I don't understand this...Izzy, this has nothing to do with your situation, honest, this is just a question I don't understand: I thought, from reading this board, that saying'you did the best that you could' was not acceptable if it was said of our parents? There is so much pain here, so much hate for parents, does anyone truly believe 'they did the best 'they' could? I do, but I'm confused because for some, when it's said it's offensive to them. Does this question make sense to anyone?
Dear Silly,
Excellent question. Yes, there is disagreement about the question as to "did the N do the best that the N could do".
Lighter explained my view of this question in another post (can't find itnow). But, MY feeling is 3 fold:
1st:For acts that are blatantly evil , like pouring scolding hot water on a child, then I would never say an NP "did the best they could do". Clearly such an act is evil and wrong.
2nd: there are situations where an N (or NP) is ignorant. Sometimes the ignorance is due to a lack of education or knowledge. In this case, I believe that the N may have done the best they could do because they didn;t know any better. Nonethe less, the child or victim is still injured, so that the N's ignorance DOES NOT DIMINISH the child or victim's wound.
3rd: This is also my opinion: If the N ( or NP) lives in denial, then the N is also"ignorant" because they subconsciously refuse to look at the TRUTH of their actions. They refuse to "acknowledge" the evil that they do because they cannot face the truth (this is along the lines of Scott Peck's "Peopleof the Lie"). Peck calls such people "evil" and I agree. Nonethe less, because these Ns refuse to acknoweldge the truth of their actions, they live in a fog of denial and therefore,it's my opinion that such people could do not better than what they have done.
Because they live in denial, they can't see the truth and therefore, they are blind to the evil that they do, and thus, they could not have done any better. Therefore, such people did the "best" they could do. Again, this is my opinion.
As to your statement about many people 'hating' their parents, I can't always call it plain and simple hate. I believe that many of us are trying to UNDERSTAND and FATHOM our NP's treatment of us so that we can make some sense of it. Maybe some do hate their parents, but there's also a lot of effort to try to make sense of our upbringings and our FOOs and as we do so, we may feel a lot of anger and hate, but I think those are part of the mix of emotions that we feel. In my opinion, I think many of us feel hurt, pain, disappointmemt, disillusion and perhaps those feelings can amount to hate. I think the hatred depends on how bad someone's NPs were.
Love,
sally
