Growing up in a family that can’t enjoy the present and thinks joy can only come later, one day (maybe!) can do lots of damage to your kids. Not enjoying the things you have, focusing on trying to impress others, and saving everything “for a special day” takes a lot of energy.
This was the family I grew up in, and I had to change it, for my sake and the sake of my children.
Using my own medicine and walking the talk, I have used my own techniques of writing goals and changing attitude from “One special day” to “Every day is a special day”, and I set new family goals that changed our family life forever.
Here is my story.
Humble beginnings
I grew up with parents who didn’t have much when they were kids. Being humble and living with the bare minimum was a skill they developed to survive the circumstances of their life. My parents had big families with 7 kids, and their mothers never worked, forcing them to survive with little.
Most people in their generation had nothing, so those who could live with less were in a better position.
It is interesting that both my mother and father were in a similar situation, yet my mother took this to the extreme. She didn’t even use most of the things she had. In her mind, they were meant for a “special day”.
So, I grew up with this “special day” mentality and always felt guilty using the things I had instead of keeping them for that special day. When I became a mother, I realized that mentality slipped into many of my thoughts and behaviors and I knew I needed to change that mindset so that this “curse” will not be carried, through my children, to future generations.
Can you see how stopping the cycle is essential?
I wanted to instill in my mind, and the mind of my children, my grandchildren, and whoever comes after, that we should treat each day as a special day.
“One Day” file
Over the years, I gave a name for my mom’s syndrome. I called it the “One Day file”. In our brain, we have files. There is one special file of “wants” we postpone at the mercy of the future.
Please note this is not the dream file. It is not positioned in a specific future, but in a vague “one day” that never comes. “One day I’ll make this phone call”, “One day I will use this beautiful necklace”, “One day I’ll be wealthy”, “One day I will be slim”, “One day I will fulfill my wishes”…
The problem with that file is that for most people, it is effectively the same as the rubbish bin file. Only those who face death get a chance to open that file and examine their desires in the face of death, when it is often too late.
My mom had a huge “one day” file. Much like her, we all put things there that we don’t think we’ll ever achieve. In desperation, we put things in it that are beyond our reach.
Again, I believe it is a defense mechanism, but it sure plants the idea in our subconscious mind that this is not part of our journey, and sure enough, we never get there.
Life is a show, not a rehearsal!
I didn’t want to transfer this mentality to my children. I thought my mom suffered big time because of this mindset. Yes, it starts with not finding joy in gifts, but in my philosophy, it grows bigger to not going after your dreams.
My mom couldn’t find joy in receiving gifts (she never used them) or in buying things. She struggled with being in the now and enjoying it.
In my imagination (and I have great imagination), I saw myself living in a dress rehearsal. She thinks that everything is a rehearsal for something special that might happen one day in the future and that day never comes. It sure never came to her. My mom is 85 years old, and she is still waiting. She is still in a dress rehearsal.
Happiness is a choice
It was not easy to discover I had adopted some of my mom’s attitude towards life. So, I made the decision to change this and wrote goals with the gist of “Life is a show, not a rehearsal. It’s one show, and we are in the show. Literally, this is a live show. We are the producers, the directors and the actors”.
In order to change my attitude, I wrote several goals, and called them “The Show”. This post is about the process of me shifting from the “One Day file” to “The Show”.
Celebration of use
My mom was in such “saving mode” that she never used the perfumes she had. She didn’t use them even if they were a gift. She had perfumes, make-up, moisturizers and creams (most were gifts, because she never thought she deserved to buy them for herself), and she still had them 20-30 years later, when they already smelled horrible.
I remember the guilt I had for breaking one of my mom’s expensive perfumes. She’d had it for years and hardly used it because it was so expensive. It was a gift my dad had bought her during their first trip overseas.
As kids, we would use it in hiding and told each other that each spray cost about $10. One day, it fell from my hands and all I could see in front of me was how much money was spilled on the floor.
It took me 15 years to find out which perfume it was and buy her the same perfume as a gift. By the way, I still use that perfume myself. I ask for it as a gift, and nobody buys it for me, I buy it as a gift to myself.
