As An Adult Now, I Understand My Mother’s Anger At An Unfair Life Better!

The topic is so loaded that I don’t even know where to start, but being back home is hitting different this time.

Not to give credit to my age but also probably at a certain point in life you learn few lessons and your perspective changes or rather expands.

The real reason why she is angry and forbidding

I have started to see my mother’s generation as very laden and exhausted, with too many stories and too less time to share it all. The pain points they have now seep through in their behaviour at times.

If someone had made them feel like they don’t matter no matter how hard they work for the house, it now comes out as icy exterior, no-one can penetrate it rather than hurt her anymore.

If someone had not given them the chance to be themselves for decades, it now comes out as possesive and cruel.

I now understand her better

Sometimes I look at my mother’s generation and I feel different emotions now than what I felt a decade back.

Anger has been replaced with compassion.

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Agitation has been replaced with patience.

Sadness has been replaced with letting go.

I always thought the best way to live is to move on from painful situations, but over the years I learnt to process and truly close some chapters. But that’s a self learning, self taught approch that took years. Still there is a long way to go for me personally.

Also over the years I shed the thought process of having a rigid view of my mother’s generation, the blanket thought of the “elders know best.” The key aspect I would always forget was that the elder was also someone young before, someone who had dreams, someone who had hopes, someone who was someone.

Sometimes when I struggle to understand this generation, I remind myself that there are stories behind that exterior that I am unaware of and that’s when I learn to turn my impatience into acceptance.

That I may not know why but I do know how circumstances change a person. I can only hope that the generation after me can have a easier time with my generation overall.

Image source: a still from the film Thappad

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