If you didn’t know, I’m telling now before it becomes front page news, so you’ll be in the know. Kevin Garnett is a preject.
You say, “What’s a preject?”
A parental reject. Someone who has been rejected by one or both parents, and is living with a cracked, broken, or shattered soul. Kevin Garnett is a preject.
A recent Boston Globe article about Garnett tells of his racially tinged arrest as a high school junior in South Carolina, and its impact on his life today; namely, his inability and/or unwillingness to trust others. His former teammate, Leon Powe, offers that Garnett trusts no one. This is classic preject behavior, although in this case the rejecting parent is the City-Fathers-Complex, the civic power structure, the only father he’d known growing up–the local father institution better known as the city government, which he thought was there to help, protect, and provide for him; but instead, in his experience, hurt, violated and rejected him.
Ouch!
Rejection by parents for who we are (or are not), or what we have done (or wouldn’t or couldn’t do); for our being and/or behavior beyond our control or choice, is both painful and common prejection. This occurs often in counter culture children (boys who are not athletic, girls who are not sweet), homosexual children, and children born with mental and/or physical deficits and challenges. And when you’re 6’11” and black in in some parts of South Carolina a generation ago, you’re as counter culture and physically challenged as it gets.
The key to overcoming this kind of soul breaking rejection is perspective and perception. Prejection is really not about parental intent, but about child perception. When a child accepts the ‘truth’ offered through a parent’s behavior that s/he is not worthy of love, respect and applause just by virtue of his/her presence on the planet, but is instead faulty and unworthy and deserving of poor treatment, that child lives the rest of his/her life guarding against what s/he fears s/he deserves, and will get from other parental figures in life.
Learning how to open up and trust again is a true sign that healing has begun. And for Kevin Garnett, the doctor is still not in.
