Our Children are From Us but Not Us…
…stop leaving your unfulfilled dreams through your kids. You better grow up and let them grow
My father was a physicist, a guardian of scientific wisdom, and also held the title of ‘Physics Teacher’ at my school. This dual role — a passionate educator at school and a caring father at home — meant that Newton and his theories were frequent topics at our dinner table. It was no surprise that I was expected to excel in physics, year after year.
Just imagine the weight of that legacy on a teen’s shoulder. The daily reminder of what was expected of me. A physicist father and a physicist son. I was a dutiful son, so it wasn’t easy to defy these expectations, especially in that era.
I spent countless hours trying to master the subject. However, the intricate dance of particles and waves, forces and fields, always eluded my understanding. The logic, the formulas, the proofs; they all seemed to be in a language that, for some inexplicable reason, felt alien to me.
Sometimes, out of sheer frustration, I’d tell myself, “Why not just say I believe in a particular theorem? No need to prove it.” Mind you, there was no YouTube in those days to gamify science.
The school was equally challenging. I barely passed each grade, and with each passing year, my report cards depicted diminishing hope. The presence of my father’s name on them only added to the pressure. Everyone knew of my family’s legacy, and the unspoken expectation was that I should excel. But my relationship with physics was tumultuous at best.
From trying to understand why Earth, with its invisible force, pulls everything to its core, to the mysteries of space and time, the concepts always seemed enigmatic. To put it simply, physics wasn’t for me.
Living with these expectations was like standing in the shadow of giant Mt. Everest, being told to reach the summit but not knowing the basics of mountaineering. In living up to others’ expectations, school was over with poor grades.
When it came to decide on higher education, I gathered the courage to face my father. I admitted that humanities appealed to me far more than scientific labs and equations. I also confessed my newfound passion for sports, particularly cricket, where I felt invigorated and alive — where I could catch balls flawlessly regardless of gravitational forces and trajectories.
As I had anticipated, he was disappointed. But making that choice felt liberating.
However, the universe is ironic in its ways. Those perplexing equations and theorems never entirely left me. They often find their way into my dreams, mockingly confronting me with Einstein’s equations and remind me of my failed love with physics.
Two decades later, I became a father. This brought a deluge of memories and emotions, and a profound realization. At first, I saw a reflection of my younger self in my son and inadvertently began imposing on him the very ideologies I had resisted.
But life, the ever-patient teacher, soon showed me the error of my ways. Our children are extensions of us, but they are their own individuals.
As a Stocic would say —
“Your kids are from you but not you.”
They aren’t empty canvases awaiting our failed designs but are masterpieces with their own narratives. They may have different dreams, passions, and talents, and that’s what makes it beautiful. We should embrace this truth.
As parents, our role isn’t to dictate but to guide — to nurture their innate abilities and support them as they discover their unique paths.
