不要阻碍孩子的独立 – Do not obstruct the child’s independence – English

0

0

  

Many problems in life come from the fact that people have “dignity”. Some people say that in Maslow’s theory of needs, needs come in five stages, and dignity comes in the fourth position; 显然该理论不应被机械而武断地理解。如果人们在生理、安全和社交需求满足之前，没有尊严需求，那人就不是“人”了，恐怕连“动物”也称不上。

In the civil theories of modern civilisation, the first ranking concept is that of independant personality, and it may have to do with the importance attached by people to dignity.

People’s existence is not just a physical existence, it is also a spiritual existence. 相对于精神的存在，人们更容易感受到肉体的存在，人之区别于动物，在于人不仅被动地感受而且主动地建立了精神世 界。善于抽象思维的人们已经抽象出人的本质，建立起人与人的平等观念。不得不说，如果不理解人的精神性存在，其实无法理解人与人之间的平等。某种程度上， 平均主义、均富思想就是忽视人的精神存在或者说偏重人的肉体存在的结果。

From chats with my friends these days, I’ve come to think that most young people in contemporary China live a broader and richer life than before, but I’m not sure that their happiness is higher than that of kids in the 80s and 90s, their is a very oppressive and unhappy aspects of it, that is, the great difficulty to walk off the shadow and the wings of the previous generation.

Although the late 20th century was an era of important change for mainland China, 但比起今天，开放度和觉醒度还是有很大差距。However, the young people of that time could only rarely expect material support from the previous generation, 我们那一 代基本上是在集体赤贫中开始自己的人生和创业。Many young people from my generation had feelings of guilt towards our parents, our parents had brought us up in a very difficult and unfortunate time, we were witness to their suffering, 以至于当我们初尝富裕生活的时候总是想到父母一生的艰辛而因此冲淡我们的喜悦。我们在创业并开展人生的时候，也在改善父母生活的方面给予自己很大 的成就感，并部分补偿我们对父母的愧疚感。

Our feelings of guilt towards our parents, for the larger part, are not normal, because not only should we not bear responsibility for the difficulties of that period when were just children, but we were even among its victims. When I was a child, I once impulsively told my father: “You deserve it, who told you to have me, you had me, now you have to bring me up.” 但那种因为自己而增加了父母的生活负担的想法却 从未真正释然，直到若干年后内在自我获得真正的成长。Although we’re used to either regarding ourselves as a burden to others, or of others as a burden to ourselves, still, in those circumstances, we had to learn to rely on ourselves, and not expect from our parents, this partly helped us make our own decisions and be responsible for our own choices and decisions. 我们的独立，是自然而然的，也不排除环境所迫。

The young people of today are growing up in an environment very different from that of our generation. I admit that my understanding and observation of this generation of young people is very narrow and limited, however, overall, they ‘owe’ their parents more than my generation did, because most of them are only children, some parents put enormous amounts of energy into their children, many parents put enormous amounts of money, they give their children everything they think is best, and some parents, after spending most of their savings on their daughter who studied overseas and, after graduation, married a Westerner and stayed over, sighed: “Life and wealth are both gone.” The social security system in mainland China is still far from perfect, pensioners still largely rely on their children and grand-children, and can’t fully expect from the social security system. 我们那一代赶上政府还给人民有限自由的时代，再加上之前的集体赤贫，无论是国家还是个人，财富都不同程度地取 得了显著的增长，儿女给父母一代养老具有相对有利的条件。But today’s young people, objectively, expect to have great difficulties taking care of their aging parents.

My intention her is not to discuss China’s pension system, what I want to say is, this social environment has influenced the younger generation as they grew up. In the past few years, the press often reported on the phenomenon of “eating off the old” NDT: grown up children living off their parents, 其中也反映了年轻一代中不能独立的现象。

People are born with dignity 尊严. As people grow up, they naturally will demand independence. And so, why are some children still “eating off the old” after growing up? There are two reasons for it, 所谓一个巴掌拍不响，有啃方的 原因，也有被啃方的原因。There are some parents who, as their children grow up, cannot give them enough recognition and trust, interfere with them too much, and do not establish clear boundaries, which is actually the main reason why the children cannot become independent.

