Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment, and especially on their children, than the unlived lives of the parents. – Carl Jung
My dad’s life was his house, primarily. It was a monument to himself, as my mother said resentfully on Monday, the day he died. He achieved what he wanted, in the sense that the house got built and it was impressive for its day–kind of a Frank Lloyd Wright house. But it was all built on some sort of mistaken idea. He needed to impress the world, and this was his way of doing.
I guess it was the rest of his life as a husband, a father, a neighbor, a working man, that was unlived.
I wonder how my dad’s unlived life is affecting me now. Or my mother’s.