Archive for the ‘parenting’ Category
“Empty” nest?
Posted on: January 2, 2016
- In: Christianity | family | freedom | intentional living | parenting
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As we turn the calendar to a new year, what are you anticipating?
Our youngest daughter is 21. Up to now, she hasn’t been in a financially secure enough position to move out on her own, but she is rapidly arriving there, so sometime in 2016, Lord willing, after 30 years, our Emancipation Day will arrive. We will join the ranks of the so-called “empty nesters”.
Being a stay-at-home mom, and especially a homeschooler, I have had people expect that this would be something hard for me. “Since you’ve always surrounded with kids, won’t you be lonely? After spending so many years with your time occupied with teaching, aren’t you worried about what you’ll do with yourself?” My answer is a laughing, but emphatic, “NO” to both questions.
I was blessed by a mother who set an example for me in this. She was always a stay-at-home mom, often essentially a single mother because my dad traveled a lot. Yet although busy with raising 5 kids, Mama always found ways to keep her own interests going. Clearing out her house after she died last year, I was struck by just how many different crafts she had undertaken through the years that confirmed her identity as an artist. She always found time to read. She always had a flower garden of some kind. She put a lot of effort into decorating the houses she lived in. Of especial importance to me as a role model, was that my mother was comfortable in her own skin and with her own company. She was “Chuck’s wife”, and “Tim/Gary/Sandy/Corey/Susie’s mom”, but she never was ONLY those things. She maintained a strong sense of self apart from anyone else.
Mama modeled an acceptance of life in each of its stages, and never repined over any season of her life. When we kids were elementary aged, she never sighed for the toddlers we were. When we were in high school, she never got wistful over our Tooth Fairy days. When we left home to go out into the world, she never wished we’d stayed home forever. When Daddy died at my house while he and Mama were visiting in 1991, she spent that night weeping and walking up and down our driveway, but by morning she had reconciled herself to her new life on her own – and was determined to fully LIVE that life. And she did, too!
Mama avoided two of the most common traps many moms fall into.
One is that they have confused their role with their identity.
Our roles are what we do; our identity is who we are. No matter how tempting it is to get our sense of self from a role we fulfill, roles were never meant to consume or define us. Roles change over time but we’ll be living with our self long after our kids are out on their own. If we keep in touch with our selves, nourish our individuality, ponder our unique purpose, and grow in our own faith, when we face a change in our role we won’t find ourselves living with a stranger.
The other trap for moms is investing all of their life in the lives of their kids, but none in their own.
At some stages, especially when our kids are very young, investing in our own life can be difficult, I know, but it is important that we do it, even if we can reserve only a tiny corner of our life for actively pursuing personal growth. This isn’t being “selfish.” Sacrificing all of our life on the altar of serving our kids does neither them nor ourselves any favors. If we can keep even a little flame burning makes it much easier to get the fire going when the opportunity arises; staying involved in our own interests as our kids grow up means that when the time comes, as it will, that we have more freedom of time, rather than feeling an empty “Now what?” we can feel an anticipation that says “At LAST!”
A few years ago, in a conversation with an older, single woman I know, we were talking about decorating for Christmas. She told me that she doesn’t bother to do it, because “there’s only me at home.” Mama decorated her house to the nines; there wasn’t a single nook or cranny in the entire house that didn’t wear a festive decoration. When I related that conversation to her, she countered, “So what if it’s just me? I consider myself worth decorating for!”
My kids may leave home. Even my spouse could leave home, one way or another. But my nest won’t be “empty” until I’M no longer in it!
Wherever your nest, may you find contentment in it, and may the new year find you filled with anticipation! God bless you all.
The freedom to fail
Posted on: December 17, 2011
I’m back from our visit to our son, daughter-in-love and newest granddaughter. I’ll spare you all the panegyrics over how adorable she is; take them as read! Although our oldest daughter has had two kids, they live here in town, so although we got to see them much sooner after birth, and more frequently after, this visit was different because we spent four days in my son’s apartment. Much more intense! And boy, did it bring back memories of those first days of our own parenting adventure – the feeling of being in over our heads, in totally unfamiliar territory, with little confidence in our ability to parent this morsel of humanity. It’s been a few weeks shy of 27 years since then, and our adventure with our five kids has taken us to places we had no idea even existed. As is not uncommon, I find myself wishing I could go back and parent then with what I know now. I can’t do that, of course, but I want to share one thing that I wish I had learned a lot sooner. So here is a letter to my son and daughter-in-love, or anyone still in that journey:
Dear Phil and Brooke,
Welcome to the wonderful, crazy, scary world that is parenthood! You have no idea just what you’re in for now. Which is probably a good thing.
