Far from the tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity by Andrew Solomon
Fridayes September 12, 2018
This book is a masterpiece. I think to describe it as unique would be very true and fitting. The author has spent many years of conmmunication with the people described in the book, travelled to different remote places, did not simply take interviews but formed friendships with many of the subjects of the book.
The book is divided into chapters about children that in some way differ from their parents: the deaf, autistic, children with the Down syndrome and criminal children, among others. Solomon is concerned not with the sensational aspects of the cases he describes but with the indentity. How being different forms your identity, how this is identity perceived by the society if it is recognized as an identity at all. How do parents deal with horizontal (sexual orientation, disability, etc) identities of their children.
He himself is somewhat different too. He is a gay man, coming from a jewish family. For many years he lives and fights severe depression. He also has children together with his partner, and describes a very complex but working para-familial union he and his partner have with the mothers of their children and with the chidlren his partner helped conceive.
I have read many-many different books. Many of them very kind and humane, full of kind ideas and love. But Far From The Tree stands apart. Andrew Solomon has managed to write about real people, with very real and often very-very acute problems and tragic situations with a truly humane approach, while at the same with impartiality. This is something truly unparalled in my opinion.
Often while reading the book I was amazed at Mr.Solomon's strength of character and kindness of his heart.
I recommend this book very-very highly. if only to gain perspective on our normal lives this book is priceless. But also it teaches many important lessons. It shows that you need to accept yourself and to accept others. And it is much more difficult to do than to say.
A few quotes, some of them quitelengthy:
All parenting turns on a crucial question: to what extent parents should accept their children for who they are, and to what extent they should help them become their best selves.
Perhaps the immutable error of parenthood is that we give our children what we wanted, whether they want it or not. We heal our wounds with the love we wish we’d received, but are often blind to the wounds we inflict.
A follower of the Dalai Lama who had been imprisoned by the Chinese for decades was asked if he had ever been afraid in jail, and he said his fear was that he would lose compassion for his captors. Parents often think that they've captured something small and vulnerable, but the parents I've profiled here have been captured, locked up with their children's madness or genius or deformity, and the quest is never to lose compassion. A Buddhist scholar once explained to me that most Westerners mistakenly think that nirvana is what you arrive at when your suffering is over and only an eternity of happiness stretches ahead. But such bliss would always be shadowed by the sorrow of the past and would therefore be imperfect. Nirvana occurs when you not only look forward to rapture, but also gaze back into the times of anguish and find in them the seeds of your joy. You may not have felt that happiness at the time, but in retrospect it is incontrovertible.
Some people are trapped by the belief that love comes in finite quantities, and that our kind of love exhausts the supply upon which they need to draw. I do not accept competitive models of love, only additive ones
To look deep into your child's eyes and see in him both yourself and something utterly strange, and then to develop a zealous attachment to every aspect of him, is to achieve parenthood's self-regarding, yet unselfish, abandon. It is astonishing how often such mutuality had been realized - how frequently parents who had supposed that they couldn't care for an exceptional child discover that they can. The parental predisposition to love prevails in the most harrowing of circumstances. There is more imagination in the world than one might think.
There is something ironic in prejudice against the disabled and their families, because their plight might befall anybody. Straight men are unlikely to wake up gay one morning, and white children don't become black; but any of us could be disabled in an instant. People with disabilities make up the largest minority in America; they constitute 15 percent of the population, though only 15 percent of those were born with their disability and about a third are over sixty-five. Worldwide, some 550 million people are disabled. The disability-rights scholar Tobin Siebers has written, "The cycle of life runs in actuality from disability to temporary ability back to disablity, and that only if you are among the most fortunate.
It is a surprise to me to like myself; among all the elaborate possibilities I contemplated for my future, that never figured. My hard-won contentment reflects the simple truth that inner peace often hinges on outer peace. In the gnostic gospel of St. Thomas, Jesus says, “If you bring forth what is within you, what is within you will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what is within you will destroy you.
There is no contradiction between loving someone and feeling burdened by that person; indeed, love tends to magnify the burden.
I realized that I had demanded that my parents accept me but had resisted accepting them.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and no power is more absolute than parenthood.
