Why do we judge our children but not look within ourselves? Is this splinter in our child's eye not jsut the beginning seed of the log that is still in ours? Unless we are self-honest, we will create a resentment within our child of the very sound of our voice. If we seek only to control instead of to educate our child will end up exactly the same as us.
"But I"m not the same as my parents," your inner voice will surely say.
Well, do you look for security in a world of competition where most go without their fundamental basic needs?
Do you put the pursuit of happiness above the goal of changing this world to be best for all?
Do you distract yourself with feelings and emotions?
If so, you can predict the outcome of your child's life: Exactly the same as yours.
How do we as parents, prevent our children from growing up to just be consumers? In a world where automation and AI will be increasingly replacing jobs, and thus where there will be few jobs left for those who are not highly creative and well educated, what will be left for our children to do, but consume the never ending supply of solutions to problems that don't really exist in the form of consumer products and entertainment produced by the robots that are better at completing a task without the unpredictability of emotions slowing down the assembly line?
As parents, we must really question everything about what we believe we are and most importantly WHO we believe we are.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to become addicted to the pursuit of pleasure.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself be manipulated by and to manipulate myself and others through reward systems.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to evolve into a highly sophisticated machine that looks for positive and turns away from negative.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed to participate in and accept and allow the creation of a society that produces a ready supply of rewards in the form of drugs, games, entertainment, pornography, sports, drama, and social media.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that social media does not connect us to each other in order to improve the balance of life and society but in order for us to leverage the group in our pursuit of instant pleasure in the form of rapid dopamine release.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that one of the most significant tools ever created, the cell phone, has been used and allowed to be used to create a jail cell for each of us, where we can get an endless supply of dopamine, so that we never realize that we are dopes sitting in a jail cell of our own design, waiting out our sentence, when life could be something amazing beyond imagination but that would require us to transcend our desire for the quick fix.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to use social media, games, TV, movies, porn, drugs, sex, and gossip as a way to get a quick fix, paying no attention to the real problems in this world that REQUIRE attention, only focusing on 'what's in it for me'.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to suppress the tremendous guilt that I feel deep down for bringing a child into the world only to submit them to a mental prison of constant stimulation and competition for their attention for them to become nothing more than an addict, sitting in a casino, pulling a lever, the lever which releases the dopamine hit, to keep them looking for more and more and more, and never being here, like a Tree, breathing, living, giving, receiving, only taking, consuming, discarding, and wanting ever more.
I commit myself to investigate all the ways in which I still accept and allow myself to look for a quick fix, a quick hit of dopamine.
I commit myself to support myself physically to stop participating in that which serves no real purpose as what is best, but is only designed to feed my mind with a constant supply of energy to continue being the directive principle - to stand up and direct myself within whatever technology or situation that is required to use it and leverage it in order to bring forth a world that is best for all.
I commit myself to be the example for my children of what means to be a human who not only KNOWS what the problems are that require attention but DOES what is required to be done.