My precious (pencils)
At one stage, I realized that, although I don’t do that with perfumes (avoid using them so they last), I felt a loss about pens, special pencils and stickers. Every time a pen ran out of ink, I felt a loss. Every time a page of stickers finished, I felt I had wasted it.
It reached a point where I would avoid using special gel pens (with glitter), to avoid them running out. When I paid attention to my feelings, I felt very uncomfortable. I was doing the exact thing my mom did. It hit me again. We do something a bit different from what our parents did and think we are better than them, but we’re not!
When we lived in Thailand, our lifestyle was that of kings and queens. We had so much money we felt spoiled. One day, I went to the Thieves’ Market and bought about 1,000 A4-size pages of stickers. Yes, 1,000 pages! And still, they didn’t give me a sense of abundance. Every time I used one of the stickers, I felt grief – a sense of loss.
Goals of gratitude
The good thing about family goals is that making a change for your own sake is harder than doing it for your kids. This was my incentive. I didn’t want that for my kids and knew that I had to change it in my mind. I could imagine the cycle of it transferring from one generation to another and I didn’t like it at all.
I figured that a pen that ran out of ink, or a sticker page that has been used, is a cause for celebration, not for misery and grief. So I made a goal that every pen, crayon, sticker page and tube of paint that reaches its end, that has given me a service and has been used to the max, is a cause for celebration, and I will have a small ceremony of gratitude.
Before I threw it in the bin, I said, “Thank you for the joy you have given me”.
Wow, that was so liberating! Suddenly, I could enjoy the pens, the sharpies and the stickers, instead of trying to save them for a special occasion, on some special day.
Gradually, I reached the point that I was happy when it happened, rather than sad. Buying a new one, after the other one “served” me faithfully, was another cause for celebration.
Special food on special days
My mom’s attitude of saving things for a special day extended beyond using things. She even applied it to food.
My mom was a chef. She knew how to cook and how to bake, but only did it fully when we had guests. There was no way we could ask her to make food we liked for us, because she only made it for special occasions.
Having guests was always a special occasion, and when she served special food to the guests, we weren’t allowed to touch it and had to be served last, even if meant there wasn’t enough left for us.
Don’t get me wrong. We had plenty of food most of the time. Cooking for seven people was a daily routine, and we always had enough for seconds and thirds, but special food, cakes – all the food we rarely had – that was always counted. One for each person, and nothing more. So, if the guests took a bit more, we simply didn’t get a chance to eat it.
I hated it to the max. For us as children, it meant that other people were more important to our mom than we were.
Now, as I am an adult, I don’t think they were more important, but she felt she needed to impress them more than she had to impress us.
This attitude made my mom very competitive about food. If we came to the kitchen to learn from her, she would kick us out or ask us to wash the dishes.
For years, she competed with my older sister on making the best dish and never backed off. She considered all of us girls useless in the kitchen and when I moved in with Gal, she brought us food, talked to Gal about how to cook it, and talked to me as if I only knew how to make sandwiches.
Every day is special food day
Being exposed to that dynamic made us, all three younger sisters give up on competing with her (my brother was oblivious to it). Until today, we keep a low profile around her and never brag about our food successes.
For years, when she came to visit us on the other side of the world, we still had to clear the kitchen, and cooking was her domain.
Thanks to her, I hated the kitchen. Luckily for me, Gal loved cooking, so the kitchen was a very happy place for us.
Unlike my mom, Gal’s mom (RIP) loved guests in her kitchen. In high school, all Gal’s friends, including me, were often with her in the kitchen, talking and helping her out, sometimes forgetting we came over to see Gal…
When Eden, my eldest, was born, I realized it was my job to change my attitude towards the kitchen. I made a goal to make her feel comfortable in the kitchen. I wanted my kids to get the message that cooking is a form of love, and my goal was to impress them and make them happy and comfortable in the kitchen.
Every day, When I brought the kids home from school/day-care, we spent an hour in the kitchen, cooking together, until Gal came home from work at around 5:30-6pm. The kids helped each other make school lunches, they learned to cut with knives from 4 years old, stood next to the stove on a chair (with the help of an older person), washed the dishes together, set the table, and all our creations were done together.
This was so enjoyable that we reached a point where I said, “Eden…” or “Tsoof…”, and they knew what to bring without me saying it. Cooking and baking were a state of flow. It was total joy.
