Beware of the Baggage from Childhood

My parents are both immigrants, and like most immigrants that come here, their hope was to find a better life in the U.S. Their focus tends to be on survival and the need to make money for their families. I'm sure it was the same with the early settlers that came to this country, but overtime, I find that those families that have been here for mulitiple generations, start to emphasize happiness-- they have somehow learned that money does not necessarily buy that. How you define success is a key part to who you are, and sadly many have not yet escaped the influence of their ancestors who perhaps tended to measure success based on how much you made and were able to acquire. An alternate view, which was instilled in me early on by my alma maters and peers starting with Andover, was to look at what you did with the gifts you have been given in life, and how you share them with others. Sadly, I have learned over time that not everyone got the same memo prior to entering the workforce or getting married. When you have two people with completely different views on work and life, and when many of these views are deep-seeded from childhood, it could be a recipe for disaster. I've seen it happen time and time again in my work, especially when the issue of core values comes up with how you want to raise your children. Having one parent that believes in the best private education at all cost, while the other is fine with public school, can become a major issue-- same is true with religion, or a couple's view on savings. I don't believe these issues are insurmountable if the parties can reach a compromise, and the only way to do that is through a series of difficult discussions where each one reveals the reasons behind his/her own beliefs so they can both get to the root of the issue. We all carry a lot of baggage from our childhood, and it does seep out into our adult relationships, as well as the choices we make as parents. Sometimes, to make up for the sins of our parents, we go to the other extreme, and we need to be cognizant of not just the short-term but long term implications of our actions. If we can develop a system of checks and balances for our own sanity, we should be able to keep the good and weed out the bad. Although we cannot change the past, we can certainly shape our own futures. We do not have to be perfect, we just need to let our kids and partners see that we are trying our best.