Apart from thinking outside of the box (kindly forgive the cliche) my challenge to myself, my sons, and those whom I have the joy of teaching, is to think alone. Have thoughts, plans, aspirations, that are not determined or shaped by commercials, fads, friends, or even by immediate and extended family.
This is a tough but liberating challenge. I encounter people who appear terrified to allow an independent thought to cross their beautiful minds. They give a sideways or backward glance seeking affirmation before the thought is permitted to step out.
The joy of owning their own thoughts, exploring unique possibilities even within their own heads, it appears, will not be theirs.
The fear cripples into conformity.
Seth Godin, speaker and top-selling writer, used the term “sheepwalking” in Tribes to describe mindless following.
I’ve extended his metaphor:
“Sheep-thinking” – borrowing thinking from others for fear of having an original or contrary thought.
“Sheep-talking” – sounding just like everyone else sounds, something particularly noticeable in churches and faith movements.
“Sheep-feeling” – to feel what everyone else feels, not in empathy or solidarity but in being caught up or swept up by the emotion of the moment.
“Sheeping” has become my catchall when it’s happening within me and I hear or see it around me.
Photographed in #Curitiba, %Brazil, with permission,
If I say I love someone, I will invest the time required to hear what he or she wants to say.
Listening, like love, has no gimmicks, no tricks.
It is expressing genuine interest. It is putting my own concerns aside for a while and entering someone else’s world. It’s rewriting, reshaping, re-writing, nothing I hear. I will listen as if I am appreciating fine, complex, beautiful art, a masterpiece. I will not “listen” as if I’m engaged in a competitive game of verbal tennis. I will listen as one who has much to learn rather than hide behind the covert belief that I’m the one with much to teach.
Such arrogance neither hears, nor listens well, or accurately.
The arrogant listener hears what he or she wants to hear. Arrogance reshapes what’s said into what the listener prefers.
When I think “I”ve heard it all before” I’m not listening.
Listening opens new worlds for the speaker and the listener leading each down a path of brave discovery. It’s a mutual risk.
The loving listener listens to what is said and unsaid, without rearranging either.
The listener enters another’s world, then departs with it untouched, understood, admired, no matter how beautiful, troubled, complex, that world may be.
Illustration by Siggi Berg and used with permission.
My sons, both of them, are in love, each with a woman who’d make any dad proud.
The first time I met Nate’s girlfriend I dressed for the occasion and wore a tie that bears a collaged image of both boys when aged about 12 and 8. Thulani’s head resting on Nate’s and they both have broad smiles. I donned the tie with playful snarkiness declaring, with zero subtlety, exactly where Nate belongs.
Harli visited a few days later and won my heart.
“Open it,” she said handing me a gift.
Treasure fell from the envelope. She’d re-produced the tie with updated images, my sons at 26 and 22, smiling as broadly from another necktie.
On Fathers Day I woke to this text which I publish with Harli’s permission:
“Happy Fathers Day, to a man I idolize. You welcomed me into your family with open arms and you single handedly raised two honest gentlemen that are so lucky and grateful to have you. I hope you enjoy your day!!”
The woman has no idea that my most ardent prayer for my sons was always that they learn how to love and that they be gentlemen.
Thulani met Alaina over a year ago and has gone so far as to purchase a ring. Last Saturday he ordered roses to surround a spot near Bow Street Bridge in New York City’s Central Park. Out for a walk the couple walked by at some distance from the bridge and the flowers caught Alaina’s attention.
“What if they were there for you,” he said.
On his knees, at the bridge, Thulani popped the question. Cameras rolled and the perfect moment of their shared joy was caught for all to see, you and me, and generations yet unborn.
From there the couple headed to a restaurant where forty of their friends waited in a reserved private room to welcome them, and welcome them they did!
Thulani coordinated all of this.
Alaina knew none of it.
I talked with my daughter-to-be the day after the engagement and I got to feel some of her joy.
Yes, I am looking forward to the wedding. No date is yet set. I am looking forward to their complete fulfillment as husband and wife. Truth be told, I can hardly wait to have at least 5 or 6 grandchildren.
I have enjoyed the run up to this event, rehearsing with Thulani, his speech to request Alaina’s parents for her hand in marriage, the design and purchase of the rings, receiving a most gracious text from my son to declare how he had learned about love from how I have loved him….
But, my real joy goes even deeper than all of that, if that is possible.
Try telling someone from my part of the world (Indiana, USA) a bad-weather story.
In seconds you will be interrupted.
No matter how deep the snow, severe the ice storm, or how strong the wind was, your “listener” will trump you.
The “listener” is not listening. He or she is waiting to speak, aching to one-up you, waiting to debate, waiting to win! His bad weather story will dwarf yours, no doubt about it.
It’s not a conversation.
It’s a duel!
I am convinced that in Indiana one cannot have one’s own weather and let it be.
This phenomenon is not restricted to weather-talk or to Indiana. Try telling friends in South Africa about your game reserve experience. In split seconds you will be told a more intense, more dramatic event that occurred in another better, bigger, greater game reserve than the one you enjoyed. Other similar topics: the best curry, the worst flying experience, the worst customer service, lost luggage tales, a recent surgery or illness.
