Roy's Journal

Roy: … Wanting to write for someone else is probably just my ego trying to leave some sort of legacy, trying to prove that it matters to someone. I can print a PDF with parts of the Actual Freedom website instead.

Hi Roy,

Your thinking about writing for the benefits of others doesn’t hold up as you already received feedback how it has helped some people and how you commented that other people’s writing helped you. It does matter. Apart from possible ego-enhancing reasons there is also fellowship regard, the very reason why, for instance, Richard wrote all he did during the last 25 years.

All that has been written before actualism is how to cope with the firmly entrenched ubiquitous belief that you cannot change human nature. Anyone’s writing about the opposite being demonstrably and successfully the case can only benefit the human race now and in the long run. You haven’t been told, by any chance, that the meek shall inherit the earth, have you? :wink:

Roy: My path is unique (because I’m a unique person in this time and space) but it’s not special in any way. I think it’s normal to feel like I’ve chosen this path, but what happened is that I made some choices that oriented me slightly in a direction and then life happened and I ended up here. It’s basically this in repeat – the path is maze-like in reality and it’s my ego that tries to picture it as a clear path that was solely possible thanks to its choices. But in fact it was also about chance and many factors I had no control over. My children will have to go on their own different maze-like paths and I can’t teach them any shortcuts because I’ve no idea where they are headed. The only thing I can do for them is to be happy and harmless. (link)

Yes, your “children will have to go on their own different maze-like paths” and yet you can already pass on some of the things you have discovered. Children often can understand more of what one gives them credit for. For instance –

RESPONDENT: What do you say to your grandchildren when they are hurt, desolate, crying?
RICHARD: I say the same to my grandchildren when they are hurt, desolate or crying as I say to any body and every body – no body is special – which is: all mental-emotional-psychic suffering is an unnecessary and self-inflicted wound. (Richard, Gen. Corresp., Page 9a, 21 March 2000).

RICHARD: Back when I was a father, when my then children would ask me if Santa Claus was real, I would say yes but not actual like a table is, for instance, as their mother was full-on into the traditions and such diplomatic answers, rather than an outright no, made for relative domestic harmony … and they had no difficulty whatsoever in grasping that concept (and applying it to witches riding broomsticks as well and fairies at the bottom of the garden and so on). (Richard, AF List, No. 25b, 19 July 2003).

Also, you are probably already discovering that being a friend to your children is much more fun than being a parent –

RICHARD: Presumably you are referring to this:
• [Tarin]: ‘… is it any better to be a friend to one’s child than a parent?
• [Richard]: ‘It certainly is … just for starters: being much more fun it readily promotes open learning (children are congenitally curious).
• [Tarin]: ‘If so, in what ways? I have already read this part: [quote] ‘and they all appreciated that immensely … as exemplified by the youngest often saying how glad she was that the ‘bossy-boots dad’ was gone’ [endquote].
• [Richard]: ‘By not being either authoritarian (as distinct from authoritative) or disciplinarian a child’s innate inquisitiveness is not stifled – and many such educators have bemoaned the lack of motivation in their subject students – inasmuch curiosity’s concomitant keenness for discovery provides more than enough incentive.
Apart from being innately curious children are also inherently imitative – as indicated by the term ‘role-model’ – and it should not take genius to suss out the advantages friendship has over parentship (or any other form of kinship for that matter)’.
There is a marked difference to being authoritarian (being an autocratic disciplinarian) and being authoritative – as in proceeding from competent authority (expertise/ experience) – and children generally appreciate guidance as the world at large can be, and often is, a bewildering/ frightful place for them … especially in the playground (where the bully-boys and feisty-femmes act-out the law of the jungle on a daily basis). (Richard, AF List, Tarin, 14 June 2006)

You’ll find out as you go along.

Cheers Vineeto

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