At certain junctures in our lives, we have to face up to important decisions as to whether we will go with the flow or make active change. What is our motivation to keep the past myth alive? We need to be honest with ourselves and analyse both our conscious and unconscious. Is it because we are so used to our lives and the family myths that have shaped us that we do not want to part with them? Are we prepared for change and can we count on the support from our loved ones? Will they understand what we are going though?
Change can be risky and even punitive in the high stakes of a wealthy family. The family script will have given each of us a role and, curiously, there may already be a prophecy attached with that role if you try and break free from the shackles of your label. This prediction can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. He was always likely to become a troublemaker. She never communicated well. He was a user from the start.
As we climb unchartered mountains without a map, we must try not to blame the past and fight our compulsions to repeat previous patterns of behaviour using our moral compass. We must concentrate on the present and keep a check on
our motivation. We cannot change the past and we will not be happily ever after. We need to accept the truth about our respective families and the human conundrum that we are not in control.
When we make changes, our surroundings will still be the same so we must not assume another fairy tale or else we are just merely swapping myths. Ultimately, we often cannot convince those around us in the family that the myths were false or fabricated. Others may have a strong emotional investment in the past and this will lead to conflict which cannot be resolved. We may have to withdraw from battles with other family members we cannot see eye to eye with. Only this way can we can escape the drama and our stereotypes.
When Katrin Himmler wrote about her Nazi grandfather and great uncle Heinrich in The Himmler Brothers, she faced up to her monstrous family’s past and not everyone in her family supported her decision to write this book. Niklas Frank wrote about his father Hans Frank, one of Hitler’s henchmen, in The Shadows of the Reich and not only renews his hatred for his parents every time he publicly speaks but tells his German audience that he does not trust the German people. For many of the descendants of the perpetrators of the Nazi atrocities, their lives have been ruined and their identities are forever inextricably linked with the past.
Frank’s daughter recognises that her father has slayed the dragon of the past and brought good reputation and a new family myth she can take forward for her three children. He has successfully changed the family script.
I try to listen to the few remaining holocaust survivors still alive tell their tales of survival and what they took away from these awful episodes in their life. Every time one hears such a speaker you start to understand how fortunate we are today and how our worries pale into insignificance. I take away new lessons that should I live long enough, I hope to pass on to future arrows.
On 9/11 when victims were stuck on doomed flights or burning skyscrapers, they phoned their respective partners not to advise them on their share portfolios or their family business, but to simply say I love you. Why is it that when family businesses describe their humble beginnings and how they grew into the success they are today, their stories sometimes leave me feeling empty and even puzzled. Surely their stories are worthy too. Family businesses talk with pride how they created businesses from poverty, how they would not tolerate waste and how for example they had strong leadership. There are of course lessons to be learned here as well. Both the holocaust and family business stories are about life but there is a difference that extends beyond the heavy weight and gravity of the holocaust. Family business stories are plagued by three curses which put their wholesome mythical stature and best practise value into dark shadows: greed, fear and control.
For the next generation of families who are cursed with the latter, perhaps their role in life which can often seem confusing is to address the past, change the current script and insulate future generations from the fallout of previous family myths.
