My biggest revelation in life has been that most of the problems I have do not actually belong to me but belong to my parents, and I unknowingly inherited them.
A decade ago, I decided to find out what was wrong with me and why success and money were eluding me, but I could not find the answer.
When I came home during COVID and decided to stay here from then on, leaving my career in another field, the reasons why I kept failing at everything became clear to me.
There were two case studies in front of me — my mother and my father.
While reading this, do not assume that I am blaming my parents for anything, for they themselves do not know what shortcomings they have.
They are too egotistical to learn what is wrong with them or accept it — something which I also inherited. If anyone told me what was wrong with me few years back, he would become my mortal enemy.
Ego was the biggest enemy of my life and I inherited it from my family.
Another thing I inherited from my parents was the habit of never completing anything — not just on time, but never completing it at all, leaving it midway, forever hanging in the air and never picking it up again.
Even small habits, like eating the same fruit every day or going for a walk every morning, or doing anything for a longer period of time, were things which I never saw in my family ever being done.
My parents are like GenZ of their times. They have tremendosu lack of focus and extremely lack of will power.
One day, a rule would be made by my father to do something, and within three days, he would break it himself, but he would be too hypocritical to accept it later.
Leaving things incomplete or hanging them in the middle, which is quite detrimental, is also something I inherited from them; it also includes the attitude of doing something as if I am doing a favor to someone.
My mother makes food as if she is doing a great favor to us and would scold us if we find any problems with it. She deliberately does it this way — adding one more step would help, but she will not do it because she never does it for the happiness of feeding the family, but for the heck of it.
They admit this themselves, but why don’t they realize that this is detrimental for them and for the people around them, as kids learn most from their parents.
My father has another tendency, which I inherited, called central-guy syndrome, where a person thinks he is the central figure in all the events happening in the world.
This psychology is very detrimental because, first, it is a lighter version of delusion, and secondly, it hurts oneself. Due to one’s extremely high regard for oneself, a person refuses to do anything which would even remotely draw any criticism, as he would rather not do something than be criticised. Criticism might dent the delusion, which I believe my father does not want.
We, as humans, often forget that we are not as important as we think we are.
My father also pretends to be extremely rich, had always, and matters related to a lack of money bring his ego out. He lives like a miser and pretends it is the right way of living, never accepting that he does not have enough money.
In my childhood, he would tell us stories of his royal upbringing, which both my brother and I took as reality, but only when we were adults did we come to know that he lived a poor struggling life. I still don’t know what the reason was for telling those stories.
Those stories were also something he inherited from his elder sister, who also has a habit of lying about their past.
You might think what is so wrong with that. Let me tell you what is wrong in lying to your kids about your wealth.
Kids believe in it and start making fice choices based on that. When later they come to know it was all a lie, the entire world of that kid falls down as then he starts questioning every decision of his life.
If I knew we were not rich, I would have joined some job, saved some money and secured my future, rather what I did was take uncalculated risks in life majority of whom turned out to be wrong.
They are not embarrassed about it; rather, it is a genes thing again. I was once told by a pandit that Kayasthas would eat salt and roti at dinner but will brag about their lives to everyone. They will never accept that they are in trouble or lack money. It is an ego thing.
Thakurs are another caste in which this similar trait is found.
Both my parents desire too much out of life, but my mother has been ruined by Instagram and Facebook lately, where she wants to enjoy life every day — something she did not ask before.
She has started behaving like Gen Z, where she thinks that travelling a lot, eating outside, and buying things from shopping malls are the only things happiness consists of.
She was not like that before, but I saw her change after mobile phones came in. She spends most of her day on WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram, and the same goes for my father.
Truth be told, life is boring, and it consists mostly of working hard to earn a living and making the most of whatever time you get in between. If you are from the middle class and are not going to inherit mountains of money, life for a common man consists of doing things we may not like but have to do anyway. Every day cannot be a celebration.
My mother these days goes out every single day and does not want to stay at home, as she feels she is missing out on so much in life and has to enjoy it all right now. Besides the fact that it costs money, which she does not care about right now, she is also getting sick two times every month because of the mental strain of enjoying life as fast as possible — as if enjoying life is an obligation rather than a way out of tedious daily life.
