As I am growing up and went through different stages in life, many factors and experiences did change my perspective of "family" from time to time.
"Running on Empty" is a movie about a family with the parents who were responsible for an anti-war protest bombing, and their two sons who had to keep running from the authority with them. The protest bombing accidentally paralyzed and blinded a janitor who was not supposed to be in that place. Before the authority could trace and find out where was this family escape to, this family would immediately move to new place with new identities. The elder son, Danny was in his late teenage. One of the scene that caught my eyes was when the mother helped Danny to dye a new hair colour and gave him a new name for new identity, Danny told his mother about his confusion about the names and his "real-self".
To me, family serves a function to form one's identity. Family structure, parenting styles, birth order and many factors can serve in a family to build one's personality, cognition, behaviours, values and identity. As Erik Erikson suggested in his Psychosocial Stages, adolescents starts to identify their roles and go through the stage of "identity vs role confusion"- they either develop their identity clearly or confuse about their role (Ciccarelli & White, 2012). A new name indicated a new identity in Danny's case. He went to different schools and neighbourhood with different identities, often needed to memorize his and his family members' identities, sometimes he confused what should "Michael" do, what should "Danny" do. I spent my childhood with my grandparents after my parents divorced when I was 6, spent my teenage with my mother and now as a young adult, staying with my father. This unique life experience shapes and changes me as a person in different stages of growing. I used to be lost during my teenage time. My grandmother trying to raise me up as a woman who can do all kinds of house chores, my mother expected me to embrace my music talent while my father taught me to be independent. Each of their values were important to me and have certain effects on my choice of career. As I used to take the blame to myself and think it was my fault to my parents' divorce, I thought that the better I do in life and school, the more my parents would love and pay more attention to me. I was lost when I came to teenage because I wanted to make the best decision for further studies and please them, but I found out I did not even know who I am. It took me quite some time and courage to talk to them about my role confusion, and my parents really did a great job to help me to explore by myself, and learn from the experiences.
This leads to another point of view of mine about family, family is to love one another unconditionally. As in the movie, the family love and support each other unconditionally. Knowing that the parents may did something wrong or sometimes things that Danny could not agree with, he still gave his support and sacrifice for his family. His mother risks her life to arrange a better life for Danny to university, and both of the parents sacrifice their "togetherness" with Danny, rather to keep Danny by their side, continue living a dangerous life to hide here and there, they left Danny so that he could pursue his dreams. I used to strive so hard in academic, actively join and excel in extra-curriculum and competitions, and never allow failure to happen. My parents and extended family members showed me unconditional love that tells me: my performance does not change their love to me. My parents were learning how to provide proper parenting especially after their divorce. My mother once told me: "If you success, I will cheer for you; if you fail, I am still proud of you as my daughter." My father always affirms me: "No matter what decision you make, I am always here to support and pray for you." They accept my ups and downs, the unconditional love helps to shape me as who am I today. Past researches also significantly proved that a loving and caring environment created in the family with honest and open communication enables the family members to express love for one another, also helps in resolve the differences or problems in the family (Peterson, 2009), and benefit for human psychological well-being (Hassenzahl, Heidecker, Eckoldt, Diefenbach & Hillmann, 2012).
As I was watching the movie, I felt heavy for Danny as I viewed his situation as his life is being chained, that he could not choose what he really wanted to do. I felt relief at the end of movie when the father asked Danny to move out and move on to his life, although it was hard for me to see the sacrifices made and separation of the family. I immerse myself to the story, imagining if I would have to make decision like this and cannot be with my family that I used to attached a lot, how would I handle it?
References
Ciccarelli, S. K., & White, J. N. (2012). Psychology. (3rd ed.). United States: Pearson Education.
Hassenzahl, M., Heidecker, S., Eckoldt, K., Diefenbach, S., & Hillman, U. (2012). All you need is love: Current strategies of mediating intimate relationships through technology. Journal of ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 19(4), 30. doi: 10.1145/2395131.2395137
Peterson, R. (2009). Families first: Keys to successful family functioning, communication. Retrieved from http://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/bitstream/handle/10919/48300/350-092_pdf.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
Picture from Google:
https://www.google.com/search?q=running+on+empty+1988+danny+swipe+floor&espv=2&biw=1366&bih=667&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjb9Y2ZqIDLAhUBv44KHfHRA3kQ_AUIBygC#tbm=isch&q=running+on+empty+1988&imgrc=OSM8pyOrB9wg8M%3A
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