No Answers, But I Understand The Questions

I have done quite a few things over the course of my 62 years. Among those I am willing to talk about are lifeguard, construction worker, pilot, gun salesman, police officer, professional chauffeur and -- for some years -- drunk and drug addict. I also managed, somehow, to get a decent (although hit-or-miss) education. For several years I worked in the field of alcoholism and addiction, dealing daily with folks who were trying to restructure shattered lives or gain sufficient skills to begin living one. I do some writing. I watch birds. I tend to my spiritual life. I try to be a decent son, husband, father, friend, brother and servant to cats.

I mention these things not especially out of pride -- although there is a certain amount of pride inherent in having mastered a variety of skills sufficiently to make a living at them. Primarily, though, I want to illustrate the fact that most of us have amassed, over the course of our lives, a pretty impressive body of knowledge that we are able to tap for a variety of alternatives in dealing with our lives. Some of this we learned on our own, but most of the basics had to be modeled for us by our parents and the other adults who influenced us.

We learned honesty by seeing a parent or grandparent walk back into a store and return overpaid change to a clerk. We may have learned dishonesty by listening to caregivers talk about cheating on their income tax. Our attitudes toward marriage were probably influenced by observing the fidelity -- or lack of it -- shown the institution and their partners by our parents. We learned, those of us who were abused, that it is OK for big people to do whatever they want to little people.

One thing is sure. By the time we are in our early teens our attitudes toward life -- for better or worse -- have long since solidified.

Some of us have lessons reinforced by other life experiences. Abused kids often do well in the marines, for example, because the traditional “molding” process of that organization echoes the verbal and often physical abuse of a certain kind of parent. This is not to say that all Marines came from abusive families, but I can assure you professionally that many do. It is not fun, but it is familiar, and young men and women from abusive backgrounds know how to deal with it. (The unfortunate corollary, that they are sometimes adept in dishing it out as well, is best left for another day.) Others eschew that sort of thing entirely, and pursue lives totally opposite. Nonetheless, those experiences are shaping every day. Working every day of your life not to be something is just as exhausting as any other obsession.

Others (I was one) have little direction molded into us. I was the only small child on a very busy, poor farm. The adults didn’t have much time for a kid, and there was severe illness in the family that distracted my mom. Later, there was a surprise little brother that distracted her even more. The result was my being left to my own devices and, later yet, having no clear idea of a work ethic.

I drifted from one thing that interested me to another, because I had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up, or how to go about becoming it. I entered the adult world with a fairly well-developed sense of right and wrong, a good mind, and little else. This was no one’s fault, really. On farms in the late ’40’s and early ’50’s, as is the case today, you did what you had to do to get by. High falutin’ ideas about raising children were things sometimes run across in Reader’s Digest. We didn’t even have electricity until I was about six, let alone TV and Oprah. Later efforts -- also well-meant -- were too little and too late, I guess.

Please don’t get the idea that I’m crying over spilled milk. I might have done some things differently, but today I’m satisfied with my life and wouldn’t change any of the things that got me to this point. If we were able to go back and make fundamental changes, what else might change --perhaps not for the better? I am a firm believer in the Law of Unintended Consequences.

My point here is that kids badly need modeling. They need to see lives lived well, not just hear about them. They need to see the people close to them doing the next right thing as a matter of course. Ethics classes don’t cut it. Kids need to be shown that it is OK to cry, to laugh and to have fun -- that emotions are not something to be hidden lest someone take offense. They need to see their caregivers living the rules, not just expounding them (or pounding them in.) They need examples, not expostulation. They need parents who had the same things done for them. They need these things in order to shape the direction of their lives. Far too many do not get it.