Really listening, being present for each other, takes love and discipline. It takes the ability to hold our tongues if we want to enter the world and the experience of another. The temptation to crowd out that world with our own (bigger, better) material can be very strong.
Being present for each other is a gift.
Hold your tongue, give liberally.
I’m enjoying this memoir very much and commend it to you.
Your “spirituality” is not measured by how much you (or I) read the Holy Scriptures, sing hymns, pray, clap your hands, run around a sanctuary with a purple flag, dance to contemporary religious music or reject those who do.
It’s not determined by how much you visit your place of worship or how much money you donate to its causes.
It’s not affirmed by your title (if you have one) or the ornate design of your robe (if you wear one) or the position you hold in the hierarchy of your faith tradition (if you’re part of one).
But, it is affirmed by your willingness to take responsibility for your life, your choices, and the good use of your skills and talents.
A biopsy of the validity and integrity of our faith and spirituality is revealed in how we treat people, especially loved-ones and strangers; how we love our enemies, offer hospitality, respect, regard, love those who reject our beliefs.
Do you clean up after yourself?
Are you wisely generous to a fault?
Do you love those who are different from you, whose lives might be in direct conflict with what you believe?
Do you love others by listening?
If you take full responsibility for yourself, become extraordinarily generous with what you have, embrace diversity, and love others by listening, you will fast-forward your “spiritual” growth.
Actually, you will put it on supercharge.
It’s not your title, the reach of your authority, how many of your memes “go viral” or the crowds who respect and adore you.
Rather, it’s how you respect and love and respond to those who don’t.
And now the boy is a man, engaged for marriage……. #graceupongrace
Have a good weekend – there are several things you and I can do that will ensure we have a good weekend.
Reach out with affirmation to a family member who does not routinely hear from you. Recall good memories you share. Talk of the joy you knew together. This act of connecting will leave you with positive feelings and you will have done something good for another.
Give time or treasure to a loved cause or to a person or family in need. While the act will benefit the recipient it will also have positive kickbacks for you. You will have done something good and you will enjoy the knowledge that your actions have resulted in a story that will be told and retold.
Even if you do not consider yourself a writer, put pencil to paper and write a sentence or two about the beautiful things that have happened in your life, then, let it flow. Without concern (yet) about punctuation or grammar, get out of the way and let the sentences multiply and grow into a paragraph or three. You will soon experience the benefits of bringing to the surface of your thinking the beauty that has been yours.
Very early morning landing in New York – from Delhi
“What parenting advice could you offer my wife and me,” said the delighted dad, “my son is 16 months young.”
Above all, love your wife with joy, freedom and courage. This will reduce and deflect loads of the anxiety that naturally tries to derail all childhoods.
Lavish your baby, then young child, then pre-teen and teenager with affirmation and affection. No matter what you and your wife face, when you come home from work, or he returns after time away, or when he wakes in the morning or in the middle of the night — baby or teenager — be glad to see him, and, say so. Verbally express the joys your son brings you, to each other, and to him.
Teach him to talk Joy.
Regard the ages 5, 8, 12, 14 and 16 as transition ages. At these times discuss with him your parental plans (your mutually agreed upon plans you’ve made as parents) to do less and less for him, while expecting more and more from him. Yes, even at 5 — point out that he can make his own, age-appropriate decisions. Include him in planning and establishing his growing independence. Plan your parenting so that by his eighteenth year your parenting roles are accomplished and he has all it takes to be an interdependent young adult.
Hold in high regard the beautiful idea that you parent (the verb) for his sake and not yours.
Our new painting will go up in my home-office this week….. from Friday this week, both of my adult sons are launched and living independently of me. Oh the joy; oh the niggling pain. #graceupongrace
They hover in my awareness and continue their holy work, despite the decades that separate me from their classrooms, lecture theaters, labs, fields, gyms, and studies.
Almost all were highly motivated men and women who loved their jobs and regarded it as a calling.
I hear them yet, beckoning me to adopt high standards for others and for myself.
I find it incredible that the teacher with the parrot – Mrs. Bradman – who dogged my third or fourth year of primary school and a psychology professor more than a decade later, and my family therapy professors, a lifetime later and nations apart, and Mr. Morey, Mr. Graham, Mrs. Hornsby, and Miss Chadwick – I could go on – cancan in my frontal lobe at the oddest moments.
Someone is going to tell me there is medication for my condition but I think not, I regard it a testimony to the power afforded men and women who are teachers and I know I could write extensively about each person named.
My English teacher, Richard Morey, at Northlands, now Northwood School, was the finest English teacher a boy could want.
