Should I distance myself from a parent?

Respect for one's parents is the root from which every other virtue grows. A person who cannot honour the people who raised him will find it hard to be faithful to anyone. So I will not tell you to walk away lightly.nnBut respect is not the same as obedience, and it is certainly not the same as silence. When parents are in the wrong, a good son or daughter tells them so. Gently, more than once, choosing the moment and the words with care. If they do not listen, you remain respectful, you do not set yourself against them, and you carry on with your duties without complaining. That is very hard. It is meant to be.nnAnd I would ask you what respect really consists of. Even dogs and horses are fed. If all you give your parents is their meals and their bills, and no reverence in your manner, what distinguishes your care from a stable hand's? The reverse is also true: you may give less of your time and still give real respect, in how you speak of them and to them.nnSo if you must step back, step back without breaking. See them less if you must, but keep the forms: visit on the days that matter, speak courteously, let them know where you are. Distance can be a kind of patience. Severing the root is something else, and it does damage to the one who cuts as well as to the one who is cut.

Start with what is in your power and what is not. Your parent's temper, their opinions, their unfairness to you, their failure to change: none of this is yours to control, and you will exhaust yourself trying. Your judgements, your conduct and the way you carry your own role are entirely yours.nnNow consider the role. He is your father. What does that ask of you? To show him the regard a son owes, to look after him when he needs it, to bear his reproaches without returning them. But he is a bad father, you say. Did nature promise you a good one? No. It gave you a father. Your task is not to get a better one but to be a good son to the one you have.nnThis is not a recipe for being trampled. If he insults you, he does wrong, and the wrong is his. It harms him, not you, unless you let his words become your judgement of yourself. You may stand back from situations that provoke you into acting badly, the way a sensible man avoids a slippery path. That is managing yourself, which is your business.nnWhat I will not grant is that his faults release you from your role. Each person is answerable for their own part in the play. Do not ask me whether you can stop playing yours because he has played his badly. Ask how you can play yours well while he plays his as he likes.

First, let us examine the question. You ask whether you are permitted to distance yourself, as though there were a court somewhere that grants such permissions. Who appointed it? The sense of duty pressing on you was planted long before you could judge it. Reverence for parents is one of the oldest of those inherited values, and like all of them it deserves to be looked at in the light rather than obeyed in the dark.nnI broke with people I had loved and revered, a great composer among them, and later with members of my own family over views I found contemptible. It cost me a great deal. I do not regret it. There is a moment in the life of a free spirit that I called the great liberation: a sudden revulsion against what one has honoured, a tearing away, a wish to be elsewhere and alone. It is painful and even ugly, and it may be necessary if you are to become who you are rather than who you were raised to be.nnBut do not flatter yourself. Many people who cut off a parent do not become free at all; they become resentful, and spend years rehearsing grievances in the parent's absence. That is not liberation. That is the old bond in a new costume, still ruling your thoughts.nnSo the test is not whether you leave. It is what you build with the freedom. If distance lets you grow, take it without apology. If it only lets you nurse a wound, you have gone nowhere.