I have every confidence that you two are going to be great parents. You take your parenting role very seriously, giving thought to your course of action rather than simply acting on the impulse of the moment. Already you are recognizing the dying to self that good parenting requires. You are seeking the counsel of those with more experience, which is wise, but you are maintaining an independent judgment of the fitness of that counsel for your own situation, which is wiser still. Above all, you have hearts devoted to the Lord and are leaning on Him for wisdom, desiring to do what is right. Yes, you are going to be great parents.
You are also going to fail. There will be times when you put your desires above Evie’s needs. You will be impatient. You will speak in haste. You will choose the convenient over the constructive. You will ignore things you should correct and punish actions that were foolish but not disobedient. You will over-react. You will make bad decisions. In these and many other ways, you WILL fail. Welcome to parenthood!
That may not sound very encouraging, but if you can accept the inevitability of your own failures just as fully and as matter-of-factly as God does, you will have deprived the Enemy of his greatest weapons against you in the parenting venture – the fear of failure. As long as you are afraid of failure, you will be living in the Prison of Perfection – not the freedom Christ died to give you.
You see, the Enemy wants you to keep focusing on trying to be perfect. He’ll use the “if you parent ‘right’, then your kids will turn out ‘good’” lie. Sadly, even the Christian community has bought into this fallacy. You probably already read my post on the misuse of the Proverbs verse on “Train up a child”, so I won’t repeat the arguments here. I’ll just say this: There has only been ONE Perfect Parent in all of history, and HIS kids got kicked out of Eden! Trying to be the perfect parent won’t guarantee the outcome for your kids.
The Enemy says you should try to be perfect so you won’t disappoint God. But this is bogus as well. Isn’t it funny how we say that we know we’re not perfect, yet we get so upset with ourselves when confronted with the proof of it? We really do expect ourselves to be better than we are, and when our reality doesn’t meet those expectations, the result is disappointment. But God cannot be disappointed! God has no expectations other than reality. He knows even more clearly than we do just how sinful we are. Think of Jesus calmly telling Peter of the betrayal to come. There was no frostiness to His voice. No “how COULD you!” shaming tone. Jesus wasn’t shocked or disappointed at what Peter was about to do. SIN IS WHY JESUS WAS HERE IN THE FIRST PLACE. It’s HIS righteousness in us that He wants to see perfected – not our own. Our own self-improvement projects are all doomed to fail. HE’s the Professional!
Part of striving for perfection means that when we fail, we have to wear guilt like a hair shirt until we are rubbed raw and bleeding. The truth is that there’s no guilt TO wear, because Jesus already wore it. “There is, therefore, now no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus.” No condemnation. Period. If God does not condemn us, how dare we condemn ourselves? We need to confess our sin to restore fellowship, but the forgiveness is already granted. Every action has its consequence, and so will our failures – but our failures don’t take God out of the equation. When Jesus told Peter, “You’re going to betray me”, He also told him, “…and when you turn back, strengthen your brothers.” Jesus was already looking beyond the failure to what use He was going to make out of it. When the Word promises that “in all things God works for the good of those that love Him” – “all things” includes our failures. Don’t ever give yourselves credit for being able to force Him into Eternal Plan B, as if you can somehow fail badly enough to screw up eternity. You can’t.
I don’t mean to sound like I think it doesn’t matter what you do as parents. Obviously, I want you to be the best and wisest and all that that you can be, and provide as little fodder for the therapists as possible. These are my grandkids we’re talking about you raising, after all. It is, however, especially for their sake that I hope it is the LORD you will take seriously, not yourselves. My grandkids don’t need your perfection; they won’t be perfect themselves. They need to see the God Who is bigger than their failures, and they’ll see Him best by seeing Him through you. Immerse yourselves in His mercy, grab onto His grace, frolic in His forgiveness, rest in His resourcefulness!
You’re going to be great parents, and you’re going to fail. And neither is what matters. You’re free to fail because HE NEVER WILL.
