A significant problem with disdain, contempt, rejection, or downright hate, is that it impacts the source more than it (usually) does the victim.

If you (or I, of course) harbor negative thoughts and feelings toward a former spouse, in-laws, parents, or neighbors, anyone for that matter, we poison our own wells. We damage ourselves, and the self-damage usually outshines the impact on our victims.

Hate (or contempt or disdain – people usually like to avoid the word hate with “softer” terms) even though that’s what it is:

• Poisons our view on the world and on all other people, even those we love.

• Even the beautiful things and beautiful experiences are contaminated if we harbor hate for even one person.

• Hate has trouble being contained and its power infects everything we do and see and experience.

• Hate, like all viruses, has no boundaries, and so it indiscriminately invades and spoils even where it’s uninvited.

• Makes us cynical and we become cynical for so long it becomes a way of life, making us contemptuous of those who are hopeful and of those who express optimism.

Love, forgiveness, grace, and goodness are better than hate – yet hate has quite a following.

Grace, goodness, kindness will lift our spirits and open a world of fresh and wonderful possibilities.

Love is courageous and creative. It’s always the best option.

Parenting has tried very hard to teach me a few valuable lessons. Although sometimes a slow learner, and some crucial principles have demanded refresher courses, I think the lessons are transferable to all relationships:

• Identifying and stopping when I’m projecting my history, fears, frailties, failures and temptations onto their motives and behaviors.

• Knowing when to stop talking, when words, shared thoughts and ideas, have turned into chasing, demanding, hunting and “suggestions” have transformed into strong-arm tactics.

• Knowing when my actions, as loving as they may appear, promote laziness or unnecessary dependence.

• Knowing when to stop thinking, anticipating for each of my sons when they are quite capable of planning and organizing themselves and understanding that if they are not, my doing it for them is hardly helpful if they are to ever develop these very necessary skills.

• Knowing anxiety and love are not the same thing and are easily, often painfully confused as they can feel so much alike. 

• Parenting ends; while I will always be their dad, they are no longer little boys who need oversight and my watchful eye. They are men in their own right, both fully capable of life with me and without me. If this is not so, I have truly failed as a dad, and they, as men.

It fascinates me that we often know so little about each other and how little time we take to try to discover each other. 

Occasionally I will play the piano. 

Someone where I live, will tell me they didn’t know I played. 

When I report that amongst other places, I played topless in a flowery skirt for a lua band in Hawaii they are usually taken aback. Sometimes I’ll add that at 12 I played for a stripper named Syringa who danced with a snake.

This is what I mean. There are whole volumes of our lives that others don’t know about and we’d all be enriched (perhaps) if we took the time to find out. We are all more than we can see.

I visited a man in a care facility a while back and met a friend of his who was also visiting. All I saw about him was that he was tall, very tall. I took no time to find out anything about him. I recalled his name because when we both left the care facility the waves and cheers he got from other residents made it clear he was well known.

I was rather embarrassed when I got home and googled him.

This gracious man was a basketball star of national significance and I didn’t even know he played.

“Leave things – parks, campsites, picnic areas, beaches, national parks – better than you found them” is, for obvious reasons, a widely used, helpful mantra.

When applied, everyone benefits.

The communal or public facilities are left clear of litter, things are straightened out, tidied, to benefit those who will next use it. Those departing are better off for having increased awareness of the needs of others, even the needs of strangers.

It becomes a way of thinking, a lens through which we see the world, all it offers, and what we have to offer it.  Exercising such awareness and thoughtfulness leaves us all better off and offers us all a chance to grow.  

I think this principle applies also to people, to all encounters, casual to intimate.

Every encounter can be a positive one. Yes. It can. Even with that very difficult neighbor, that surly in-law, that rude guy at the post office. Your Ex.

You can make it so by how you leave it, how you clean up after yourself, how you take care of who you are and how you respond in the encounters. It’s not that I think everyone needs some kind of fixing but we can leave every encounter with grace, kindness, with an exchange that’s encouraging, even the most difficult of encounters.

I hope you will learn the power of a strong “yes” and a firm “no.”

May you learn to say YES to opportunities even if they involve risk or if they involve venturing into the unknown, learning new things, and breaking unhelpful habits. May you say YES especially if the opportunities involve meeting new people. May you say YES to opportunities to travel, to serve, and to build and to assist in mending broken places. May you say YES to exploring new ideas. May you say YES when you encounter opportunities to offer hospitality.

