In his Broadway show, Bruce Springsteen explained the choice presented to all parents: We are ghosts or we are ancestors in our children’s lives. We either lay our mistakes, our burdens upon them, and we haunt them, or we assist them in laying those old burdens down, and we free them from the chain of our own flawed behavior. And as ancestors, we walk alongside of them, and we assist them in finding their own way and some transcendence.
Will you be a ghost or an ancestor to your children? Will you haunt them or guide them? Will you curse them or inspire them? Of course, we all know which of those two we want to be, just as Bruce’s flawed father surely did. But then our demons, our issues, the ghosts of our own parents, get in the way.
That’s why we go to therapy and read good books. That’s why we stay up at night before bed talking to our spouse about how hard this parenting thing is, to exorcise those demons by bringing them into the light. It’s why, wordlessly, when we hold our kids, we promise ourselves to do better, to try harder, to not repeat the mistakes we endured growing up.
This isn’t going to be easy. We’re not going to be perfect. But we’re going to keep trying. We’re going to be an ancestor—someone who guides them and inspires them. We’re not going to haunt their future selves like a ghost.