“I would much rather have regrets about not doing what people said, than regretting not doing what my heart led me to and wondering what life would have been like if I’d just been myself.”
–Brittany Renee
Life is a precious gift from God, and it is given to the individual–not to the parents, or anyone else. When a baby is born, its parents tend to think it belongs to them. Certainly, the responsibility of caring for the child belongs to the parents, but the child is not their possession. The parents are granted custody of the child during its formative years, but must be prepared to relinquish that custody when the child becomes an adult. The role of the parents is to love the child, care for it and do everything in their power to prepare it for a life of its own. It is OK for the parents to want what is best for their child, but it is not their role to decide what is best for the child.
Some parents are reluctant to surrender their control over their children, but once the child becomes of legal age, it has the right to choose its own journey through life, with or without the approval of the parents. Some parents try to relive their own lives through their children by pressuring them to enter certain career fields or do other things that are important to the parents. Parents should encourage children to have their own dreams and try to help the children to fulfill those dreams instead of wanting the children to have the same dreams as the parents.
There are some limits on what we can do with our lives. We must not violate the laws of God or the laws of nations. However, beyond those boundaries, we should be able to live our lives according to our dreams and our hearts. Each individual’s life belongs to that individual, and to nobody else. That being the case, nobody has a right to try to manipulate the life of anyone else. Some parents are so selfish that they try to maintain control over their children’s lives after the children become adults. They have no legal or moral right to do so, but sometimes parents try to make their children feel a false sense of obligation and, through guilt, manage to maintain control over their children for years beyond the time they should have relinquished it.
Each and every one of us is a unique individual, and God’s purpose for us cannot be known by anyone else. We can seek God’s guidance, and try to determine how we can best use our talents and opportunities to further God’s work on earth. Although many people will want to tell us how we should live, we dare not let our desire to please others override our own judgment. As for pleasing others, we need to remember the words of renowned psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung: “Where love rules, there is no will to power, and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.” Those who truly love us will not want to control us, and those who want to control us cannot truly love us.
Think about it.
***
Copyright 2025
Allen W. Smith
