As a child, I did not reflect. I was curious. I wanted approval, warmth, a place in the world, and I did not know that was what I wanted. External signals told me I had found it: a compliment, a look, a parent turning to someone else and saying, look what he can do.
The signals came through ordinary channels. A sport, a musical instrument, good marks at school. Sentences like “I’m proud of you” or “be proud of yourself.” No one meant any of it to harm, and praise is not wrong. But something built up underneath it, quietly, one layer at a time.
The formula that formed underneath went like this: I please, so I am loved, so I have a place in this world. Over time, praise came to stand for love, and love depended on what I could perform.
The formula worked where I was actually good at something. Pretending to be good at something I was not made it complicated. When success failed to arrive, I told myself it did not bother me. It did: success had started to include love, so losing one meant losing the other. The disappointment over failing came from the love I believed I had lost along with the result.
This is how the pattern works, and recognising it in myself has made it easier to live with.
It follows me now, into rooms I did not expect it to reach. I am in a conversation and already rushing towards the next one. I care for my family and my company in the same breath. I listen while I am already composing the reply.
When a moment arrives without an event attached to it, what I feel is emptiness, and I mistake that emptiness for danger. So I fill it: with work, with stimulation, with the next idea, with the next proof that this is my place in the world. I keep filling it until there is no place left for anyone, myself included.
My child looks at me and expects something: a reaction, a correction, at best praise. There is fear or hope in that look. I am not always sure I see it. Often I am full of my own thoughts, the job, my own problems, and I throw back a glance, put on an expression from the standard repertoire, and move on because the child went quiet and seemed satisfied.
“I love you” is three words. They mean: it does not matter what you do, good or bad, and you can judge that for yourself. It is always fine to be who you are. I love you, always.
A child who hears mostly praise and correction stops listening to the voice inside, because the outside is louder. That child then keeps asking other people for something only he could give himself. At some point there is an adult who functions, delivers, does not break under pressure and no longer knows what his own voice is telling him.
I wasn’t there yesterday, and if I keep going like this, tomorrow will look the same. The question that stays with me is whether I was ever there at all, with myself, the way I want to be with my child.