I've been thinking today of the lesson my father wanted to impart on me by locking me in a room for three days, forcing me to memorize a random page out of my history book, and terrorizing me every hour on the hour he was at home. For the purpose of discussion, let's take the interpretation of this event that is most favorable to my father.
Let us assume that he went nuclear because he feared I was going to fall into a trap he had fallen into - fucking around and poor grades - and wanted me to avoid the kind of hardships his mistakes presented to him. This is plausible enough - he went to Duke University at a time where it was antisemitic, had a miserable four years, and did not do well. To get into medical school, he had to complete a master's program and use his father's influence with the state governor.
And when I consider the event in this light, I think OH MY GOD. Being able to get cranked up to do something perfectly is a useful skill, I will admit. In a very few times, it has served me well. But oh my God what kind of parent wishes to beat the ability to be perfect into his child? What the fuck kind of warped value is that?
I worked my ass off when I had to, and I got rather far in life, but I have to say that all in all I would rather have been less prosperous and happier. It's hard to be happy when you work 20 hours a day. It's hard to be happy when everything you do has to be perfect. Perfection is an insane standard to teach anyone, particularly a 13 year old boy. You don't have to be perfect most of the time. You can't be perfect most of the time. Shit happens. Fortuna spins as she wants.
And what right did he have to impose such an unrealistic standard upon me? It's not like he ever obtained perfection - in everything except, perhaps, his profession. I'm going to assume he was a good physician. I have no evidence to the contrary. But he royally fucked up his life for reasons I still find mysterious but that had nothing to do with perfection or the lack thereof.
Self knowledge isn't his forte, but he probably had some idea of what he'd done wrong in life. He certainly didn't have a clue about how do live life in the right way. He was miserable by all appearances. He was a drunkard. He was trapped in an unhappy marriage. His parents didn't give a bloody shit about him.
It seems to me that a rational person, confronted with this dilemna, might be irrasible, insecure, and utterly fucked up. I was. But why would you assume that what followed from your experience was perfection as an empirical truth? How would you know?
Seems to me there are a wide variety of reasonable alternatives.
I'm sick of thinking about this already. A friend of mine from college apparently wrote a moving eulogy to his dead father. I didn't read it; I glanced at it, and saw it spoke of his father as a partner in life. Mine wasn't. In the early years, he was a tormentor; as I made the more important decisions in life, he was an obstacle; later he was to be avoided by living in a different city. Every single piece of original advice he had ever given me had been wrong.
I guess I should be thankful that he created me and that he didn't molest me. Even if I was borne out of bottle.
I don't even want to imagine having a father as my partner in life. I can't even contemplate it. It is foreign to me. At this point, I'm not even sure I'd want it.
I don't want to think about this anymore. I've thought about it alot over the past four decades. It's been a central theme of my life. I'm tired of it. I'm tired of being fucked up over it. I'm tired of my head hurting. I'm tired of the incorrect instincts I have as a parent. I just want it to be over.
And for now, that's my answer: I just want it to be over.
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