Reinhard Gouw's Journal

When we were little, most of us lay our days on our parents' hands, letting them protect us, guide us, place us, teach us everything we need to know. Some of us grow up with abundant love and care, some without. Despite that, we still believe that we're gonna be safe as long as we shelter inside their arms, because they're the ones who brought our existence to life. They're our superheroes.

As we grow up, we start to have our own opinions which sometimes differ from theirs. We start having this little fights, thinking they don't understand "this era", and maybe our opinions are really better. We become rebels. We start trying to do things our own way; lying to them when needed, just to try to go along with the plan. Then the fights become bigger. It becomes the fight between principles, or maybe between "my era" and "your era". We think they'll never gonna understand. But that might not be the worst.

Not all children experience this, but what's worst is the moment you found out that your parents become the person they always protect you from becoming, doing the things they get mad for whenever you even just talk about it, and in the end destroying the belief all your life they've been sharing with you to hold together. That exact second, it breaks you to pieces knowing that they aren't perfect, that your parent isn't that superhero you've believed them to be. that honestly they are humans. Just like us. They're humans who have flaws, who can't stand temptations, who can be a hypocrite at times, who can lose grip of their own words. The other sad reality beyond that is we can't always shelter anymore, we have to find a grip of our own and survive in the wild.

With this post, I'm not hoping to make children hate or question their parents. I also acknowledge that I've never been a parent. What I'm trying to say is maybe it is a false popular belief that we believe in or that parents plant in their children that they're superheroes. Undeniably, parents are also humans; only, they lived longer, brought us to this world, took care and nurtured us. The perks of being humans are that we are learning throughout life. Everyone is still a student of life, differing in ages. To expect too much of parents are to forget that they may also do "things", or the ones we call mistakes. And thus we blind ourselves from the probability of that to happen. When it finally does, we get mad because those expectations are broken.


Maybe it's fair to think they're superheroes when we were little. But there is a time when we grow up to be aware of their humanly flaws, and still love them. Take the good attributes, the strength, and just throw away the bad ones. They are just like us. We don't have to hate them just because our expectations over them are violated. In the end, maybe it's even fairer to see them struggle with their "dark side", and still love them anyway. Above all their horribleness, they gave us a beautiful gift: a chance to be in this complex maze called Life. And that's the reason of the breath you've been taking up to this second.

To parents, or future parents, maybe we don't have to be perfect for our children. We don't have to build those overrated expectations for them. We don't have to hide from them our probability of making mistakes. We don't have to always be an almighty for them to feel safe. Maybe we need to put some layers of our "I'm always right" down, and instead train them to have their own version of "strength" and "right", with the hope that they will be a better person than we are in the future. To tell them that it is normal to be imperfect, that they can still find happiness and satisfaction in life with that condition.


When I have a child of my own one day, I won't force in his mind that the world is a harmless place. I will nurture inside him that the world is not like the ones in fairytales, but I, with all my imperfections will love him and help him get through it. I will tell him that he's a fighter, and ask him to put his trust in this older knight as we walk through life, until he's ready to become a knight of his own life.

 Imagine you are standing inside a circle of columns. Each column is an aspect of your life. One might be family, the others college, talent, friends, relationship, anything. These columns are supporting your life. Your job inside these columns are to maintain each, so that it will not go down. But sometimes the wind is too strong, even comes with lightning that strikes one of your columns. And it's out of your control.


When one of them suddenly breaks, it doesn't mean that everything is over. Remember that around you there are still other pillars supporting your life. You can still choose to keep maintaining them, even when you are hurt by the broken one. The shattered stones might hurt you, but not your whole life. Latch onto those columns. If you can, try fixing the broken one. If not, try building a new one. Sometimes, storms are there to tell us that we need to make stronger columns.

Whatever storms you are in, stay alive. Always remember to latch onto something. Even the smallest ones. In life, there is always something to smile about, only if you choose to.

We may think we got everything under control. We might be the most drama-free person in this whole earth. We may be that kind of superman with super self-healing ability. The toughest guy.

But we can never deny the fact that we are still human. We are just like a pot with different boiling points. You might have 100, I might have 150, someone else might have 240. But no matter at what point we boil, we still boil anyway. We have to do something before we go on a downward spiral of self-destruct.

One way to do that is to spill the weights down. As much as I'd love to deny it, I never thought I needed other human to cope with my problems. Until the point when I realized I had too much on my own back, and had to spill it somewhere 'less I want to go psychotic. That moment when I was on the edge, I knew that if I let it stay inside the pot, it would rattle savagely and break the pot itself. And when I spilled some on a trustworthy friend, I surprisingly bursted into tears. I thought I was OK with everything; even at the moments when the problems happen, I felt nothing profound. I could still feel and act normal. But my unconscious realm said otherwise. I realized it was defending me this whole time, keeping everything on the label "OK". And then it was just tired.

So I guess it proved to me that we really are social creature. It's not a matter of getting an advice or answers that magically solved everything. Sometimes what our soul really needs is as simple as to be listened. It lets it map out things. It lets it rest. And after, it stands up again and fight better - with less burdens.