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July 13, 2015

Autonomy – a powerful and natural urge within us all

by Rod Smith

I confess.

My urge for autonomy is screaming at me – it’s bouncing off the walls of my neo-cortex.

This time I am going to succumb.

Before I get hit the details let’s be sure that this is not a new thing nor is it peculiar to me. You probably have it too.
When my sons were much younger I’d take a shower to be alone. Or, I’d close myself in downstairs if the boys were napping upstairs and pretend I was in the house alone. This did it – it met my needs for autonomy. They settled down, at least until morning.

When I could legally leave my sons at home alone I’d go to a local coffee shop with a Time magazine and pretend I was on vacation, or, I’d go to Fresh Market and meander through the tropical fruit stands and pretend I was living back in Kona.
Once I was so desperate to think an uninterrupted thought I took the boys to church then lurked (unseen) through the building to the parking lot and headed for an early lunch at PF Changs where I pretended I was in Hong Kong.

It worked.

I picked up the boys an hour or so later and felt like I’d had a sabbatical.

Anything, yes; anything – I’d do about anything to satisfy my strong urge for autonomy.

Next week is going to be an unusual week.

Nate is going to “The Great Escape” in Wisconsin. Thulani is going on a mission trip to New Orleans.

I am going to take the VW Beetle and drive to my brother California – and, wait for it, I bought myself a floppy hat so I can do it with an open sun roof!

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July 11, 2015

Why do you go to so many places and what do you do there?

by Rod Smith

A handful of (newspaper) readers have asked about our travel.

The suggestion is that I am independently wealthy, perhaps a little bored:

1. I travel mostly to speak in Youth With A Mission and its affiliated University of the Nations. I try to take my sons with me. This is a volunteer organization operating in hundreds of locations. I think I’ve been to about 40. I teach classes about growing up, personal responsibility, and about the concept of Differentiation of Self. I have loved this imperfect organization since I was 17. I have tried to play my role since 1986.

2. Outside of YWAM I have developed a readership through my newspaper column (The Mercury). Consequently, I have been invited to address schools, colleges, and public groups about various matters like RACE, ADOPTION, and SINGLE-PARENTING. My newspaper audience is predominantly in South Africa although invitations have come from the UK and Eastern Europe.

3. I travel to assist individuals and groups in conflict. I help people speak and hear each other and engage in necessary and meaningful conflict. On such missions I have no agenda but to help parties articulate what they think they need.

4. I don’t use PowerPoint, I have no bells and whistles. It’s all about the process, respect, mutuality, and love. When I use the term LOVE in this context I mean seeking the highest good for all concerned.

[YES. I will come to you, your organization, your school, church or whatever. It’s all about time and availability. No destination is too far. Am I expensive? YES. It will cost you everything – and the least expensive aspects of what it costs will have to do with money.]

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July 10, 2015

What we accommodate defines us…..

by Rod Smith

Allow others to speak down to you and you will begin to look down on yourself. You will begin to see yourself through their lens and even begin to agree with them.

Allow others to speak ill of you and you will begin to hide and avoid people and believe their disrespect is somehow deserved.
You will begin to carry a sense of shame that’s difficult to shed.

Allow others to lie to you (and then on top of that make excuses for them) and you will begin to fumble with what it true and what is not and soon you will be unable to tell the difference.

You will begin to question your judgment (and sanity) about the most insignificant of matters.

Firmly, kindly address those who choose to treat you poorly, knowing you will ruffle feathers (or more).

Use “I” statements. Define yourself; not others. Don’t go into detail.

People who treat others in the ways I have described – power-hungry people – love an argument. They will bully you into seeing just how wrong you are and how much you’ve misunderstood them.

Relationships are not about winning or losing and you know they that. They don’t.

Do not be afraid to walk away from ANY relationship that does not hold you in highest regard. Life is far too short and already far too difficult to have to bear the added burden of accommodating another person’s unresolved power-issues.

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July 9, 2015

Attachment, bonding, connectedness…..

by Rod Smith

Attachment, bonding, connectedness – whatever your theory or label, parents, and perhaps especially parents who adopt children, hope it happens with our children and we hope it happens early and enough.

On that note, biological parents tend to think it’s “automatic.” I don’t think it is.

Anyway, I know I looked for it. I still do. Back then, when my sons were infants and they hiked all the stages of child development, I looked for signs that my sons had bonded with me, I with them, and that they (perhaps more importantly for me) bonded with each other.

Oddly it’s the attachments I have to fight and resist that expose how bonded we are. For instance, when my boys are disappointed for ANY reason, any reason at all, I feel the urge to save them from it – no matter who or what caused it – rising up in me.

When they express that they feel they have no friends or when they hear about events and they are not invited – I have to calm my inner-fierceness. It’s here, right here, where I believe we as parents can do some real damage – when our attachments to our children mess with the natural, necessary pain life sends all of our ways and does so just because we are human.

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December 31, 2014

Planning 2015 / Become your own CEO

by Rod Smith

The Mercury – January 1, 2015

Ways to think about the New Year that will lead you into new dimensions of living that you design for yourself:

All behavior has meaning. Assess your behavior – your responses, your attitudes.

Try to see the behavior of others (good or bad) as none of your business.

Draw. Using stick figures of various shapes and sizes, draw your family according to the influence you perceive them to have.

Think about your patterns. Diagram your relationship traps and triangles.

Chart your position: how it’s changed over the years and how you’d like to see it modified in the future.

Use colors.

Give the colors meaning. Track the information-flow.