In Chinese style parenting, often, as the child is growing up, parents are either overly protective or negligent in their care and guidance, which limits the development of the child’s abilities, and so when the child has become an adult, 到了孩子成年时，却以为孩子自然应当具有 那些在应当发展时受到压抑和限制的能力。啃老族固然造成被啃者的损失，但其实啃老者所受到的伤害和损失或许在被啃者之上，and that is, not being independent, lacking self-esteem, and for that reason suffer from depression, fear and anxiety.

According to the philosophy of modern civlisation, it is the duty of parents to take care of their children while they grow up, and children should not feel indebted to their parents for that, but once the children are grown up, they must assume their responsibilities including their personal, family and social obligations. These are not imposed obligations, but rather part of a healthy personality. Mainland China is still a pre-modern society, the boundaries between parents and children are not clear, and when children are young, parents often over-cross the boundary, and when the child becomes an adult, parents are still unable to establish the necessary boundaries, so that they all overstep each other’s boundaries. This directly affects the possibility for children to develop an independent personality.

Some parents feel wronged, they think they have paid a lot, and are not getting the adequate return. 如果能够摆脱“自我中心”的思维，能够站在孩子的角度考虑这个问题，是否可能存在这样的情形：parents paying without taking account of the child’s feelings cause the child to be overwhelmed, weak, or take it for granted in order to avoid the guilt?

In a talk about giving and receiving, I once mentioned that one way giving or receiving was imbalance, and this often leads to the recipient lacking dignity, and to compensate this feeling of losing dignity, 受者也有可能有意无意地将其当成施者的当然义 务，and even think that the giver owes it to him, and this way he will naturally accept the charity given, but even bear resentment towards the giver, in order to no longer feel the loss of dignity. Probably because of insight about and understanding of human nature, people have replaced one-way giving with mutual aid charity systems, 从而抑制人性的弊端，发挥人的神性部分。

Between parents who are happy to sacrifice and children who are happy to or forced to accept this sacrifice, the relationship becomes unbalanced. Children who get used to receiving the sacrifice of their parents, will end up easily losing their sense of responsibility, 乃至在社会上也是习惯索取而不乐于付出的不受欢迎的人，而多少有点被迫接受父 母的牺牲的子女，they will be submitted to a lot of pressure, and will live in the shadow of their parents for the long term, and easily develop low self-esteem and the intertia of dependence. 无论何种表现，this is not conducive to the establishment of a healthy and independent personality. Although it looks like the children take a short cut by relying on their parents, in the long term, because of their vulnerability and low self-esteem, they will find it difficult to face the inevitable difficulties and setbacks of life alone.

I sometimes admire women who become mothers, I admire their tenacity and self-confidence, and this kind of invicible spirit and perseverance they show towards their children, but it seems to have both benefits and shortcomings, they are often over confident and almost arrogant, they are not only convinced that they are in the right, but they often feel obliged to act as as the child’s guiding light. At first, it undoubtedly constitutes a safety zone for minor children, it helps them build a sense of self-confidence and security in the face of a strange world, but later, it hinders the child’s independent so that they become weak and undecisive, 或者使得叛逆心强的孩子产生与母亲越来越大的隔膜，which could eventually lead to a lifetime of communication block.

Self-sacrifice no doubt reflects the spiritual part of humans, but properly restraining passions is probably more important. Our generation is perhaps the more fortunate of those before and after 或许是前后几代人中最幸运的一代，这容易助长我们的骄傲；客观地看待世界，我们应当怀有感激之心，也应当懂得谦逊的价值。 The next generation will probably go beyond some of our limitations, and we must stand behind them, rather than stand in their way, and become an obstacle in their life, preventing them from going their own way, creating their own life.

Everything parents give their children has a strong influence on them, and it’s often not material wealth, but concepts. Humanity tends to more easily accept the most advanced tools and technology, but when it comes to new ideas that differ from traditional ethics, reactions are often very inconsistent. And the wrong ideas of the past, generations after generation, have been blocking the progress of civilisation in china, one of the world’s oldest and most populated nations. At least our generation should, while fully acknolwedging traditional values, interrupt the intergenerational transmission of misconceptions, and among those, the traditional ethical concepts that hinder the development of an independent and healthy personality.