Some of the Easiest, Hardest and Most Redemptive Life Advice You'll Ever Find – The Marginalian

“Your children are not your children, they are the sons and daughters of the life you long for,” wrote Kahlil Gibran in his touching verse about parenthood. And yet, each of us, we are someone's child—physically or mentally or both—and they sing to us as we sing to ourselves in our longing for life, whether we like music or not.

Like the Zen koan, this truth is completely lost when you start thinking deeply about the underlying truths, which are layered beneath ordinary truth, even extraordinary truths. Parents – exactly their opinion. The idea that you – this most complex whole of muscle and self, this physical universe that sparkles with a million ideas and passions and little ways of being-on-the-world that make you – began as a glint in someone else's eye, a set of chemical reactions that became molecules that became cells in someone else's body before they merged with you. The idea that so many dimensions of your personality, so many things that you give so easily to making sense of the world, are made by someone other than you (and possibly outside the body that gave birth to the cells that became you) – someone who takes, in your universe, this strange and wonderful position of mediator between existence and your particular existence.

It is a twofold experience of what happens when that mediator crosses the threshold of its absence Mary Gaitskill he speaks in his thoughtful and tender letter to Take My Advice: Books to the Next Generation from People Who Know a Thing or Two (public library) – a wonderful 2002 anthology by artist and writer James L. Harmon, inspired by one of his spiritual parents: Rilke and his timeless moments Letters to a Young Poet.

Gaitskill writes:

My advice here is clear and practical. It's advice I wish someone had given me as strongly as I'm about to give it now: When your parents die, you have to go with them. You should spend as much time as possible. This may seem obvious; you'd be surprised how difficult it can be. It is not difficult if you have a good relationship with a parent or, even if you don't, if you are old enough to have lost friends and have seriously considered your own death. However, it may be more difficult than you think.

With a serious warning that there are people “for whom this standard guidance does not work” and his advice is not to blame those people, Gaitskill speaks to those of us who have been raised by faulty parents, who somehow, fail miserably at the deepest task of parenting—unconditional love:

If you're a teenager with a bad relationship with your parent, it's a nightmare of anger, confusion, and guilt. Even if you hate them, you may not want to believe that it is happening… Even if your parents abused you, physically or emotionally, they are a part of you in a way that transcends humanity or morality. Perhaps “beyond” is not the right word. They are part of you in a way that goes beneath your everyday humanity. They transfer the essence to you. This context may not be obvious; Your parents may have made its raw material into something so different from what you did that it seems like you're not the same. That they give you this context may not be within their control – they may not have chosen to do so. (It may not be biological either; everything I say here is about adoptive and biological parents.)

Having a dying parent, Gaitskill notes, is a way of honoring the fact — the basic but elusive truth — that they will soon be gone, and with them will be your childhood as you know it, the basic way you know yourself. At the heart of this dual recognition is “the hard truth that we know nothing about who we are or what our lives mean.” You write:

Nothing makes this more clear than being in the presence of a mortal for a long time. Death makes people look like tiny containers packed so tightly that we know only a fraction of what's inside us from moment to moment. Being in the presence of death can open you up to an open mind, releasing feelings deeper and stronger than anything you thought you knew. If you have had a loving, open relationship with your parent, this experience will not be so difficult. In fact there may be moments of pure compassion, even exaltation. But you may still have to watch your parent seem to break down, mentally and physically, disintegrating into something you can no longer see. In some ways this is bad – most people find it absolutely so. There is another side to it, however: In seeing this seeming rupture, we catch a glimpse of a part of our parents that does not translate to humanity, that we know nothing about, and that the human container is too small to give shape to.

Because any emotional experience we have when facing another is always an emotional experience we have inside, and about, ourselves – especially if that other caused this self – to face this incomparable quality is facing the limits of our self-awareness. Gaitskill writes:

Knowing your feelings is also difficult because there are so many feelings, it is hard to tell which one is true. Part of you may want to go faster; part of you may want to stay forever. That's why I advise you to stay “as long as possible.” What that means will vary from person to person, with the needs of the parent and other relationships. A day may be enough, or it may take a whole month. If it's a long-term situation, it may be best to go away for a few days and then come back. Those decisions are too personal and beyond the scope of my advice – except for my advice to pay close attention to them. If you feel, To hell with this, I'm outdon't worry — there's room for that. Maybe you should actually go. But before doing that, make sure that the voice is not shouting down the truth. When your parents die, you will never see them again. You may think you understand that, but until it happens, you don't.

In a conflicting sentiment but in fact agreeing with the deep meaning of what the artist Louise Bourgeois wrote in her diary of the years of her old life – “You are born alone. You die alone. The value of the space between trust and love.” – Gaitskill concludes:

They say you come to the world alone and you leave alone. But you are not born alone; your mother is with you, maybe your father too. Their presence may have been romantic, it may have been paralyzing, it may have been both. But they were with you. When they die, remember that. Go be with them.

Complete this section of the Take My Advice – including author Richard Powers on the most important attitude you can take on your life and philosopher Martha Nussbaum on how to honor your inner world – with Richard Dawkins on the happiness of dying, Marcus Aurelius on accepting death as the key to living fully, and the founder of the Zen Hospice Project Frank Ostaseski to re-extend the five lives of death. reflecting on the cycle of life.