I think everybody has a few things that stand out from their time of childhood and youth that they feel was most traumatic.  Sometimes you will think it was a whole bunch of things but if you start to process it you will realize so much of it boils down to a few simple things.  Ultimately you can boil it down to one sentence or concept.

For me one of the most traumatic things was realizing that adults were untrustworthy.  In so many ways they proved themselves to me to be small, inept, unkind, unwise, unloving, uncaring, frail etc.  I know I was just old way ahead of my time and I even remember sitting in my grade one class and looking at the other kids and thinking of them as children, not realizing I was one myself.  I had many things in my head already.  As many children do.

Well I can blah blah blah on that topic forever but the point I want to make is that for as long as I can remember I was so deeply disappointed in adults.  They were in charge of us.  They were supposed to be better, to know better.  We should be able to count on them and feel safe because of them but so many of us didn’t/don’t.  For us the weakness of adults was our biggest problem.

I did not come from a horrific family, so don’t get me wrong. It was just terribly dysfunctional.  I might explain more about that some other time.  But I suffered a lot.  A lot.

I remember times when I felt such despair and all I wanted with all my heart was someone wise and kind to talk to.  Someone who could tell me “why”.  I wished so much that there was someone who would be a trustworthy elder with whom I could feel safe and secure and occasionally happy.  For a couple of years I found great solace in martial arts and my martial arts masters were like a refuge to me.  But then we moved again.

At one point I was so desperate for someone to talk to about my troubles that I thought of just picking up the phone and dialing a random number.  But I knew that was a stupid idea.  It was a real moment of desperation, you have no idea.  I really had no adult to look up to and that is a really bad feeling.

Now I look around at my peers who are the parents of the new generation of kids and I am filled with so much loathing.  So many of you are in the hands of real idiots.  It turns my stomach and I am sorry to say it but even sorrier to see it.  The selfishness and stupidity and ineptitude of “adults” has only grown exponentially.  If my world felt messed up, yours probably feels messed up to the power of 10.

I have spent years and years trying to understand what is going on, I have lived in many places/cities/countries/continents.  I’ve been an accidental insider into so many worlds you have no idea.  I’m the direct descendant of an ancient royal family on one side and of Huguenots on the other, so questioning and rebellion is in my blood on a DNA level.  I don’t belong to one race or religion.  I have studied professionally and I have observed privately.  It has taken me a long time to process things but now I finally understand.  Not everything but a lot.

If you want some of those answers, I will present them here from time to time.  You don’t have to believe them obviously, but you would do well to think on what I say if your goal is to understand and if you are hoping to find a way through despair and into a very decent, sometimes happy state of mind.

I’ll tag these posts “the P files”.  P stands for philosophy.  And it is one of my initials.

If you have had real problems with the adults in your life (not stupid problems like your parents won’t buy you things you want) and you wish there was a wise elder out there somewhere, you just found one.  Maybe I am just speaking into the wind and no one will ever read this.  Or maybe for someone I will be the person that presents some answers, the one that never came for me.

(creative photo manipulation by norvz austria cuded)