The Good Enough Parent by Alain de Botton

Author:Alain de Botton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The School of Life

J. Xaudaro, Concorde before Concorde, 1920: ‘Thanks to the aeroexpress, New York is only one and a half hours away from London. Price of the trip: 1,000 dollars.’

In the Year 2000, a series of French illustrations, 1899–1910

Children don’t only have things to teach us around playfully imagining the future. They are also canny at coming up with imaginary friends. Reality can be very poor at providing us with the kinds of people we actually need in order to feel understood and comforted. What we long to hear and the sort of interactions we crave may not always be possible in the compromised conditions of a typical home. But this rarely holds children back. They will latch ingeniously onto a promising-looking thirty-centimetre piece of cloth and stuffing with button eyes and decide that this is the friend they always wished for and deserve: someone who can understand their sorrows, will have comforting things to say when they are confused, will want to have cups of tea with them in the night and will always, always be ready for a hug.

Later on, they may discover books and try out a similar move. These so called bookworms learn how to feel connected to a person who might have died in 1420 CE or 300 BCE and who tells them important things with a freshness and clarity no one in their vicinity can match. They take to carrying this friend around with them in a bag wherever they go, and don’t mind if its corners get dirty or pages mottled. They stay up late with the ‘friend’ and might weep at a tenderness and understanding that seems so far from what they receive from their own acquaintances. A few of these children even go on to become writers, and one day confide to a page what it feels hard to express to others in person – a grown-up version of the move they might once have made in childhood, when their frayed bear patiently heard their upsets. Bookshops, the toy shops of big people, end as places where our disappointments with others can be mediated and redeemed, and friends not found in life can be secured through the grown-up game we soberly call ‘literature’.

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