If someone were to ask me who I am, I am sure my answer would be “I don’t know.”
Of course, in reality, you will naturally answer in other ways in various situations.
For example.
I may answer with my profession, saying I work in real estate and consulting,
I may answer with my family structure, saying I have three children and seven grandchildren, or
I may answer with my nationality and where I live, saying I am an American living on the island of Oahu, Hawaii.
In reality, however, none of these are “me.”
I am not who I am in real estate, in my position as a mother or grandmother, or where I live. I am given the experience of being someone’s mother at this very moment, but I am none of these things.
I am zero, nothing, the breath that nurtures life.
I am the perfect identity that is always connected to the Divinity, that is me and you. First, let us return to these basics.
Several times a year, when we have family gatherings, I try to do something before I meet with my family. I try to clean my own position. I clean my position as a daughter, mother, grandmother, and mother-in-law, and I clean what I feel about them, what I think I should do or how I should be treated.
Conversely, I clean my feelings and expectations toward my mother, children, grandchildren, and daughter-in-law before meeting them.
By doing so, the memories that have unknowingly seeped into my mind are cleaned. During the position of mother and child, memories are replayed not only of the events that occurred in your actual relationship with your own child, but also of the various events, pains, and sufferings that have occurred in that relationship throughout all history.
Sometimes the feelings and responsibilities toward family members that you thought you felt that way are actually from those memories.
So what do you actually want to do?
Do you want to reenact the history that has been repeated in this parent-child relationship?
Or do you want to savor the moment of pure engagement between two unique identities?
I would prefer the latter. So, as much as possible, I clean my role in advance.
Peace
KR
