Passed on

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Sometimes a man stands up during supper
and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,
because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.
And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.

And another man, who remains inside his own house,
dies there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,
so that his children have to go out into the world
toward that same church, which he forgot.

[Rainer Maria Rilke]
Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke


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Parents should always be conscious of the fact that they themselves are the principal cause of neurosis in their children ...

What usually has the strongest psychic effect on the child is the life which the parents (and ancestors too, for we are dealing here with the age-old psychological phenomenon of original sin) have not lived. 

This statement would be rather too perfunctory and superficial if we did not add by way of qualification: that part of their lives which might have been lived had not certain somewhat threadbare excuses prevented the parents from doing so.

To put it bluntly, it is that part of life which they have always shirked, probably by means of a pious lie. That sows the most virulent germs.

[C. G. Jung]
The Development of Personality, CW 17, pars. 84, 87


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April:  You don't want to go, do you?

Frank:  Come on, April. Of course I do.

April:  No, you don't. Because you've never tried at anything. And if you don't try at anything, you can't fail.

Frank:  What the hell do you mean I don't try? I support you, don't I? I pay for this house. I work 10 hours a day at a job I can't stand.

April:  You don't have to.

Frank:  Bullshit! Look, I'm not happy about it. But I have the backbone not to run away from my responsibilities.

April:  It takes backbone to lead the life you want, Frank.

Dialogue from Revolutionary Road (film)


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Related posts:-
Go Your Own Way
Path of Maturation

The Man Watching

I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
that a storm is coming,
and I hear the far-off fields say things
I can't bear without a friend,
I can't love without a sister

The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on
across the woods and across time,
and the world looks as if it had no age:
the landscape like a line in the psalm book,
is seriousness and weight and eternity.

What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.

When we win it's with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
I mean the Angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
when the wrestler's sinews
grew long like metal strings,
he felt them under his fingers
like chords of deep music.

Whoever was beaten by this Angel
(who often simply declined the fight)
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneaded him as if to change his shape.
Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.

[Rainer Maria Rilke]
The Man Watching
 
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Status Quo