This train doesn’t go there
Posted on: September 25, 2011
A few months ago I picked up a habit again that I have done off and on since college – reading the chapter of The Book of Proverbs that corresponds to the day of the month.
I love the rich visual imagery used in so many of the proverbs, such as 11:22 “Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout is a beautiful woman who shows no discretion” or 26:2 “Like a fluttering sparrow or a darting swallow, an undeserved curse does not come to rest”. Or how about the section dealing with the young man caught by the adulteress, who goes with her as “an ox going to the slaughter, or a deer stepping into the noose till an arrow pierces his liver, like a bird darting into a snare.” From the one comparing a nagging wife to “constant dripping on a rainy day”, you get the idea that the writer had some experience of what he was writing about!
There is a such a wealth of wisdom to be found in this book. Like all Scripture, it is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness. 3: 5,6 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart…” is probably one of the most well-known verses in Scripture. 1:7 “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” is echoed in many other passages throughout the Bible. However, one thing the Book of Proverbs is not is The Book of PROMISES. There is a difference between what is Truth and what is a truism. The dictionary definition of a proverb is “a short popular saying, usually of unknown or ancient origin, that expresses effectively some commonplace truth or useful thought.” Even the definition for a Biblical proverb is “a profound saying, maxim, or oracular utterance requiring interpretation”. The book says of itself that these are “teachings” and “sayings of the wise”. We need to be careful about making them all into “thus sayeth the Lord” absolutes.
There are many proverbs that speak in black and white of what is never that cut-and-dried in real life. Look at 13:25 “The righteous eat to their heart’s content, but the stomach of the wicked goes hungry”. Do these verses mean that there can never be a hungry Christian? Of course not! If proverbs are absolutes, then what do we make of 16:7? “When a man’s ways are pleasing to the Lord, He makes even his enemies live at peace with him.” There are times that this proverb has been realized; we all have seen or heard of godly men and women who have won the respect of even their opponents. However, every prophet ever killed, every Christian ever martyred – our Lord Himself on the cross! – stand as witnesses to the fact that this is a truism, not a promise.
When it comes to parenting, of course, the ultimate example of this proverb-as-promise misconstruction is (all together, now, 1, 2, 3): “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” (22:6) It’s engraved on our gray matter. It’s the mantra of a plethora of parenting books. Many a parent of a prodigal clings to it as fiercely as a drowning man does a life-raft. The trouble is, of course, that it is NOT a promise.
This proverb is generally true. The majority of adults live lives on a trajectory begun in childhood. Thus, children who are raised with godly training in a loving home where God is glorified will, indeed, more often than not, continue on that drift upon reaching adulthood. BUT there have been, are, and ever will be those that eschew their training, some of whom will return to their roots after a sojourn away, and some who will not. With examples of this from past and present surrounding us, why are we so ready to try to turn this proverb into a promise?
I believe the reason is that if we take it as a promise, it puts US in control of our children’s destinies. We can accept salvation by grace for ourselves, but by golly, we are going to save our kids by our works! If we just do everything “right”, then we can be certain of the outcome, either by keeping our kids on the path in the first place, or by putting into play a spiritual boomerang effect that will compel them to return to it at a later date. Oh, how we want guarantees for our kids!
The first brick wall we hit in trying to force this proverb into promise status, though, is …. ourselves. If we take this as a promise, then it is predicated on the perfection of our parenting to activate it. That is, how our kids turn out rests entirely on our shoulders. If our kids turn out to be all that we hope for, then we get to take all the credit for it; we must have trained them right. If our kids go off the path, we may take the defensive position that we did train them right, so of course they’ll be back, or we may blame ourselves for it, making assumptions of having God-like knowledge that if we’d done this differently or that better then certainly our kids would have gone the right way; we must not have trained them right. All of these responses are wrong, for all are focused on us and our own efforts and a perception of what those efforts earn us a right to: a guaranteed outcome.
Now, even assuming for just a fraction of a second that we could be perfect parents, the second brick wall to taking this proverb as a promise is the other party in the transaction – our kids. Kids are not simply a product of their upbringing and situation. The world is full of people raised in similar situations, even in the same home, who nevertheless developed in totally different ways. One abused child grows up to be a caring, compassionate social worker, while another becomes a sociopath! God was the Perfect parent for Adam and Eve, yet they walked wide-eyed awake right off the path, knowing full well they were doing so. Our kids are born with their very own full-up supply of Original Sin, and no matter what we do or do not do as parents, no matter how close we come to being God-perfect in how we train them, our training cannot control what their response to it will be. Though they will generally tend to follow the path they start on, it doesn’t always play out that way. Our children’s choice can trump any training.
