by Melissa Brown

Created on: November 08, 2010

Recently, I had the opportunity to attend a birthday party for one of my brothers.  We’ve been giving special birthday celebrations for those of us that have turned 60 for almost 3 years.  That means that three of us, including one cousin, have made it to 60.  Most of our siblings were able to come for this celebration.  Two were not, and they were missed and talked about, lovingly, of course.   As I observed my siblings, I saw “Momisms” and “Dadisms” in each of them, and I dare say they see the same “isms” in me.  My observation of the entire celebration is that we all had a wonderful time, good food and very good company.

What a comfort that all of them are fine people with separate agendas; and that they certainly do not need to have my same agenda, nor my advice.  It’s even conceivable that I am just fine, and can do whatever I choose, including screw up, without the help and/or advice and consent of others.  And, yes, it has taken that long to realize that my siblings are just fine.  This whole paragraph gives light to the term I’m OK You’re OK, which was originally coined in a book of the same name, by Thomas A Harris, MD  in 1972. Actually, I do vaguely remember reading this book about 38 years ago. 

In his book, Dr. Harris talks about the movie, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf?”  I also remember seeing that movie as well, and that I was disturbed at how the characters treated each other.  It seemed that from this scenario, we are supposed to see that we create our own illusions; and when we are not happy with the illusions we have created for ourselves, then we tend to pick on the illusions that our loved ones (family, friends, neighbors, strangers?) have created for themselves.  Shouldn’t we just create newer, better illusions for ourselves; reinvent ourselves?  That would have been great, if we had only realized that it was that simple.  Sadly, we did not and sometimes still  don’t, so we continue to observe and critique others.  And that’s only part of the analogy.  Hence, the good doctor is telling us that we’re all okay, so we should quit picking on each other, and just appreciate and accept. What a relief not to have to analyze and pick apart!

All of this

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