Healthy replies to unhealthy prompts. These are not direct quotations. They encapsulate what I have heard from healthy people:
• No, I do not feel as anxious as you do about this – it’s not helpful if we are both immobilized. (Wife to husband over a business failure.)
• This is a conversation it seems you need to have without me – your adult sons and daughters want time alone with you. I understand completely. (Man to his wife in a second marriage.)
• Your accomplishments at school are yours. When you are doing well I will not take the credit. When you are doing poorly I will not feel as if I am to blame. You already have everything you need (from me) to be a good student. What do you need to change about your work habits? Start there. No, I will not speak to your teacher. You are perfectly capable of doing that for yourself. Your teacher is not responsible for your performance – you are. (Parent to son of 15.)
• I am very uncomfortable speaking about people who are not present unless you are full of praise for them. Gossip is not at all good for friendships. (Friend to friend.)
This week this column has been on newsstands every weekday for 22 years in one of South Africa’s morning newspapers, The Mercury. The Mercury is sold in KwaZulu-Natal and is one of the oldest newspapers in the country.
It has been my privilege to build a faithful readership over the years.
I’m proud to know I write for the newspaper that was my first “real reading” as a child.
As a child I recall being fascinated that “The Idler” (backpage humorist) was able to write EVERY DAY.
Little did I know it would be my joy to be published daily for over two decades (so far).
Today, and every day, try to be the adult you hope your children will become. How else will they learn what it means to be an adult? Who else will teach them?
Try to stop blaming the teachers, coaches, or the school for your child’s every challenge, difficulty, or hurdle. Blame restricts maturing, yours and theirs.
Try to stop blaming the government, the economy, or prejudice for every distress or dilemma you face, unless you think blame will be a good tool for your child to take into adulthood. If you want your children to be adults who take responsibility for their lives then show them how it’s done. Your children won’t forget your temper tantrums no matter how young they may be; and they will probably emulate them.
Demonstrate, by your own display of excellent manners, the manner in which you hope your child will navigate life and relationships. It is true, they are going to watch and learn from multiple sources, but you are their primary resource when it comes to how they will respect and treat others. Little eyes are watching.
Respect, visit, and be kind to the elderly so they know exactly how to do it when it’s your turn.
Dismiss no one; look down on no one. Young eyes and ears are absorbing how to be in the world, and we, we parents, are the primary teachers.
Respect is placing high value on privacy, even, perhaps especially, between and among people who are very intimate with each other. The deeper and greater the intimacy, the greater the need for individual space, even opportunities for extended solitude.
Respect is listening, it’s having the willingness to focus on what another is saying without correcting, interpreting, or interrupting. It’s developing an eye for what another may need or want and looking for ways to serve one another. It’s having an eye for mood and occasion, the ability to read a moment and to sense when strong emotions may call for deeper understanding.
Respect is having an ear for what is not said. It’s the capacity to read between the lines, to discern what may be uncomfortable to express. It is developing an ear to honour what another finds painful, the ability to understand that loved ones may hide pain, may want pain concealed, from some, but not from all.
Respect is found in the appropriate use of touch, touch to affirm, the kind of that says “You are not alone,” and expresses warmth, declaring the pleasure it is to share life with another.
[Kindly pass this post on to others whom you think may consider it interesting or pertinent]
Take time to think things over even if the act of thinking things over feels or seems impossible. Get some distance to gain some objectivity. When your thinking is nudged and poked by overwhelming feelings of sorrow or anger you know it is still necessary to take more time before you respond.
Reactive behavior is unlikely to do you or any situation you are facing any good. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction which is probably not going to be very helpful to you.
No response from you is better than a half-baked response from you. Be aware that your half-baked ideas will be misunderstood and often in ways that are not to your advantage.
While you may not feel like it, take care of immediate business in your immediate environment. This will get your wild and wandering mind temporarily off things and you will feel as if you are accomplishing something with your day.
Remind yourself daily that you are the one common denominator in all of your relationships, that while you are thinking or feeling like a victim you are no help to yourself or to anyone, and your deepest resource is the valid and authentic and talented person you know yourself to be.
Within each person is a holy place called The Self. It is here, in the deepest recess of who each of us is, that the human spirit, soul, intellect, meld and form the powerhouse or engine room for who and what each of us is.
The subtle art of self-care — “subtle” because there is a delicate difference between being self-caring, selfishness, and being self-serving — is fundamental to good mental, emotional health, and also relational health.
Appropriate self-care is not selfishness or self-indulgent. It is not self-centered-ness. It is not self-serving.
It is self-awareness.
It is self-monitoring with the firm understanding that each person is responsible for the condition of his or her self.
Each of us is responsible for how we relate to all others (to neither dominate or be dominated).
Each of us is responsible, when it comes to ALL other adults, for maintaining relationships that exemplify mutuality, respect, and equality.
Part of self-care is the enduring understanding that each person has a voice to be respected, a role to be fulfilled, and a calling to be pursued.
Every person (every Self) requires room to grow, space apart from others, while at the same time requiring intimacy and connection.
The healthy Self is both connected and separate all at the same time, underscoring again the subtlety required in the art of self-care.
Harking back to my early music days – I began to perform publicly at 14 – my dad always told me to keep it clean.
He said that comedians and musicians never needed to be “blue” which meant suggestive or sexual. He said no one ever needed to use swear words or “bad words” or racial slurs in order to be funny.
Dad said that real artists could do it all without resorting to filth, claiming it was the distinguisher between real talent and those who were found lacking.
I know my dad would cringe if he were around today. Browsing an airport bookstore recently I was surprised how many book titles contain the “f” word on the cover. There are clergy who think it is cool or authentic or “vulnerable” to use the “F-word” in common exchanges and in print and from the pulpit.
Keep it clean, really.
What we say and how we say it exposes our hearts.
It reveals what’s going on within you and me.
It lets others into what’s going on within each of us and I hate it when I am in a place where it feels necessary to use words I know my dad would prefer me to avoid.
Dear Rod: On the whole I think you give very positive advice, although you’re not always right! I estimate that 90% is a good average, so keep it up! I enjoy your column. Kind regards, Glen
I love such responses to my work and have probably received hundreds of similar replies (always from men) over the 22 years this column has appeared daily in The Mercury.
Glen is far above average when it comes to politeness.
Thank you Glen for the 90% grade. I’m quite happy to reach even 75% (of being “right”) given the diversity of readers and thinkers of our beloved newspaper.
I do try to be positive. I do this first for myself and then for my readers given that most of us are more immersed in negative news than is probably good for the soul. I really do approach my life and the blank page (actually a blank screen) with a “yes” or “can-do-it” mindset. Who wants to live with anything less let alone read repeated discouragement in the mornings?
I know I’m not always right. Thank you for reminding me about this.
Life certainly agrees with you and often reminds me, rather loudly, that I’m not.
My name is Sibahle Nsukwini I am a final year student at Durban University of Technology. As an upcoming journalist I always follow the steps of people who are the best in the game and who have experience in journalism like you, Mr Smith.
I read your article in The Mercury newspaper which has a title that says “Beauty is all around us, in all we meet.” The article inspired me a lot since I have been struggling to myself since high school.
The article lifted me as it said all people are beautiful and there is gold to everyone, it gave me strength to continue love the way I was created and to tell myself that even if people can poke fun of me they will not touch or shake my silver and gold, I just have to be strong.
When the time comes next year and if I quickly get job Daily Newspaper Organisation ,I will write articles like yours maybe I will touch souls and give hope to the people who are in the dark.
Thank you so much sir and keep being the light to us
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