Projection of the Childhood Element Into the Present

The summer days, which were stifling enough and always lulled me into laziness, have arrived. I don't like summer at all, it burns and scorches, unlike the sparkle of spring. The only good thing about it, if I can grasp it, is that it makes me want to create.

These days I feel like I should be writing and reading more, but I feel like I'm doing the opposite. I think I'm excusing myself with the feeling that I'm going to fall asleep at any moment. I put off things I want and need to do. Unfortunately, I've had this habit since I was little.

On the other hand, I can't help but repeat the things I do. I listen to the same music, watch the same kind of videos, I don't add anything new. Then I thought, yes, summer does that, but most of my life is based on such repetitions.

Even though I know this may be the case for many of us, it always gives me the feeling that I am in a vicious circle. Reading similar books, walking along the same path, going to the same café or sitting on the same sofa at home... Everything is the same. I think of the man in the comic: 'What the hell, it's the same as yesterday.

Well, some things are like that. Others are more deeply rooted. It's a habit, it's part of our nature. Although I have not found anything to attribute my laziness to, I think I know what can cause my repetitive behaviour.

Repetitive behaviour is not open to innovation. Novelty means uncertainty and possibly fear. My mind doesn't want to deal with that, so it prefers the most comfortable way, which is to trust what I know over and over again. This shows me that trust lies in repetition.

Yes, although I don't know how it was formed in my childhood, I have had trust problems in many periods of my life. I am sure I will have trust problems for the rest of my life.

When I was talking to my friend she brought up a similar subject and I found the term when I was searching. There is an element of physical trust in our lives called a transitional object. This is a term that highlights the toys or objects that we like to play with or keep with us most when we are children (because it is during these times, and even before, that we begin to build the infrastructure of our personality).

I thought about it when it was mentioned and tried to remember the toys that I saw as the basis. The first thing that came to mind was definitely my teddy bear, which I slept with and loved very much. It gave the feeling of a friend and could ease loneliness. Of course, after seeing fantastic productions and animations, there was a time when I thought it could hear me and was actually alive.

Fluffy, cute, smaller than me (to feel superior) and a toy that my mother insisted on buying me, this teddy bear should have always been in my life as an object that gave me the feeling that I might be missing and covered it up.

As we grow up, toys naturally disappear from our lives. Even if we say they are childish and put them away, we are still childish inside. I think that is the irony of it, that as we grow older it is assumed that everyone develops on a common ground and we are suddenly detached from the things that belong to us. But we also allow the psychological structure that the cute and childish object has formed and supported for so long to collapse. Sometimes we do this unconsciously and sometimes we are forced to.

This is especially true if there is someone younger than you in the family. Although I was the second child brought up alone, I was forced to share with my cousins. If I didn't, I was called jealous, rude, spoiled, naughty and accused of not sharing.

Whatever was good for me was somehow either given to those younger than me (none of whom adopted these objects as I did because they were not theirs in the first place) or secretly disposed of. Strangely enough, for others they were just toys. Of course, they did not have the emotional and imaginative connection that I had. Can you see what a poor form of support this is? The parents just want to silence the little child at that moment with this kind of gesture. Sometimes they even buy the same toy when they see it in the shop. But the child is usually not interested, because the child is finished with the object. It was a momentary whim and they have moved on.

So we are left with children who have not been able to create their own transitional object, parents who are unaware of their children, and another child whose attachment has disappeared. No one has benefited.

Photo by Jerry Wang on Unsplash

Back in the present, I thought about it again. I wondered what my transitional object had become. To be honest, I thought about it for a while and couldn't come up with much. Has it really become something completely different over time, or have I not yet encountered its changed form? Do I really still need it, or where and how can I find it?

I thought about the situations that reassured me. Unfortunately, some things are easier to find in a poorly lived life. The house I live in, the technological devices I use every day, the sofa I sit on and the bed I sleep in... The things that make me feel safe are either a closed box like the house, a soft texture that supports me like the bed and the sofa, or a few technological elements that are small and that I can control.

If these things are true, and as I said, I can't think of much, we can see that there is a personal object that varies according to time, age, time spent on it and necessities. It doesn't seem very illogical to me that my toy, with which I used to sleep and play, should now take on this form.

I wonder what it will look like in 10-20 years? Will it change again after a certain age or will it remain as it is? How much can my everyday objects that make me feel safe change in this process?