26 Quotes by Lukasz Laniecki

You don’t need to provide your parents with a “success story” to share at gatherings.

Parents were good to us, gave us a lot, took care for us when we couldn’t have taken care for ourselves, wanted the best for us, continue to care about us and our future, but none of it is good enough a reason to fulfil their dreams/ do everything in order to make them happy/ provide them with a peace of mind, or whatever they want for themselves.

They (parents) want life to unfold according to what they believe. Most people want that. The last thing they want and need, is somebody (let alone their own child) telling them that their beliefs about life are bullshit / full of holes/ severely flawed.

We feel stuck in a rut, unable to say ‘no’ to our parents, unable to put an end to their controlling behavior, unable to grab hold of our own lives, simply because we fear that we will hurt, insult, disrespect or disappoint our parents (entire families).

None of us has an obligation to accept the definitions of ‘respect’ and ‘gratitude’ our parents espoused, especially when those definitions can be used to guilt-trip us, or when they are being used for the purpose of forcing us to do certain things (as an extortion mechanism).

That’s not our role here, provide our parents with a “success story” to share at gatherings. Our role here is to contribute the best we can to the society. Use our talents and make sure we add the greatest value possible to other people’s lives.

We grow up in a belief system according to which children should always make their parents proud and happy (instead of making themselves proud and happy) - and that’s unfortunately the belief system in most cultures.

An approach, according to which children should fulfil their parents’ dreams/ do everything in order to make their parents happy/ provide their parents with a peace of mind, or whatever they want for themselves - because they owe it to them for all those years in which their parents took care of them - is utterly selfish.

It’s safer/ easier to follow the script and complain how broken some things are in that script, than to attempt to change those things.