Mr. Morey made us write anything (“Heads down, Gentlemen, fill a page, write about anything you want. If don’t have anything to write about write about that.”) for the first five to seven minutes of almost every lesson. This daily exercise showed me I could try my hand at writing. Mr. Morey said splitting infinitives, ending a sentence with a preposition, using “less” when you mean “fewer,” misplacing an apostrophe, were as close to criminal acts as using “I” when it should be “me.” He made us recite “Quisque Sibi Verus” from our blazer badge and said the day may come when we’d fully understand its meaning. He debated whether Shakespear’s King Lear was “a man more sinned against than sinning” and argued about which of Lear’s two daughters was most evil. He talked of people he’d met in literature – Pip and Miss Havisham and Ralph and Piggy and Jem and Scout, to name but a few – as if they were long-time neighbors.
That’s an odd thing to observe when you’re 15.
It was for me.
I did think it a little odd that poetry could make a grown man cry.
When Morey exposed the class to “Walking Away” by Cecil Day Lewis he could never have known how much the poem would shape my thinking and parenting.
“I have had worse partings,” writes Lewis, referring to watching his son cross the rugby field and walk alone toward his boarding school education, “but none that so gnaws at my mind still,” and later continues, “how selfhood begins with walking away, and love is proved in the letting go.”
This sentiment steered me at each crucial departure in my sons’ lives.
The lines reverberated when I released them to kindergarten, signed release forms for youth retreats, watched them walk away through an airport terminal, one to an adventure in Australia, the other to Europe.
Neither son is a “hesitant figure, eddying away” as Lewis describes his boy. Rather, by grace alone they are portraits of courage and determination – but there remains pain to be endured as they walk away.
It’s mine, not theirs.
I bet you can recall word-for-word what an inspiring teacher did for you: One very ordinary day, I was about 14, Mr. Morey summoned me to his table. He took a minute portion of an essay I had written, about three lines, and circled it. Pointing with his red pen, he said, “Do more of this. Not, that,” the “that” referring to the other three pages.
You open Your Hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing. PSALM 145: 16
Open your hand using all your strength. Stretch your fingers. Allow the lines on your palm to feel as though they might tear apart. Study the contours, colors, ridges and valleys, joints, dents and spaces. Push, pull, and rub. Move your fingers through their paces: together, apart, back, forward, curved, strained and relaxed, cooperative yet unique. Feel the texture and every curve. Touch the crevices. Spread your hand further, turn it at the wrist, examine and compare patterns from every angle. Here are pieces of yourself you might never have studied.
Your hands are your constant companions. They have met the needs of others, pioneered romantic moments and worn rings of commitment. They are the way your heart leaves fingerprints, the eyes at the end of your arms. Hands reflect a person’s being and are the front line agents of your life. If eyes are said to be the windows of a soul, hands express the soul.
Hold other people with your hand thoroughly open. Allow them to know the warmth and welcome of your hand, investigate its curves and benefit from its scars. Invite others to follow the lines into the fabric of your life and see the risks you have taken and the adventures that are yours. Allow them to wrestle and rest, search, see and speak. Let them stay; let them go, but let them find your hand always open.
The Open Hand of friendship, at its widest span, is most rewarding, most challenging and most painful, for it enduringly acknowledges the freedom others have while choosing not to close upon, turn on, coerce, or manipulate others. In such friendships, expectations and disappointments become minimal and the reward is freedom. As others determine a unique pace within your open hand, they will see freedom and possibly embrace their own with excitement and pleasure.
Openhanded people do not attempt to “fix” others, change, or control others even for their own good. Rather, each person is given freedom to learn about life in his own way. Openhanded people, instead, express kindly and truthfully what they think and feel, when asked, knowing even in the asking, others might not be interested or willing to learn.
The Open Hand is not naive. It is willing to trust, while understanding and accepting that no person is all good or all bad, and that all behavior has meaning. The Open Hand is convinced it cannot change others; it cannot see or think or feel or believe or love or see for others, but trusts people to know what is good themselves. It will not strong-arm, pursue or even attempt to convince others because it has little investment in being right, winning or competing. Here is offered a core-freedom of the deepest and most profound nature: allowing others to live without guilt, shame and expectation.
Further, the Open Hand offers oneself freedom that extends to one’s memories, ambitions, failures and successes. This allows for growth of enduring intimacy, greater personal responsibility, authentic autonomy, and the possibility of meaningful relationships with others.
In the discovery of a closed hand, even at the end of your own arm, do not try to pry it open. Be gentle. Allow it to test the risky waters of freedom. As it is accustomed to being closed and fist-like, it will not be easily or forcefully opened. So let the closed-handed do their own releasing and trusting, little by little, and in their own time and manner.
When openhanded people meet, lives connect in trust, freedom and communion. Community is set in motion. Creativity is encouraged. Mutual support is freely given. Risks are shared. Lives are wrapped in the safety of shared adventure and individual endeavor all at the same time.
I want my life to count, make a difference, contribute to the greater good, to have MEANING.
I cannot exist in a vacuum, but in a community with persons of similar desires to create something beautiful with the skills, resources, and years that we have at our disposal.
I want to serve a cause that is greater than my own fulfillment.
I want to plant now, so people I may never meet or know or hear of me, may harvest something rich and rewarding in their futures.
The only photograph — I’m aware of — of my mother and me.
difficultrelationships.com 