Life is a special occasion
Changing my attitude helped me heal the kitchen trauma I had carried with the help of my own children.
If one of the kids wanted to cook for us, we would add the ingredients he/she needed to the shopping list. It was an honor for us to eat their creations and there was never any competition.
Our children could ask for a special dish they like any time they wanted. Noff, the youngest, asked for her 20th birthday to stay home and have her favorite dish, instead of going out to celebrate.
If I learned to cook something new, the kids were the first to enjoy it, guests always come later. Eden at one stage became our baker and from the age of 13, baking was her domain. She was the chef, and we were the helpers.
Unlike my parents’ home when as a kid, our kitchen was the most joyous place in the house, and still is. Even now that our kids don’t live in our house, when they come, we often gather in the kitchen and cook together.
From time to time, When I went shopping, I would buy a special food (mangosteens that reminds us of or Thailand, or special childhood snacks). When the kids asked, “What’s the special occasion?”, I would say, “Life is a special occasion“.
Food adventures
I have three children who love to eating, love to cook, know how to cook and are proud of themselves for it. They are adventurous with food, they are not fussy and like to try amazing dishes everywhere we go around the world.
Our rule was, “You don’t have to like it, but you have to try it once”. Trying is the only way to find the tastes you like and discover new things you might like.
In our house now, when one person is cooking, all the rest are grateful and say it out loud. Our son, who bought himself a house several years ago, cooks all his meals for himself (proper dishes, not snacks or sandwiches), and hosts a dinner for us or his friends once a week, on average.
We’ve reached the point that even going out for dinner is no longer just for special occasions. Food is a beautiful way to show love, share experiences, experiment and be together, not a tool to impress anyone, because it’s the intention that matters.
When I look at my children and their attitude to food and kitchen, I know that my family goals have been successful.
Gifts are for use, not for storage
Another issue I had to get over is the issue of gifts. At my parents’ house, we never received a gift for our birthday or had a party. Our parents bought us something we needed (shoes, uniform, school bag), and we just accepted it because beggars can’t be choosers.
All our neighborhood friends were in the same situation, so it seemed normal. The only mention of a celebration or special occasion was a cake my mom made for the weekend closest to the birthday.
When my parents got a gift, they would put it up high in the closet for us to use when we got married and left the house. Mom or dad never used the gifts they were given.
It was so extreme that my sister moved out of the house at the age of 24 and my mother didn’t give her the “stored” gifts because she wasn’t married.
I remember dreaming about gifts. When Gal became my boyfriend, he bought me a record for my birthday, and I cherished it for years. The wrapped present, the intention, was a beautiful expression of love for me.
I was 16 years old, and the feeling was totally new to me.
Gifts as a love language
When Eden was born, I decided that gifts needed to be part of life. I took it to the extreme when I decided to buy gifts for no reason at all. Gifts are a language of love, and my goal was to make it a language we speak in our family.
The same way, we have made a choice in our family that every year, we would have a birthday celebration for the kids and another party for no reason, and that one day wasn’t enough to celebrate birthdays, so we celebrated for a week or two.
Although not all of us are “gift” people, we all buy things for each other for no special occasion, just because we went shopping and saw something that would make someone else happy.
We have a box of gifts that we have received and didn’t need or want, and everyone in the house is welcome to use them or to give them away.
Gifts are now an expression of love in our family. They are something to be grateful for, and, most of all, when we use them and enjoy them, we send love in return.
My three goals to freedom
Those were the three areas I have set goals to change the way my own parents thought about life (using what we have, enjoying food and loving through gifts). Since then, every time I fall into Rehearsal Mode (“One day, I’ll…”), I remind myself that every day is a special day and that the life I live right now is the real show.
These goals were extremely beneficial for my children. They remember to live their life now, not for something in the future that may never come.
I believe setting those family goals made my kids think that life is “The show” and not a “dress rehearsal”. They totally understand that they are the producers, the directors and the actors of their own life show. Their “one day file” is empty, because they enjoy what they have.
I want to say that I achieved those goals without anger towards my parents, because I respect the circumstances that brought them to behave like they did. To my children, I said that I hoped they would examine my way of doing things and do things even better.
Happy family goal setting,
Ronit
