#9 Our Actions and Their Long Tail
My maternal grandmother and grandfather. Sadly, both are no longer with us.
Lockdown in Sydney continues
I’ve been spending my mornings listening to Scattered Minds, a book by the Hungarian-Canadian Physician, Dr Gabor Maté. Although the book is primarily about the origins, expressions and healing process of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), it has sparked some other thoughts in me and I am going to share them briefly here.
In discussing the cause of ADD and other conditions, the book makes it clear that genetic dispositions play a strong role in determining our behaviour. However, our fixed coding only make it more likely that some of us will replay the same behaviours as our forbearers. Dr Maté makes a salient point that if genetic makeup was the sole determinant of who we become, then identical twins raised under different circumstances should always retain the exact same traits. Research suggests that although there is a strong correlation, it is nowhere near 100%. Personally, I find this to be quite powerful because it means that there is significant room for adaptation and personal agency. The existence of mental plasticity at any stage of our lives allows for the possibility of powerful personal transformation and change. No matter how down and out we might feel, we are still capable of meaningful adaptation.
Of course, making that change isn’t so straightforward. As the book points out, many of the factors that result in conditions such as anxiety and ADD are multi-generational in nature. Childhood volatility experienced by one of my grandparents has rippling effects down to me and will continue to impact future generations if I don't come to terms with them and do the required work to overcome their effects. The difficulty lies in the fact that so few of us fully comprehend how we are impacted by our genetics and our upbringing. We experience many of our inclinations as innate and they come to us as naturally as breathing does. It is only when our functions and dysfunctions clash with those of others - a spouse, a friend or even a stranger - that we become aware of our predispositions and habits. Once we are made aware of them, it is then a further task of trying to distinguish between the helpful patterns and the destructive ones. One might think this would be easy given we should know ourselves well enough but if we take one look around us, we would see that most of us are excellent at pointing out the loops of others and remain blind to our own disruptive patterns. This process of identification and acknowledgement can be highly distressing and exhausting. If we manage to hone in on the traits that are holding us back from living an autonomous and fulfilling life, we then have to possess the awareness and courage to free ourselves from their dominant influences. This is a colossal task. It isn’t a surprise that so many of us never even begin to acknowledge our patterns. It is simply too hurtful and shameful to do so. Nevertheless, I personally believe that as difficult as the work is, it is a worthwhile pursuit. This herculean undertaking not only brings me closer to my own self-actualisation, but it will also allow my children and future descendants to have a more fulfilling life, unburdened by trauma that occurred generations ago.
When I put all of this into the context of my own life, it really starts to make a lot of sense. I have always experienced my paternal grandmother as distant and cold. Although I have always wanted to be closer to her, she never seemed emotionally accessible, as though a part of her just wasn’t there. Over the years, I attributed this to generational differences between us but at best, that can only account for part of the story as I didn’t have the same experience with my maternal grandmother. Even when my father recounts his own childhood, he would always say that he was raised by his grandmother and his mother wasn’t really involved. A few years ago, I learnt that my great grandparents were part of a local militia during the 1930s in China and were both killed and their bodies dumped in the river when my grandmother was only a small child. Even then, I didn’t fully comprehend the gravity of those events and their effects several generations later. Today, I look at my grandmother and even my father in a whole different light. Their inability to express their emotions and connect deeply with their family was the result of unimaginable childhood disturbance, caused by forces far more powerful than themselves.
When seen in this light, the irrational or agitating actions of others become far easier to understand. Human beings are first and foremost emotional creatures. Without having the fundamental needs met at crucial stages of our lives, important aspects of our being will be underdeveloped going into adulthood. Maté points out that many disruptive traits aren’t fixed deficiencies but aspects of ourselves that weren’t given the proper conditions to develop. As infants, we were all prone to impulsive tendencies, such as irrational anger and easily triggered agitation. For people who continue to exhibit these traits into adulthood, there is a high degree of possibility that their development process was disrupted during childhood. This most often occurs when the bond between the child and their primary caregiver is interrupted or severed entirely. When I use this perspective to examine my own nature, some interesting rise to the surface. Due to economic pressures at the time, I spent a considerable portion of my early childhood away from my parents at boarding school. Between the age of 2 to 9, I only saw my parents on weekends and during holiday breaks. We moved so frequently during that period that I cannot recall the exact number of homes I had. Although these experiences gave me a colourful childhood, they resulted in significant turbulence and upheaval in my early years. Thinking back, this explains why I was so terrified to be alone even going into my late teens. It explains why I am unable to relax and sit still for long - a fact I was made aware of by my wife. The point here isn’t to blame my parents or my grandparents but to highlight the fact that the experiences of one generation can have lasting effects on the lives of their descendants, in ways that are concealed from them.
Some might look at that and think this perspective is an easy way to escape personal agency - Nothing that happens to me is really my fault so I shouldn’t be held accountable - far from it. This perspective allows me to see that the better response to destructive parts of ourselves or anyone else isn’t blame, it is understanding. If we can begin with the acknowledgement that our flaws are often the product of circumstance and not simply due to genetic miswiring, we can then start the work to adjust those circumstances for ourselves and our children.
Even in the last few days, I have come to see so many of my own patterns in this way. Of course, they cannot all be explained by childhood instability, it is never that neat or simple, but it does get me closer to greater self-understanding. Since the birth of my son Noah, I have often found myself thinking about my own actions and how they impact others around me. His birth gave me another reason to better understand myself. As Maté puts it, a great proportion of our impact on other people is invisible because we are simply acting out our unexamined proclivity. When those actions are perceived by others, they do not have access to our first-person intention or rationale, however benevolent they may be. They are privy only to the consequences of our actions and this is especially true for our children. My intention is to reveal my own invisible patterns so that I can allow those underdeveloped parts of myself a second chance to thrive. By doing so, I am hopeful that my own actions will have sown the seed for my children to find fulfilment and well-being.
