—
Once upon a time there was a young boy whose mother and father didn’t understand how to be good parents. When they were growing up, they had been hurt and confused by the way people treated them. They hadn’t learned how to love themselves when others didn’t. This was very hard for them, and they felt hurt.
Their pain kept them from really seeing their son. The way they raised him didn’t teach him that he was loved more than anything in the world. He felt empty because he didn’t get held and appreciated and understood enough to keep him filled up.
The boy’s mother and father had been hurt when other people said something mean to them. To keep from being treated this way, they paid a lot of attention to how they looked to others in the world. So they watched others rather than their son. They knew when others were unhappy, but not their son.
The little boy grew and became a bigger boy, but he was still confused about why his parents were not loving him the way he needed. He felt sad a lot and didn’t know how to get the attention he needed to stop his sadness.
When the little boy tried to get his parents to hold him, they didn’t seem to know. He felt like they would leave him completely if he talked about his sadness. So he stayed sad and became angry and confused a lot of the time.
As he grew, he thought a lot about what to do. He understood that his parents loved things and being approved of by others more than being with and loving him.
“Maybe that’s what I ought to do to feel better,” he thought.
So he worked to get approval from others like his parents did. The main way he figured out how to do this was to get lots of things that other people need and wanted.
By the time he became a young man, most of his thinking was only about being admired for his wealth, which meant the best things, the most things, the most power. He didn’t remember his need for love from his parents anymore.
He grew up believing that what others thought about him would be good if had the biggest and the best things. It didn’t matter how he got them, just that he could use them to show who he was. He thought that with enough of the best things, he would be able to control the world and finally get his parents’ love.
“If I have everything, no one can not love me,” he thought. “I can be someone everybody admires. If I have everything, then people will need me.”
So, he collected and collected things.
However, what he didn’t see was that the more things he owned, the more he needed to replace the love he didn’t feel from his parents.
He learned that if people didn’t agree with him he could buy things to make them agree. He could even buy things that people were using to make them respect him.
“If people are afraid of me, I can make them do what I want,” he thought often.
Soon, the lost little boy had grown to be a man who was very wealthy and also unhappy because he still didn’t feel the love he needed.
“I just don’t have enough” he kept telling himself, thinking he needed more things. So he kept on collecting things. He got so rich he could buy people by offering them things they wanted.
All this time the lost boy felt a hole where he wasn’t getting closer to the love of his mother and father. He still felt something missing in his heart. The things weren’t helping his heartache. So he kept getting more and more.
He spent many years working hard to buy the love he knew he needed. But it didn’t happen. He did many desperate things and hurt many people, all to feel loved. All this time he didn’t understand why his parents couldn’t love him the way he wanted to be loved.
One day when he had sooooo many things but not a feeling of being loved enough, he decided, “I’ll be president and then everyone will love me.”
So he became a president.
As the president, he used his power to buy friends to get things to be the way he wanted them to be.
However, he couldn’t buy love, nor a connection with his parents. The sad little boy had become a man who still didn’t understand the most important thing in life…..love between parents and children.
All he felt was hungry for more things. He didn’t know that love is not a thing. It’s everything.
So, his heart hurt all his life, no matter how many things he collected. Even having people admire him wasn’t enough. He needed more and more.
He didn’t understand that parents’ and childrens’ love for each other is more important than anything.
So for the little boy who became president, it seemed all right to take children away from their parents. He didn’t look at how hurtful it was for children to be taken from their parents because what his parents gave him was hurt that kept him from seeing the hurt in little children he took away from their parents.
—
RSVP for Political Activism Calls
What Now? Participate. Take Action. Join The Good Men Project Community.
All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS.
A $50 annual membership gives you an all-access pass. You can be a part of every call, group, class, and community.
A $25 annual membership gives you access to one class, one Social Interest group, and our online communities.
A $12 annual membership gives you access to our Friday calls with the publisher, our online community.
Register New Account
Need more info? A complete list of benefits is here.
—
Photo credit: Getty Images