Due to her brothers located around the world and her friends who keep making programs to travel to various places, she has travelled the entire world by now, which most of our family hasn’t even seen on YouTube. Yet every time she comes back, she wants to go somewhere again. It is a never-ending loop.
Since I love my mother, I never say no to her (most of the time), and it ends up with me having a backlog of work which should have been finished last year.
Still, she complains about it all the time without considering the reality that we are not descendants of the Rockefellers. It is not her fault, in case you think I am too harsh on her. Most Indian parents struggle their entire lives wishing their kids will help them do whatever they want to do during old age. But the world has changed now. It is not the 1970s anymore. Despite inventions to smoothen and help human life, we have ironically become more burdened, and it is becoming tougher and tougher to earn a living nowadays.
But one should not crib!!
Having said that, cribbing is another problem which both my parents have, and they can literally crib about anything. At times, there is so much negativity in our house because of their fights due to constant complaining and cribbing that I want to run away to the mountains and become a monk forever. They fight each other if they ever come closer than five feet to each other.
I try to keep them aloof from each other as much as possible, but they will find ways to fight and then cry over it. Thank God their marriage lasted so long. The after-effects of the fights are that they will come to me or my brother and crib and complain about each other more. Since we are related to both of them, we can do nothing but listen.
I guess after 60, parents start becoming children, and you have to pamper them.
However, there is a nuanced observation of mine. I only see both of them happy when either of us brings money home. There is no other moment of pure happiness in our family, or for that matter, in any family.
Money brings happiness — I understand that. Money also brings freedom, but that freedom is limited to only a few people. The rest of us have to work day and night.
My parents also have a problem facing the difficulties of life. They do not have a calm attitude. When there are problems, they lose all hope, and when there is something good, they are overly happy. Their emotions are always extreme.
With their attitude, they have also made me a coward. I still remember that the moment I would face any problem in life, they would ask me to quit and come back rather than ask me to stay and face the problem.
At that time, I did feel a sense of security and relief that I could easily quit because my parents were backing me.
But what my parents should have done instead was to ask me to stay in the fight and leave only when things were too grim to continue.
Teaching kids to fight in this jungle of the world is essential.
Too much happiness also leads to a dopamine drop the next day and sadness the following day. That is why every theory of spirituality teaches being calm in every situation, in order to control the chemicals inside the body.
Once the human mind experiences extreme happiness, it keeps seeking that moment for the rest of its life, and every other moment — even a happy one — does not matter much.
There is another problem with middle-class parents like those of mine: they have been told for ages that money does not bring happiness and that money is an evil thing — a thought which they also pass on to you.
But having a theory about something and observing it in reality are two different things.
I have seen that money makes my parents happy, yet they keep advising me not to worry about money and to do good work or become a good human being — preaching they repeat almost every day, which they themselves do not believe in and which I have never seen them practice.
My parents’ mindset was destroyed by the generation before them, and now they are destroying the current generation — people like me.
When I came back, I realized that I had achieved significantly more in life than I ever should have, considering the mid-sized brain I inherited and the wrong habits inside me.
There was a time when I started hating my parents and blaming them for everything, but then I realized it was not their fault. They did whatever they thought was right to raise me, given the circumstances they had and the values they inherited from their own parents.
They have nothing to do with this anymore.
The baton now lies in my hands to change things.
Understanding my parents’ mindset helped me understand my own problems better. I cannot solve every problem of mine, as it is very difficult to identify one’s own problems.
By looking at my parents and then looking back at myself, I realized that there were problems I inherited that are deeply seated in my mind and genes, which have to be removed.
I made a list of those things, and now I am on my way to solving them.
The first problem, which is the root cause of all problems, is denial. Thankfully, I had enough intellect to understand that I had issues, but I did not know whom to ask or where to seek help.
Thankfully, I found the root causes, and I am on my way to resolving them.
If you are looking for solutions to your problems, go back into your family’s history. You will realize that the majority of your life’s decisions are not guided by the knowledge and education you gained in this life, but by the genetic knowledge you inherited from your ancestors.
It becomes easier to solve problems once you know what those problems are.