Until you become your own Chief Executive Officer and Human Resource representative in your own family you will not see the changes you’d prefer. While you are not in charge of you, someone else will be.

Keep your drawing private. You are looking for change, not an argument.

Everyone sees his or her family differently because we all live in different families – EVEN if we are siblings.

Allow yourself, and everyone else, the kind of grace you’d like shoveled your way. This is partly what it means to accommodate homeostasis (yesterday’s column). Allow for some degree of regression and failure on all of your parts.

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December 28, 2014

Don’t forget the power of homeostasis when making your New Year resolutions…..

by Rod Smith

When making your New Year resolutions – whether they involve very personal matters like ridding yourself of excess weight, changes you’d like to bring to your family, or how you conduct yourself at work – consider and respect the power of homeostasis.

This is the systemic pressure for things to return to “normal”. It’s the pressure that resists change. It’s the force that wants things to go back to the way things were.

Think of the power of homeostasis as an influential undercurrent, an invisible force. It’s why losing weight in the short term is easier than keeping it off in the long term. It’s not only that you may just get slack about watching what you eat. It is more than that. Your body is reaching for, even aching for, a state it once knew.

Understanding homeostasis will help you understand why some people will leave one abusive relationship only to appear to welcome another.

It’s why the “new broom” boss was only able to change things at work for a short time.

If you can accommodate the power of homeostasis in your plans you are more likely to succeed.

Understand this pressure is real.

Embrace it, build your plans around it, and you are more likely to harness it.

Awareness is a powerful tool.

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December 26, 2014

Decisions for 2015…..

by Rod Smith

What gifts will you offer yourself and others in 2015?

Here are mine…

I shall make every attempt to be clearer about what I need and what I want, knowing full well that clarity and definition on my part do not guarantee that I will get what I need and want.

I shall make every attempt to be softer and gentler with my opinions, clearer with my humor, and less terse when annoyed both in print and in person. Readers have been more gracious than I deserve in pointing out this necessity to me and my close friends have been kinder than I deserve in accommodating my strong views.

I will use my skills and my privileged platform to promote the gifts and the skills of others.

I will vet requests on my time more carefully than I have done in the past so that I may give myself more fully to the things I love and to the things about which I am passionate.

I will look for the treasure in others, treasure that is so often hidden behind tough façades.

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December 22, 2014

Not like other children at Christmas….

by Rod Smith

Perhaps I was not like other children and the differences I experienced were as profound as they felt.

Perhaps not.

Perhaps all that separated me from what I perceived was the experience of other children was amplified in my young heart.

You know, you know how children are said to amplify things.

Who can tell these many years later?

But the things I wanted for Christmas when I was very young, and I mean as young as 7 and 8 and up until I was 10 and 11, required no batteries or remote devices or charging.

I wanted safe adults. I wanted adults whom I could trust. I wanted them sober. I wanted them sober all the time, not just in the mornings.

I wanted my dad to be as sober as my mother always was.

I wanted a peaceful home.

I wanted to live in a house where people didn’t live on the edge of financial ruin and where the anxiety over lack of resources was not repeatedly temporarily eased by very excessive drinking.

You can think I am exaggerating if you want. I’m not.

I did get it – I got all I wanted for Christmas when I was 12.

Dad stopped drinking.

Forever.

Posted in Adolescence, Boundaries, Children, Communication, Education, Faith, Family, Grace | Leave a Comment »

December 21, 2014

Text for help from a woman who is cutting……

by Rod Smith

“There’s a young woman cutting herself outside my flat. What can I tell her?”

(Text received from South Africa)

Assess the level of urgency.

Does she need an ambulance or your presence?

If it’s the latter, your presence is more important than your words.

Be very respectful.

Be calm.

Be gentle.

Ask if she wants you to say anything at all.

If she tells you to be quiet, be quiet. Tell her you will sit with her in silence.

Allow the quietness between you to settle in, and this could take a long while, then tell her gently that you are willing to listen to her for as long as she wants to speak, and that you will not say a word while she talks or try to rearrange her thoughts or mess with her feelings.

If she tells you that you may talk, tell her very gently, after much silence, that there is help available to people who think that hurting themselves is helpful; that while her strong feelings that result in her inflicting pain upon herself may offer her a tangible outlet for her strong feelings, there are steps available toward more permanent relief from whatever she is facing.

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October 18, 2013

What provokes you to write a column to girls……?

by Rod Smith
“What provokes you to write a column ‘to the girls I know and the billions I don’t’ as appeared in yesterday’s Mercury? Please tell me what prompts the exhortation.” (Heavily edited)

Hope provokes me. I write it in the belief that some young girl will read it and decide to take it to heart and see herself as beautiful, courageous, and strong, even if she doesn’t fit the stereotype propagated by glossy magazines.

I write with a particular girl in mind: the one who has been told “any man is better than no man,” the girl who’s been taught that it is her body and not her brain that will lead her to success. I write to the girl who thinks that life’s entire meaning pivots on marriage, childbearing, and obedience to a man.

Teaching children (as I do) I have noticed that at around 13 or 14 years of age, girls tend to second guess their opinions, raise their hands less and less, and begin to believe that it is really a boys’ world.

It’s these misconceptions I aim, with my very limited platform and power, to correct, and, if only one child, somewhere takes it to heart, sees herself and talented and powerful, even partially as a result of what I have written, then every column I have ever penned is worth the time and the effort – and if it comes to my attention, even I shall dance.

(When I’m excited I write long sentences).

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