Sure you can wonder sometimes, who you had been if the world you were not born into so strongly talked about for a who to be - what roles to have?Of course, it is impossible to think about the answer to that, but to think about it - both for yourself and in what you pass on to your children - is not completely unnecessary, I think.There are so many roles you are assigned without really (consciously) approving them. They are taken as for granted and are often based on factors such as gender, age, etc. A little sad, monotonous and, to say the least, stupid to throw roles at people like that, but some of them may play a function, somewhere in history.
Today we know both more and better and being "different" or "unique" is lifted in many contexts as desirable, strong and attractive. The tricky thing is that we are many who feel that the demands to be high performance, like "everyone else" and to fit into tight frames have never been higher than now .."Working like everyone else but at the same time was completely yourself" is a sentence that at least gets me a little out of balance .. I want to teach my children that differently is good, important (and probably also necessary for our survival). But then I throw them out in a world that shows that that "different" is strongly conditional ...
With that in mind, does it have to be more important than ever to talk to the children about being themselves - to be unique? And try to put meaning into it, for sure it is easy to say. But do we really live with the conviction - do we really dare to talk about being different (and what does it mean)?
Something else that I think is important to really talk about with children (and even with yourself) is to fail. What is it to fail and can it sometimes be good to do it?The expectation that everyone (small and large) should strive to be the best at everything they are doing is so great, while the failure is an eternal companion for all of us. We fail all the time and even if it can sometimes feel like the downfall of the earth may be good to be at all a little buddy to fail? If we do not, it is perhaps the risk that we are walking around and feeling unsuccessful most of the time - without really have failed?
What do we radiate adults when we fail and what does it say our little ones?
