Uphill Both Ways

Cycle-makers, cycle-breakers 

Hi (No) Wonder-ers,

If you see my kid enrolled in a school run by nuns, it means that I apparently died before having the chance to stop that from happening. Feel free to extend her your condolences. “I’m sorry about the religious trauma. Oh, and your dad too.” 

I enjoyed Catholic school so much that I made it my life’s mission to ensure she never has to go through that. She doesn’t need to go through life thinking she’s inherently flawed for living/loving/being a certain way, or thinking “guilty pleasure” is a tautology. Suffering is inevitable enough without making it unnecessarily so. “I suffered, she shouldn’t have to.”

I don’t remember when suffering became an Olympic event, some competition to be dubiously “won” by convincing others that we’ve had it worse. All I know is that whoever decided this didn’t consult me beforehand. Perhaps the Misery Olympics one-upmanship is some people’s way of feeling better about their suffering, or about the fact it might not have had to be that way. Who knows. I won’t fake an ability to wrap my mind around it. 

Many parents enjoy regaling kids with the myriad ways in which they had it worse. Sometimes it's true, but the implication is often “I had it worse, so quit your whining. Buck it up and suffer, kid. I suffered, so should you.”

“I suffered, so should you” is certainly one perspective to take, if you don’t mind your kid resenting you the very second they figure out it didn’t have to be that way. 

Thus there are two schools of thought regarding generational suffering: “I suffered, so should you, that’s the way it is.” OR “I suffered, you shouldn’t have to, it doesn’t have to be this way.” The former perpetuates generational trauma cycles, the latter breaks them. The former is lazy shortsighted thinking, foolish consistency that doesn’t seek improvement lest it rock the (sinking) boat. The latter does the work of introspection, sees inconvenient problems with the status quo, and goes against the grain in order to address them so they don’t continue. Often at the price of being ostracized as the “black sheep” of the family. 

Apropos of nothing, here’s a picture of Mirabel and Bruno Madrigal from Encanto.

It’s also worth noting that these ideas – the cycle-driver’s “I suffered and you should too,” and the cycle-breaker’s “You shouldn’t have to suffer like I did” – aren’t unique to generational family dynamics. Ask any medical residency trainee: I promise you we’ve seen plenty of “you should suffer like I did.” I'm pretty sure General Surgery requires that attitude. However, if we’re lucky, we might also have had a couple “you shouldn’t have to suffer like I did” mentors along the way. 

Loath as I usually am to speak in binaries, cycle-driving and cycle-making are mutually exclusive. They espouse different worldviews, different attitudes toward suffering. If you’re breaking a cycle, you’re not continuing it; if you’re continuing a cycle, you’re not breaking it. Sometimes we do both at different times in our lives, depending on where we’re at and the information we have at the time - depending on the dynamic, and depending on what one's survival requires at any given time. Sometimes breaking a cycle requires thoughtful long-term strategic planning. After all, the cycle-breaker has to survive in order to break the cycle.

#Schwinning,

Merrit