“I won’t be like my parents” — why doesn’t it work?

When I was young, I had a friend who dreamed of a better life than her parents’. I vividly remember walking along the seaside promenade with her one day as she spoke about her dreams. Her main dream was simply not to live the way her parents did; she said she disliked their lifestyle and was determined to ensure her own life turned out differently. I didn’t ask her exactly how she wanted things to be different back then; at the time, it seemed enough just to know that her parents’ way of life wasn’t for her.

And it was true—she moved to Asia, got married, had a child, and worked there. From the outside, it looked like she had made it. Then we lost touch, and I didn’t hear from her. About twenty years later, I happened to find out that my friend had returned to our hometown and was living exactly the same way her parents did: in the same Brezhnev-era apartment block, working a government job, and living paycheck to paycheck. Everything she had feared had become her reality.

Video

There is a video on this topic on my YouTube channel. I may not have fully explained the significance of the one-pound coin metaphor there, so read on to find out why wanting to live differently from our parents is the other side of the same coin—and that coin is your life (or your parents’ life).

Metaphor about the one pound coin

In my video, I compare our desire to live differently than our parents did to a one-pound coin. When we say we will live better than our parents, we are merely flipping the coin over to the other side; the coin itself does not change. A one-pound coin remains a one-pound coin, no matter how you turn it. Yet, when we speak of wanting to live better or differently, what we really need to envision is a completely different coin. Figuratively speaking, that different coin represents a different mindset—one that will enable us to live a different kind of life.

“I won’t be like my parents”—that is a manifesto that needs to be backed by something that defines your own life. And your own life should start with a blank slate where you write something of your own. If you choose to live your life in reaction to your parents’ lives—even if theirs is a negative example—it is still an example. Set your own example instead of theirs, and everything will be fine.

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