Disclaimer: This blog post will undoubtedly show the trueness of my nerdy side. But bear with me.
A couple of weeks ago I was watching an episode of Star Trek Voyager. Two members of the crew, Tom Paris and B'Elanna Torres (who are married), found out that they were pregnant and going to have a baby girl. Now B'Elanna is half Klingon and half human and they found out that their baby girl would have a lot of the Klingon characteristics her mother had. From that point on, B'Elanna spent the rest of the episode trying to get the doctor to genetically alter the baby's DNA, while it was in the womb, so that it wouldn't have any Klingon characteristics. The whole time, you think the reason she is doing this is because of what is shown in a memory of B'Elanna camping with her father and cousins. The memory shows how much she was picked on as a little girl for being half Klingon and it also shows a conversation her father had with his brother about how hard it is to live with Klingons. Here is one of the final scenes at the climax of the episode.
What struck me about this scene was that B'Elanna's true fear was revealed. The whole episode you think she is trying to change the baby so that her daughter won't get picked on like she was, which is a valid desire. But B'Elanna's real reason was the fear that if her daughter had Klingon DNA then Tom would leave her just like her father left. And it was that fear that drove her to try and change her own daughters DNA.
So many times in my life there is a hidden reason for an action that I am taking. I think I am doing something for one reason, but really it's coming out of a deep fear related to an experience that I had at some point in my past. It's amazing to me how my past experiences can engrave themselves on my heart and still effect me today. And it's the painful experiences, like B'Elanna's, that have the most effect on how I live my life today. And my guess is that it's the same for you.
So how can I figure out what those hidden reasons are and how do I deal with them? I'll talk more about that in Part 2.
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