Generational Curses

I've just finished reading a 12 page piece on my mom's thoughts about her dad.
Grampa.

Sept. 30 marked his two year death anniversary, and expecting all the prayers and mass sponsorships that my mom would've done that day, I was treated to this. "Growing up with dad" written by Eileen Araneta.

It speaks volumes to me of what lies beneath the grandpa-grandkids relationship. Behind every Christmas gift, behind every "Ryan, come here, watch PBA with me", behind every time my grampa would wanna do something with me.... there was my mom. Fearing the worst.

My grampa wasn't the person he tried to portray to his grandkids, and I could tell.
My mom's piece was the final nail on it.

He was a dictator. Power-hungry. A charmer. Completely self-serving.
He was a womanizer, the worst kinda husband my gandma could've ever gotten hitched to.
He is the epitome of SLY GUY.

I won't narrate the entire piece that my mom wrote. First, it isn't fair to her and second, 12 pages about someone else's Lolo isn't gonna cut it out with you guys. At least if I was famous, it probably could.

But I'd like to discuss GENERATIONAL CURSES. It is that which I am fearing now. The traits and bad habits that filtered from my grampa, to my mother (although she might never accept it) to me... and hopefully, never to my kids, if I would be so blessed to have some.

We are all brought up differently. And generational curses may expose it's ugly head under the circumstances we are brought up. Let's take power-hunger as an example. To some, it may be exposed in the dictatorial sense to be ruthless, uncaring and Machiavellian, such as what happened with my Grampa. It seemed to him that he had already won each debate he argued in.

Or.. It could be like what happened to my mom. Power-hungry because she wanted to separate herself from her dad. She became a workaholic, which eventually led her to her own success story and countless talks in school auditoriums.

And then there's my sister. Equally power hungry, but without the charm my grampa used to sleaze his way into situations or my mom's drive to become rich (growing up in Alabang Hills kinda does that to you). Rina ended up becoming a mixture of them both and their upbringing... and she soon found herself in a very lonely place.

For some reason I was never power-hungry. Maybe it will manifest itself in the future or in some work or some gay-ass hobby that I am yet to encounter. Who knows. But this is just an example. There are many other traits that we may keep from our parents, whom we hate to the very core, and pass it down to our children unsuspectingly. The white lies that my dad would make to my mom, so that he could buy things for the house. "The billiard table would help increase their peripheral vision" or some shit like that was never found as wrong. He did it with everything. The salesman that he is, he loved describing things as if it was God who created them. There was no darkside to every sales pitch he delivered, and if something wrong came up.. he'd always go "Eh what can we do?".
It eventually led me to my vice, which I have been curing for the past couple of years... LYING convincingly and effortlessly.

It's so easy for anyone to pick up these things... that it's scary.

So for any wrongdoings or bad habits that I have, which you may know about (So far I know that I lie a lot, tend to think "an eye for an eye", and generally don't trust people)... save me. As Y2J Chris Jericho used to say "save me".

Maybe preserving your name comes at the risk of preserving your family's bad habits.