We’ve talked about spicy love, lasting love, playful love,and love between friends – how about a dose of storge, that love between parents and children?
So, for full transparency, I have to say that since I don’t have kids, I can’t speak on the parental side of storge. The closest thing I have to being a parent is my relationship with Sici. I swear I’d take a bullet for that dog. She’s like an extension of my own body. If that’s how it feels to have a dog, I can’t imagine the intensity of the love parents have for their kids.
So I don’t have much to say other than this: be good to your parents. With age, I have more empathy for them and all they’ve been through in their incredible lives. Little by little, I’ve been able to imagine them as having lives before I existed, as if they were actually people and not all-powerful beings. What a thought.
But real talk: on one hand, shattering that illusion of parent-as-hero can be an enormous disappointment. On the other, really understanding this fact adds so much more dimension to everything they’ve done and all the love they have for my sister and me. Wouldn’t it be less meaningful – and much more dull – if parents were somehow invincible beings with infinite capacity for perfection? The truth is that they’ve had to leave behind any ideas they had for who we “should” be in order to let us fully realize our own vision for ourselves.
Bows and Arrows
If you haven’t read the book The Prophet by Khalil Gibran, stop everything and get yourself a copy. It’s a beautiful philosophical text on anything and everything that we go through as humans – like a nonreligious bible of sorts. It is filled with short, poetic essays on love, on wisdom, on loss, on it all. There’s a wonderful passage about children and parents, and how the relationship between the two is like that of a bow and arrow. The parents’ role is not to control the entire path of the arrow, but rather to launch it onto its’ trajectory the best it can. This is what storge is all about.
There’s an innate sacrifice to this, to let kids find their own path. It’s like letting your heart stride off from the rest of your body, looking for its’ own way apart from you. I can’t imagine anything more painful and more wonderful than that.
That is one reason why I gain more respect for my parents over the years. They threw themselves into parenthood, giving everything to be the best “bows” they could be (which are damn good bows). They gave us everything they could, and we’re fortunate that that was quite a lot. Then they stepped back and let us steer our own course, supporting without controlling.
Mamas and Papas
I am grateful for many things that my parents have done forme. A major thing is how my mom never (never)pressured me in my career path, never pressured me about marriage or kids before I felt ready. None of that. She would simple listen to me talk about my goals and vision for my life, asking, “What can I do to help?” instead of the tempting, “This is what you should do.” From when I was in college and pre-med to now, working on the blog, it’s always been a question of helping me get where I want to go in the healthiest and wisest way possible.
My dad as well. For a long time, I assumed that he’d be disappointed if I didn’t make it to medical school. After all, he is a doctor, loved his career, and was delighted to share the interest in medicine with me.After the accident happened and I eventually realized that medical school wasn’t an option anymore, that fear became very real. And very short-lived. Instead of disappointment, he expressed the desire to help. And you all know how that’s worked out – my dad, a retired surgeon, is now studying photography so he can take photos for my blog. For. Real.
I’m not writing this to brag about how awesome my parents are, or to say that they’re “better” than others (although of course, I’m biased), or to put people down who don’t have a good relationship with their family. Sometimes your parent is not biological – they are adoptive, formally or not, they’re grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, or teachers. Whoever has been the bow to your arrow: that’s where you’ll find storge.
How has storge affected your life?
love
Stig
