls up the rope…?”
Me: “A bungee? What’s that got to do with anything?”
Mama: “Yes, bungee, that’s the one…I saw this funny Tube (Youtube) where the man did it over a crocodile pit…(at this point he pulled out his phone, and the three of us chuckled at a silly clip).
Anyway, this anchor that your dad talked about is like going through life with a permanent bungee rope wrapped around your waist. No matter what you do or achieve you will never get away from your past. This way you will never truly evolve.”
Pants! They were right! I started to see patterns of where I was doing this and effectively always rebounding back to the past anchor.
Me: “Okay, yeah I get it. Someone gets hit in the past or bullied or abused and they then treat all future experiences with caution. As if there is always going to be some ‘hit’ on its way.”
Dad: “Yeah, but it’s not just the crap experiences that you can anchor to. It’s the ‘positive’ ones too.”
Me: “Huh? How can that be a bad thing? I don’t get it…”
Mama: “Take you now, you are qualified in accountancy…”
Me: “Actuary”
Mama: “Whatever. You are qualified, now if for the rest of your life you say I am qualified and that is all there is to do then you will not be using your time here to its fullest. If, any time you come across a challenge, you simply say ‘not me’ or ‘I can’t be bothered’ because you qualified then you are just rebounding back to this point and not moving on.
Yes, you have achieved a great thing, but that does not mean you are fully defined by it. What will you do to help others with this skill, what value will you bring to others with it. How will you evolve to take advantage of the new opportunities in-front of you?”
Me: “Hold up, you said don’t live for the future but now you are saying always think of how to be more and be stronger?” (Obviously, I saw a chink in their argument and cutely/naively brought up my hands to bring my point home using their analogy; suffice to say I was feeling emboldened.)
I should not ‘anchor’ myself and live in the past (my Left hand posted in the air) AND you clearly made a case that I should not live in the future (my Right hand posted in the air about two foot from the Left). Pray tell then, oh enlightened ones, what is it that I should be doing?”
Genuinely I felt I had out thought them and had won one back for Team Youth. Now, some of you may have already realised where this was about to go, I did not.
With a warm and sincere smile on his face Dad reached across the space between us and grabbed my Left hand with his Right, and my Right hand with his Left. Surely, he was going to concede that I had beat him in this thought.
However, with his hands over mine, he pushed them together and said…
Dad: “Here, this is where you should be. In this moment, neither there nor there, but here.”
Mic Drop!
Honestly, this blew my mind and way of thinking. Getting me to challenge the fundamentals of the way I thought. It then took me another 6 months to come out of the grey…
Again, the usual caveats of me not doing justice to the profoundness of the message and delivery apply. This is very much due to my communication skill set and for this I am sorry.