Passing it on

So, some of the thoughts I've had in the past weeks. I think by now it's a relatively known thing how stuff gets passed on over the generations.

However, it is one thing is that you are mimicking things you learnt from your parents who learned it from their parents who again ... and so on.

Then again, in my family it is more than that. After all, if you are doing something "wrong", just because you don't know better, just because you are acting thoughtless, then you should be open for somebody telling you it is not ok to do so and that you should please stop with this behavior. If it was only thoughtlessness you shouldn't have a problem to think about it, apologize and change your behavior. Just like, if somebody tells you that you cut the line and if it really was unintentional you can as simple as apologize and move to the back of the line.

However, if being confronted with your own behavior and you totally freak out and heavily attack the confronter and try to shut you up once and for all, there is clearly more behind it. In this case the violator really "needs" to behave like this and when being stopped, freaks out.

But what does the violator really "need" to do? I think it is (not only, but also) like passing on the hot potato. He took the potato from somebody else in the family (or any other system like a work team) and now the hands are burning and it just needs to be passed on to somebody else to carry it. And if this other person refuses to take it from you, then you will go violent to force it.

If somebody punches you in the face, you just have to punch somebody else to make even and take this "potato" from you.

Recently I really made the experience in my family and also in the work place. If you just say "no", stay with it and use every resistance needed to keep the potato away from you ... oh boy, do they get desperate and violent and they just don't stop, trying it over and over again ... wow, really amazing.

Just wanted to get that off my chest, thanks ...

This resonates with a meme I just read on facebook. It was along the lines of:

Pain is passed on down from one generation to another, until someone decides to stop and feel it.

Yes, good point. In my family appearantly everybody wants the other to feel the pain, so that they don't have to feel it themselves.