Final Blog Post

 Have you ever seen those commercials for Progressive Insurance about people turning into their parents? (examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfdrZzF_RL0, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RednLQ-4VE )They are commercials advertising young homeowners turning into their parents with small habits; the point being that you cannot save yourself from turning into your parents but you can protect your home with insurance. These commercials have always stuck with me because I found them funny and I have seen in my parents how they have the same small habits as my grandparents do. However, when thinking about time and how time repeats itself, these commercials tie into a bigger picture. 

As we have discussed in class, time is not always linear. The past, present, and future are all connected and interact with each other. This is especially true when looking at relationships between parents and their children. Parents see themselves in their children and children adopt some traits of their parents (both consciously and unconsciously). In these ways, time is not linear but rather past experiences affect both the present and the future. 

There have been many situations when my mom uses the line “you know, I was once your age too” when trying to give me advice. When I was in high school, I shrugged off this advice - not believing there might be some merit in what my mom was saying. As I have grown older, and seen that my mom’s advice usually is correct, I have a greater appreciation that my mom has gone through a lot of the same experiences that I am going through now. Her advice is usually spot on, even to an annoying degree, because she has been my age before and has had to navigate similar situations. This presents an interesting function of time. My mom, when she sees me growing up, sees her younger self in some ways because she is reminded of her own experiences growing up. She uses her feelings and her past to help me through present situations. Therefore, in a way, I am a living memory of her past and her life growing up. Who knows, maybe by her seeing me at this age gives her a new understanding of herself at my age. If this were the case, and I feel in one way or another it is, then my present would be affecting my mom’s past. 

Likewise, her past and present affect my future. Her advice and what she has taught me have an unmeasurable influence. My mom is an amazing woman and growing up I have always strived to be like her. Children, including myself, make conscious decisions to try to adopt certain aspects of our parents and make them a part of our personalities. In this way our parent’s past and present affect their children’s present and future. In addition to consciously choosing to incorporate aspects of our parents/role models personalities into our own, there will inevitably be unconscious additions as well. One that comes to mind for me is how my dad always needs to leave a sporting event or a concert at least ten minutes early to be the first ones out of the parking lot. I have noticed recently that I have unfortunately inherited this tendency as well - I now get anxious just thinking about all the traffic we will sit in if we do not leave an event early. This is a silly, little example but shows how we do become our parents/role models in more ways than we know which shows our future being affected by the actions they have taken.