Parenting: Role or Function?

In A New Earth Eckhart Tolle makes a provocative distinction, between parenting as a role and as a function.  As in The Power of Now, Tolle works at our distraction from being truly present to ourselves, to the truth that Jesus said would set us free.  In past brief attempts to read Tolle, I would have been argumentative, because I rejected his writing as agnostic egoism.  I ascribe this to my own narrow-mindedness, and am glad that our son started reading his copy, encouraging me to read mine.  Visiting with us for the longest time since he moved to Europe 13 years ago, his presence at home with us, his retired parents brings out in me a gladness to be father to him, but Tolle’s distinction helps me sit in that father-ness and consider it from the inside.  Who am I as Father?

A few days ago I listened to a father admit that he was very angry at his daughter, who had brought misery on his home with choices she had made.  His wife later shared her deep sadness in the loss of her dream of a life with an adult daughter who would be her friend now and her caring helpmate in her old age.  When I woke up this morning, sure enough, I was still a guy.  As a parent, that means I continue to know
from the inside only the father role, and the father function.  So my sense of sadness for that woman came, as I listened to her and observed her face, came through guy-vision.   But when I listened to Tolle’s distinction this morning, I considered again my reflection on hearing her.  Her sadness seemed to me to come from her expectation that her life with her daughter would be as hers had been with her own mother.  Someone said expectation is premeditated regret.  I feel sadness for her that she burdens herself with that regret, and wonder whether she does not burden her daughter with it as well.  I wonder too whether her husband is equally blinded by the expectation that he would be married to a happy woman, that when the daughter grew up everything would be done. 

Konstantin Stanislavsky helped actors bring life to their portrayals by a method that drew them into the role, becoming the person they were portraying.  While other directors would actors, Stanislavsky directed characters.  While other directors’ actors would leave the studio as themselves at the end of the day, his actors would leave as the characters they had, for the duration of the production, become.  By taking on the personality of the character, the actors chose to set aside their own identity for awhile, and stay in the role.

But even Stanislavsky’s actors eventually returned to themselves.  Tolle has some good things to say about our relationships as parents and with parents.  Here is a short clip of his comments about being ourselves in relationships; part of it relates specifically to parent and child.

I am struck by the absurdity and sadness of the actor remaining in role coming home and not being able to be himself.  And I wonder how similar that absurdity and sadness is for the parent who cannot step out of that role.  It is the sadness that grabs me, a I recall the face of that mother, whose clinging to role and expectation festered into righteous and immobilizing self-pity.  What a waste that she is unable to see her self, in all of her goodness, talent, and beauty, and find joy in that.  What a waste that deprived of herself, she cannot share herself with her daughter and her husband.