The quote below is from a Travis McGee novel by John D. MacDonald, The Green Ripper. It occurs towards the end of the novel after a series of devastating events left the protagonist questioning the very meaning of existence. For some of us a daily occurrence, but for our knight errant, it was a much deeper hole that he had fallen into much too often.
It had taken most of the five months to finish the job of sorting
myself out. Meyer had put me on the right track. I didn’t know
what he had meant when he said to me, “Not one of us ever
grows up to be what he intended to be. Not one of us fulfills his
own expectations, Travis. We are all our own children, in that
sense. At some point, somewhere, we have to stop making
demands.”
On initially encountering this philosophy in a pulp fiction novel, it was a bit surprising as the Travis McGee novels are aimed at the 16 year old boy in most men. I suppose women might enjoy these novels also, but I cannot see a lot of women reading them. Much like it is a bit of a rarity to find a man reading pulp romance novels.
I am still debating whether the quote is particularly profound or not, but it does make one pause for a moment to consider what it means. MacDonald spins a good action mystery novel that keeps you turning the pages, but they are not destined to become classics. Nor is MacDonald particularly original, but he does has a tendency to have these long, preachy asides which is where the quote came into play.
It seemed to me I had heard the phrase “we are all own children” before, but a quick internet search did not turn up any sources. As I mentioned previously, MacDonald was good at channeling the milieu of the time he was writing one of pulp fiction novels.
Make of it what you will, my friend.