Viewing your parents through the world’s eyes
Do you remember when you were a kid and the way you looked at your parents? Your dad maybe was the strongest man in the world, invincible. Your mom could make anything delicious and no matter how badly you got hurt she made everything better. Slowly but surely as you grew up you may have become disillusioned to the mystique your parents possessed in your life. Perhaps even as you got older you began to grow annoyed at the little things your parents would or would not do.
Personally when I was a teenager I grew exhausted with my dad’s incessant life lessons and coaching when I didn’t ask for it. His apparent need to share the details of my life with random people as if he had no care for my feelings what so ever or the embarrassment he caused. As kids we laughed at him when we’d get lost in the car and he’d say: “we’re not lost we’re just meandering our way there”. Despite the perception that he had at home it never occurred to me to think about how he was perceived in his professional life.
Allow me for a moment to provide a little back-story. My dad is a former Presbyterian minister; he eventually transitioned from this line of work into an educational and consultative role where he worked with family businesses. When we were kids we were all for the most part too young to ever really see him preach, all we ever heard was that he was incredibly long winded. Only two of us ever really got to see him teach, my sister and I had the pleasure to take an elective course that he guest taught while we were in college.
I’ve said in a previous blog post that when I transitioned into this field the first articles I read my dad was cited eight different times. What I came to find out is that in my dad’s professional world he wasn’t a joke, or a family punch line. In fact people paid him for those life lessons I’d been receiving for free, and the stories he was telling about my life were a means to convey his personal trials as a parent to the families he worked with. In all honesty I never saw the man my dad truly was until I started working with him and watched him teach his graduate students. I sat in the back of a classroom captivated by the person in front of me, I couldn’t stop smiling. This wasn’t the same man at all that raised me, this man had a presence about him, this man was eloquent, and every word this man said was respected.
I saw my dad in a new context, I saw my dad on his stage and in his world. Some parents allow their kids to only see one side of them, some kids just get dad; sadly other kids only get the CEO or President. My challenge is to any kid that only ever saw dad, try as hard as you can to experience your parents in their other context. Revel in the experience and take in their presence as if you’re that little kid again and everything they do is magnificent and new. You may get the rare opportunity to see a wild animal in their natural habitat; it can be truly exhilarating.
I hope that I get the opportunity to continue doing this line of work forever. But if for some odd reason I was forced to change careers tomorrow, the few years that I’ve had to watch my dad work on his professional stage have been worth their weight in gold. I feel like I’ve gotten a glimpse into his life that was missing before this time. I cannot encourage you enough to open that door with an open mind and the same sense of wonderment you one possessed.
Enjoy
Productive Summary
- Remember that how you see your mom or dad may not be how their professional world sees them.
- Seek out opportunities to see them in another context, specifically as you may start working with them.
- Enjoy the new side of them you see, get excited to alter the course of your relationship as you connect on a different level or in a new way