Educated:A Memoir

On the way home from work, I suddenly thought of a very interesting question: choose a university, choose a major, employment, marriage... It seems that most of life's big decisions are made at an immature age. Isn't it a little ridiculous that the choices you make in your early years can basically determine your life? This, some say, shows the importance of parental guidance at a young age. So the question is: one, will we follow our parents' guidance? When we are young and energetic, we may not follow the guidance of our parents, but insist on going in the direction we choose. Second, is parental guidance always correct? What would be the result of following your parents' guidance in everything?

I recently read a popular bestseller, You Should Fly Like a bird to Your Mountain, which is very enlightening to think about this question. Tara Westover, the author of the book, was born in Idaho in 1986. She never went to school until the age of 17. At first, I was misled by the book's marketing slogan, thinking it was an inspiring story about a poor student who turned into an excellent student to get into Cambridge University. In fact, the book is a story of trauma, growth and metamorphosis, with little space for learning and much more about the author's struggle to overcome the barriers of her family of origin and find and become her true self.

The English name of the book is "Educated", which means education. The author said that education redeemed him. It was through continuous education that the author completed the transformation of himself, reconstructed himself, and finally flew to the mountain of freedom. The title of the Chinese translation is said to have been chosen by the author himself. It comes from the Bible and has two meanings: to flee or to find a new faith.

Author tara was born in a very unique family, father is a faithful believer of Mormon, and suffers from bipolar disorder, depression, mania, the delusions, paranoia, murdered his don't believe in any organizations such as government, schools, hospitals, he believes that the end of the world will come, in the cellar storing food, canned fruit, gasoline, guns, ammunition to replace paper money with gold, and so on. The mother was completely dependent on the father, who was the absolute authority of the family in the Mormon belief that men were superior to women. Tara was the youngest of five brothers and one sister. They did not have birth certificates, did not go to the hospital, did not attend a day of school, their father imprisoned in a rubbish dump, under the control of their parents. The same mental abnormal second brother Sean to her spirit and physical torture, more make her situation worse. In Tara's words, "my childhood was made of scrap metal in a junkyard, where there was no reading, only the roar of cranes."

The third brother Taylor is like a beam of light, leading Tara to the door of education. Taylor was an introverted child, easily nervous, born with a stammer, his only friends were records and books, maybe it was the power of music and books, Taylor became the first child to leave his family, he was admitted to Brigham Young University through self-study. One day, Tyler told Tara, you can live like this, or you can do what I did and get into Brigham Young University. I like a sentence I read on the Internet very much: "Just like I never opened my eyes, I thought the world was originally black. If I hadn't seen the sun, I would have thought I liked black." Tyler was the faint light in the darkness of ignorance, without which Tara might still be alive in the darkness of ignorance. On the flyleaf of the book are four words: Dedicated to Taylor. When she turned back to the page after reading the book, she felt like crying. Tyler deserved Tara's thanks.

Tara lived up to Tyler's light. Through hard self-study, Tara was admitted to Brigham Young University at the age of 17. Later, with hard work and exceptional talent, she eventually received a doctorate in history from Cambridge University. But not everyone has the courage to go out when you're in the dark for so long. Along the way, Tara has experienced the contradiction and conflict between the old and new ideas, the struggle and repetition of the transformation process, the pain and helplessness of being active and passive and giving up her family. Finally, she escaped the mountains and opened up another world, "the new world my education had given me, the endless possibilities of my life." In addition to tara's own efforts, the help of noble people and the enlightenment of books are very important factors. Tara's tutor not only gave her guidance, but also helped her to apply for grants and recommend her to Cambridge University, which made people envy Tara's good luck. What is more important is the enlightenment of books. In her philosophy and history studies, she read a lot of philosophy and history books and got in touch with a lot of advanced ideas. As she read extensively, she began to understand that all men's opinions had certain limits, and that even historians could be mistaken by their cognitive limitations. So, the father in the family, who is regarded as the authority, has been instilling in him views that are not necessarily correct. In the continuous learning and education, Tara opened her eyes to the world, constantly updated her ideas, constantly reshaping her own thoughts, looking for and becoming a better self.

Tara fled the mountains and paid the price of breaking with her family. She had no contact with her parents or her brothers and sisters left behind in the mountains. Many years later, Tara tried to reconcile with her family. But there is no happy ending until the end of the book. How to reconcile? Maybe she doesn't know either. Don't her parents love her child? There are also many warm scenes in the book, one of the most memorable is when my father learns that she is going to university in England. "If you are in America," he whispered, "we can come to you wherever you are. I've got a thousand gallons of gas buried in the ground, and when the end of the world comes I can pick you up and take you home and keep you safe, but if you go across the ocean..." This warm moment between father and daughter proves that he loves her. Tara herself did not deny it. But she said: "You can love someone and still choose to say goodbye; You can miss someone every day and still be glad they're not in your life." Perhaps, there are always some people who love each other deeply, but can't really understand each other, so it's better to miss each other.

Psychologist Adler has a famous saying: "Happy people use childhood to heal life, unhappy people use life to heal childhood." How big is the impact of family of origin? Is it inevitable to live in an unhappy family and be unhappy all your life? Tara tells us that no matter how bad your family is, you can change your life. There were seven Tara siblings, born into the same family of origin, and three of them, including Tara and Tyler, made it out and became PHDS, while the other four who stayed behind in the mountains lived like their father without a high school diploma. Such a divided life shows the importance of self-awareness. People should try to get rid of the prison of thought, realize self-awakening, renew ideas and concepts constantly, and maintain the independence of thought and personality. The most powerful element of who you are comes from within, and it is within you that you truly heal.

Back to the question at the beginning of this article. Parents can and should give their children guidance, but they cannot manipulate their children in the name of love, they cannot determine the future of their children with experiences that we think are right, they can only decide the direction of their children's life. The reverse is also true, and children cannot change their parents as they think they are right. Everyone is destined to find, choose, educate and shape himself.