Letters to my daughters (January): CHOICE

photo by dmitry pavlovsky @Unsplash

My darling girl

‘I am going to be a train driver!’ you say again, emphatically. Your clenched fists thrust southward at the end of your rigid little arms. 

And smiles pass across our lips. (We do our best to hide them.)

When you were a young three-year-old, someone had asked you about the things you liked, and you had mentioned sometimes playing with trains.

‘Oh – so you’ll be a train driver one day then!’ they helpfully added.

And from then on, regardless of the fact you were not really interested or inspired by trains, you said you wanted to be a train driver. No Brio, no Thomas the Tank Engine, no films with trains excited you. Not a sausage. It was as if someone had downloaded an idea, and it had got stuck in the system.

And we didn’t want to diminish your ambition to be a train driver. I was all for it - a steady, respectable job. In service to others. Great-grandpa Joseph would have been especially proud. The world will always need train drivers.

But you didn’t actually want to be a train driver. Someone had suggested it at a moment of high suggestibility – and it remained the answer to ‘…and what do you want to be when you grow up?’ for a surprisingly long time. And you became entirely fixated on this ambition, even when gently questioned about things you prefer, furious that anyone would suggest any alternative.

I wonder what the psychology was of that ‘fact’, that assumption you had created for yourself? How had this idea got so firmly lodged? What was the association? What was the story in your mind?

Our beliefs are only ever stories – often germinated in our youth, in those moments of influence, by someone who presses an idea into the soft clay of our development. And we become moulded, dynamic reflections of all the many messages and beliefs we are fed and exposed to.

(And I acknowledge here our privilege. Our white, educated, affluent privilege. We are lucky to be in the position we are in and I recognise that we have it so good compared to so many. I am still learning what to do with that privilege - a lifetime’s work, I think.)

But it’s not the case now, is it my darling? Now you have your sights set on painter-nurse-dj – and your preferences are beginning to reflect the world you live in, grow in, breath in every day. And how much of that painter-nurse-dj life is due to your parents’ enthusiasm or experience of these things – and how much of it is real desire?

How much will we, your parents, continue to shape your choices, your preferences, your outcomes – just by being the people who clap when you are dress up as a nurse, who go out to work as a painter-decorator or who pore over shelves full of records, thinking about a gig one day…?

As a teacher and now a parent – it is so very common to hear parents say that they just want their children to be happy. I want that for you too, my darling, but I believe your happiness will – fundamentally – stem from your knowledge and confidence that you have endless choices in your life. Life is not always happy. But life is always full of choice. And I want you to seek them out, learn how to manage them and know what intelligence you need to make the best one.

My job, I think, is to ensure you are in as full command of your choices as possible, and ready to sit with you in the discomfort of not knowing, patient and trusting that the knowing will eventually come.

I also want your happiness to emerge from degrees of challenge, questioning, exploration and discomfort. I want your happiness to be deep and rooted in your ability to play to your strengths or notice when things don’t feel quite right – and to be able to respond by choosing what suits you best in any circumstance.

I want you to know, forever, that you have choice. That you don’t need to put up with a bully. That you don’t need to follow the in-crowd (unless you choose to). That you can withstand the pressures to conform and comply – not out of wilful rebellion but simply because you know yourself, and you know what you want and need.

And I want you to know that choices are available to you even if you don’t know what they are yet. I want you to feel comfortable with discomfort, at ease with uncertainty – that the right path will emerge if you trust yourself and have the resilience to NOT know sometimes.  All these states are part and parcel of one connected to their intuitive self, their gut instinct – a much underrated relationship.

Through my own exploration, especially around my long-term grief for your Granny Bel, I am also beginning to understand that all feelings are worth experiencing – even the difficult ones. And that we can choose to turn towards discomfort and fear: to understand the shadow feelings, to be able to let them wash over us and eventually let them go.

Our choice to do so, to live in all states of pleasure and pain, enables us to live fully, to feel in control of our lives, to leave the mark we want to leave, not the one expected of us by others. It leads to a happier, fulfilling life.

You have choice my darling. You will always have choice. At the very least, you have choice over how you perceive and imagine the world around you. Even when things feel pretty locked-in, we can choose to find a new angle to see things from. Always. When you feel stuck, ask yourself, what IS in my control here? What can I choose to do, think or feel differently?

And I really would be delighted if you were a train driver one day. As long as it really is your choice. Then, I know you’ll be the best train driver there is – committed, motivated – and in control of what you want.

With all my love (over which I have no choice – just endless amounts)

Your Mama x