May you say NO to toxic secrets, to behavior that judges or excludes others. May you say NO to religious teachings that limit your capacity for generosity and freedom. May you say NO to anything that will delay your formal education no matter how appealing or adventurous the idea may be. May you say NO to those who disrespect you or encourage you to treat the adults around you with anything less than utmost respect and close-to-perfectly good manners. May you say NO to those who dismiss your ideas and who treat you as a means toward their disclosed or undisclosed ends.

“Is every intimate relationship worth fighting for? How do you know when to throw in the towel?” 

After much first-hand experience of couples beating incredible odds (addictions, violence, serial infidelity) to revitalize devastated relationships I’m going to say YES. It is probably worth the fight. There are some essential pointers that suggest ending it may be inevitable.

Both people have to be almost equally in the battle. “Almost” because one person is inevitably more motivated than the other. It just cannot stay that way if it’s to survive and thrive. Both people have to acknowledge individual roles in the breakdown. I have no urge to “blame the victim” but it takes at least two to tangle (and tango).

Both people have to acknowledge a commitment to “on-going” truth. I don’t believe every detail of an infidelity ought be divulged but I do believe a couple can commit to “truth-from-here-on” agreement. Affairs (emotional, sexual, soul-mates-only) must end if the couple is to survive and thrive. Both people have to be willing to learn to HEAR the other person – no matter how long or painful the process. No listening; no love.

Given that it is Father’s Day I have to tell you my father was a David who had his fair share of Goliaths. He had many in all shapes and sizes and spread over many years. I’d suggest being fatherless from birth was a Goliath of sorts. I’d suggest the Second World War must have felt much like a Goliath to much of the world and to a 15-year-old boy going off to war before even needing to shave. I guess entering the Indian Ocean off a burning and sinking destroyer to find safety was certainly a frightening encounter. Floating in the ocean, protected from sharks by the oil that has surfaced from the sinking ship is not usually the safe option. Floating for hours – about 30 in all – in oil and debri and being fried in the day in the scorching sun and freezing in the night while hoping for rescue may well qualify as a Goliath. Dad said the men in the water sang “Nearer My God To Thee” and “From Sinking Sands He Lifted Me” and “Abide With Me” a lot. But, he did it. He did it all. My dad was a long way from perfect but I have noticed he was much more imperfect when I was younger than he is now. I guess he improved over time.

Did you know my dad? He owned the tearoom near the top of Blackburn Road next to the Dutch Reformed Church, up the road from Parkhill soccer club. You may or not have known him by name but you may have been a woman in need of milk for her baby. He would have given it to you under the counter as if defying the boss which was, of course, himself. When you tried to pay he may have whispered “take the milk my dear. No baby should go without food. Keep your money for something else the baby needs.” Or, you may have wandered into the shop and said you had no place to stay for a while and he may have said “we have plenty of room here” and given you a bed for a week, a month, even longer. Perhaps you knew him because you faced addiction to alcohol and he was your Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor and he said “just for today” to you and told you he’d decided he’d no longer drink “just for today” until his pledge spanned decades of sobriety. Did you know my dad? You may not have known him by name but perhaps you went to his tearoom where he served bread, milk, kindness and good humor and wrapped the goods with the feeling that you were known, that you belonged.

I will resist the appealing urge to mind the business of others, to spread gossip, subtle or gross, and to take on burdens that have already proven too much for people more equipped, wiser, stronger than I.

Your dad, on Father’s Day, probably wants very little from you. It’s likely he will be satisfied with a simple card, a brief note, and the words “thank you, I love you.”

The real gift you’re offering to your dad on Father’s Day is if you are living well, loving deeply, using your skills, your talents for the good of all.

That’s the gift he’s really looking for.

He’s not looking for you to give him something; he wants you to give the world something.

Offer the world about you your integrity, and you’re giving your dad a gift. Give to the poor, the lonely, comfort the mourning, put your arm over the shoulder of your own son or daughter, and you’re giving your dad an invaluable gift.

Your dad is probably not looking for what you can do for him; he’s looking at how you’re living amongst others.

That’s the real gift for Father’s Day. It’s not the cufflinks, or the new tie, or another pair of comfortable socks, as wonderful as those things might be.

Your dad is looking for how you are living your life to its full potential.

That’s the gift he really wants.