Live As Your Father Were Dead

father with son

We aren’t who we want to be. We are what society demands. We are what our parents choose. We don’t want to disappoint anyone; we have a great need to be loved. So we smother the best in us. Gradually, the light of our dreams turns into the monster of our nightmares. They become things not done, possibilities not lived.”
-Paulo Coelho, Adultery

What Paulo Coelho said in his book typifies life for most people as it is the very often true. This happens almost in every area of one’s life as one grows up; from choosing carrier, to marrying someone, to do small things. In most cases, it is the father who is trying to pull the strings of his son or daughter all the time, but in some case it is mother or both parents involved. This doesn’t mean that our parents are wrong all the time, but it doesn’t mean either that they are right all the time. Our own decisions are often taken by others so our life often is a design of others, but guess… what if they didn’t design anything in actual but rather created just a delusion?

I have seen very often people around me strangled and shackled into something which was chosen by someone else for them, reality which was created by someone else and society for them. And they never try to escape these false realities to create their own rather would spend their whole lives into dilemma that there is something wrong with their lives. If one doesn’t realizes his own reality, he won’t have the chance to dissolve into veracity of his life which was written by God for him.

“When you grow up, you tend to be get told the world is the way it is, your life is the way it is inside this world. Try not to bash into the walls too much, that’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader, once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you, you called life was made up by people who were no smarter than you, once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.” -Steve Jobs

It is very important to break all the shackles if one wants to live a fulfilled, happy, and free life.
One must love his father yet be free of his father’s expectations and criticism to get freedom; one shouldn’t allow someone else to pull his strings. Imagine as if your father has died, or try to remember when he did die (If he died). Does any kind of relief feelings appears associated with his death? Now that he is dead, is any part of you happy and relieved that you do not have to live up to his expectations or suffer his criticism?
By imagining father’s death you don’t have to hate you father rather the mere purpose of this imagination is to dissolve all kind of fearful image you have bound to your mind about what you can’t do.

One should ask himself how he would have lived his life differently if he had never tried to please his father or people around him. One should ask himself how it would have been if he didn’t try to prove his worthy to his father (or to others), how it would be like if he never felt burdened by his father’s critical eye.

As an initiative, for next three days, one (if one finds himself in such a situation) must do at least one activity a day that he have avoided or suppressed because of the influence of his father. In this way, he will practice being free of his subtle expectations, which may now reside within his own self-judgment. Practicing being free in this way, once each day for three days, even if one might still feel fearful, limited, unworthy, or burdened by his father’s expectations will at least give him a direction toward his destiny. This little exercise can’t set someone free from his shackles but at least it can provoke thought of possibility which might multiply if followed and would lead eventually to total freedom and veracity in one’s life.

“To realize one’s destiny is a person’s only obligation.”
-Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist