As we get older, our awareness of love becomes sharper. Some beliefs drilled into us since childhood no longer feel like gospel truths. Growing up, we’re taught that parents love their children unconditionally, and therefore children should love their parents unconditionally in return. But children lack the ability to discern — these mental imprints, planted early, only deepen with time. Without independent thinking or distance from the culture of filial piety, it’s nearly impossible to break free from this programming.

Most people who live with their parents and extended family assume everyone loves them, and so they should love them back just the same. This sense of “unworthiness” has given most people born in the ’80s and ’90s an underlying tint of self-doubt. The reality is that many relatives don’t love you as much as you think. Most of the goodwill they express is just social performance.

Back to the main topic — in this post, I want to share the moments I became aware of the absence of love, and how the world felt different after that awakening.

Stage One: Your Parents Don’t Love You

Your birth may not have been what they planned. In many cases, a new life enters the world driven more by the animal instinct to reproduce. In society’s collective unconscious, procreation is treated as a mandatory choice rather than an optional one. Before the invention of contraception, hormone-driven reproduction expanded the species’ population, providing more labor. Parents who raised children to adulthood earned the right to direct and command them — essentially outsourcing physical labor to the next generation. As the number of offspring grew, the first-born children were even expected to take on part of the child-rearing responsibilities.

In primitive societies, due to primitive medicine, this gamble often came with high risk, and people tacitly accepted the “one life for one life” trade-off. As medical technology advanced, the risks of childbirth have dropped by orders of magnitude compared to ancient times — but the collective unconscious hasn’t kept pace. In the 21st century, most parents still believe their children should stay close, be filial, and inherit their (often modest) estate.

These beliefs create conflicts within individual consciousness. As children grow, they may wonder why their parents sometimes seem to love them and sometimes don’t. This confusion leads the still-developing child to mistakenly believe they need to earn their parents’ approval to be loved — losing the “self” part of their identity in the process. They start performing textbook filial piety, falling into the trap of self-betrayal.

When you release all expectations of love from your parents, you enter the second stage of awakening.

Stage Two: You Don’t Love Your Parents

After deconstructing the true nature of parental love, you realize how absurd many of your past attempts to show love to your parents really were. Self-doubt sets in. You start questioning what made you love them in the first place. If your parents don’t even love you, why does society still insist that children should believe their parents love them, and that they should love their parents back?

From a management perspective, the most cost-efficient structure is hierarchical — the classic “ruler over minister, father over son” model. If every person in society has a default manager, you only need a small number of people capable of managing those managers. From a cost and implementation standpoint, it’s actually a pretty efficient approach.

Once you see through the nature of this collective unconscious, the relationship between society and family becomes clear — the family is simply the smallest management unit within society’s hierarchical structure. You can choose not to work in this department. And of course, you can choose not to work at this company either.

Stage Three: You Don’t Love Your Children

This is a play that keeps repeating on an endless loop. As you gradually become aware of what “not loving” looks like, you’ll also develop your own thoughts on what real love actually means. If you choose to become a parent, you may find that your role is more about accompanying a life through its growth — you’re an observer witnessing the awakening of a new being. During your child’s development, you’ll recall the experiences from stages one and two, constantly reminding yourself that you’re merely a bystander in this life.

When your child acts in ways that seek approval and beg for love, you can tell them about the rights and wrongs of love. You can also tell them that they need to love themselves first before they can truly love anyone else.