EMOTIONAL SECURITY
A Superpower
It is one of the insane ironies of our species that we seem unable to do the most obvious thing, cut out from ourselves the things we don’t like about our parents...
My dad, Jerry, was born in the Bronx in 1937. My mom, Marcia, was born in Boston. Their parents did not provide them the love they needed, straight up. Sorry to air your business out like that, Guys. But it’s for good reason. You’ll see. I’m not sure if it was a generational thing or what. It seems from our present perspective that maybe parents just didn’t view this as their role in the 40’s and 50’s when my parents were growing up. But it’s probably more than that. It probably goes way back. They say hurt people hurt people. And it’s true. It is one of the insane ironies of our species that we seem unable to do the most obvious thing, cut out from ourselves the things we don’t like about our parents. Instead we perpetuate them.
But, somehow, my parents stopped the cycle. They provided me and my sister unconditional, unending love. Again, maybe it was the times, the 70’s and 80’s now, and they were hippies. They say it was not a conscious thing. They just loved us a lot. Whatever it was. It worked. They gave us a sort-of superpower called emotional security, basically the sense that everything was gonna be alright. In the end, that is what Footprint is about, emotional security. We want to give parents a way to tell their children that they love them and a way to fulfill the parental duty to transfer love and wisdom to their kids. And we want to give kids a way to experience that love as young adults, at a particularly critical time in their life when they are passing into adulthood.
… maybe we wouldn’t need so much policy change if people just had more emotional security in the first place. Hell, maybe we wouldn’t even need policies at all. Imagine that!
I think, in a way, all our political problems, all our economic problems, and, somewhat less, all our environmental problems are byproducts of personal problems. Greed, for example, is a symptom of emotional insecurity. So the goal isn’t just to provide people emotional security, though that would be enough, it is to make better humans who then make a better world. Policy change is no doubt important. But maybe we wouldn’t need so much policy change if people just had more emotional security in the first place. Hell, maybe we would even need policies at all. Imagine that!
My parents gave us an amazing gift, the only gift that really matters. And now we are trying to give that gift to other people in the form of Footprint.
Fix people, and you will fix the world.