EDIT
This book is a masterpiece. I think to describe it as unique would be very true and fitting. The author has spent many years of conmmunication with the people described in the book, travelled to different remote places, did not simply take interviews but formed friendships with many of the subjects of the book.
The book is divided into chapters about children that in some way differ from their parents: the deaf, autistic, children with the Down syndrome and criminal children, among others. Solomon is concerned not with the sensational aspects of the cases he describes but with the indentity. How being different forms your identity, how this is identity perceived by the society if it is recognized as an identity at all. How do parents deal with horizontal (sexual orientation, disability, etc) identities of their children.
He himself is somewhat different too. He is a gay man, coming from a jewish family. For many years he lives and fights severe depression. He also has children together with his partner, and describes a very complex but working para-familial union he and his partner have with the mothers of their children and with the chidlren his partner helped conceive.
I have read many-many different books. Many of them very kind and humane, full of kind ideas and love. But Far From The Tree stands apart. Andrew Solomon has managed to write about real people, with very real and often very-very acute problems and tragic situations with a truly humane approach, while at the same with impartiality. This is something truly unparalled in my opinion.
Often while reading the book I was amazed at Mr.Solomon's strength of character and kindness of his heart.
I recommend this book very-very highly. if only to gain perspective on our normal lives this book is priceless. But also it teaches many important lessons. It shows that you need to accept yourself and to accept others. And it is much more difficult to do than to say.
A few quotes, some of them quitelengthy:
All parenting turns on a crucial question: to what extent parents should accept their children for who they are, and to what extent they should help them become their best selves.
Perhaps the immutable error of parenthood is that we give our children what we wanted, whether they want it or not. We heal our wounds with the love we wish we’d received, but are often blind to the wounds we inflict.
A follower of the Dalai Lama who had been imprisoned by the Chinese for decades was asked if he had ever been afraid in jail, and he said his fear was that he would lose compassion for his captors. Parents often think that they've captured something small and vulnerable, but the parents I've profiled here have been captured, locked up with their children's madness or genius or deformity, and the quest is never to lose compassion. A Buddhist scholar once explained to me that most Westerners mistakenly think that nirvana is what you arrive at when your suffering is over and only an eternity of happiness stretches ahead. But such bliss would always be shadowed by the sorrow of the past and would therefore be imperfect. Nirvana occurs when you not only look forward to rapture, but also gaze back into the times of anguish and find in them the seeds of your joy. You may not have felt that happiness at the time, but in retrospect it is incontrovertible.
Some people are trapped by the belief that love comes in finite quantities, and that our kind of love exhausts the supply upon which they need to draw. I do not accept competitive models of love, only additive ones
To look deep into your child's eyes and see in him both yourself and something utterly strange, and then to develop a zealous attachment to every aspect of him, is to achieve parenthood's self-regarding, yet unselfish, abandon. It is astonishing how often such mutuality had been realized - how frequently parents who had supposed that they couldn't care for an exceptional child discover that they can. The parental predisposition to love prevails in the most harrowing of circumstances. There is more imagination in the world than one might think.
There is something ironic in prejudice against the disabled and their families, because their plight might befall anybody. Straight men are unlikely to wake up gay one morning, and white children don't become black; but any of us could be disabled in an instant. People with disabilities make up the largest minority in America; they constitute 15 percent of the population, though only 15 percent of those were born with their disability and about a third are over sixty-five. Worldwide, some 550 million people are disabled. The disability-rights scholar Tobin Siebers has written, "The cycle of life runs in actuality from disability to temporary ability back to disablity, and that only if you are among the most fortunate.
It is a surprise to me to like myself; among all the elaborate possibilities I contemplated for my future, that never figured. My hard-won contentment reflects the simple truth that inner peace often hinges on outer peace. In the gnostic gospel of St. Thomas, Jesus says, “If you bring forth what is within you, what is within you will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what is within you will destroy you.
There is no contradiction between loving someone and feeling burdened by that person; indeed, love tends to magnify the burden.
I realized that I had demanded that my parents accept me but had resisted accepting them.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and no power is more absolute than parenthood.
EDIT