If they do choose to walk away? This proverb is not a promise that they’ll be back. That’s the hard but simple truth. No matter how much it hurts to think about, we can’t focus on the “old” as a talisman against the possibility that the circle will be broken. To do so is a false hope, for it is predicated on our trust in our training and a denial our children’s self-determination.
Neither the perfection of our parenting nor the reliability of our children’s responses are anything to trust. So what do we do? We train our children in the way they should go with the best of the wisdom that God gives us – and then we let them go. If they continue in the path on which we set their feet, then we praise God and thank Him for His surpassing grace that brought them there in spite of our imperfect parenting. If they leave the path, then we put our hope, not in our training of them, but rather in the sure and certain knowledge of God’s infinite love, justice, and mercy, never ceasing to bring our children’s names to the throne of grace, yet leaving the ultimate outcome in His hands. We do the best we can as parents because it is the right thing to do, not because it’s our quarter in the Proverbs 22:6 gumball machine so we get out our promised outcome.
Training may bring our kids to the station, but it won’t guarantee their ticket onto the train bound for glory.
A covered event
Posted on: September 18, 2011
It can be interesting reading through an insurance policy and looking at just what all is considered a “covered event”. House blown up by a gas explosion? Yes. By a terrorist’s bomb? No. Kitchen flooded by a nearby overflowing stream? No. By a break in the line to your ice-maker? Yes. Health insurance has its own intricacies. It’s always up to the insured to understand what is or isn’t covered. Sometimes, even if something is covered, if it’s found that you didn’t exercise “due diligence” in trying to prevent an occurrence – failing to maintain your vehicle’s brakes, doing your own faulty wiring, leaving doors unlocked – you could find your insurance company refusing to pay up, or at least reducing your claim payment.
I was thinking about this while reading a sobering and excellent article last night on parenting, “Solving the Crisis in Homeschooling: Exposing the 7 Major Blind Spots of Homeschoolers” by Reb Bradley http://www.familyministries.com/HS_Crisis.htm. (There’s also a shortened version of it on Josh Harris’s blog.) The author does an excellent job of dissecting a number of problems common not just to homeschoolers, but some of them to parents in general, especially those of conservative bent. I would recommend it for any parent who wants to be challenged to self-reflection. But be warned – if your kids are already grown or well into their teens, and you see yourself in this article, you could end up feeling terribly guilty, exceedingly depressed, and convinced that you had thoroughly “blown it”.
That’s a common type of parenting regret. We parented following some direction – maybe some teaching, a book, a class. Or maybe we just went with our own intuition. We were so sure we were doing The Right Thing! Our intentions were entirely honorable and lofty, and because we knew that our goals were right, we were convinced that our methods must be as well. Then somehow we ran across somebody who challenged our ideas – an article like this one, a talk with a friend, a talk show – and we started seeing things in a different light. We realized that what we’d been doing wasn’t, in fact, the best way after all. We didn’t MEAN to short-change our kids, but we just didn’t know better.
Then there are things we did know. We may like to comfort ourselves by saying, “Well, I did the best I could” – but we all know that’s not always been true. We don’t always do the best we could. We often do “know better”, but for whatever reason, we choose not to do it. We’re tired, so we yell. We’re frustrated, so we make a hasty judgment in a dispute. We’ve got a headache, so we get sarcastic. We’re in a hurry through our own fault, so we get impatient at the naturally slower tempo of our children. Whatever our excuse, sometimes we just do make the wrong choice.
All parents have regrets of the general wish-I’d-done-it-differently type, too – things that weren’t “wrong”, per se, but that if we had it to do over again, we’d change. Less housework, more Play-Doh. Less “no” and more “yes”. More “Way to go!” and less “Cut that out!” More mud puddles, less hurry. Maybe we wish we’d gone camping, or travelled, bought a bigger house, bought a smaller house, did more school, did less school. There’s never a shortage of shoulda, woulda, coulda’s.
Sometimes the things we feel bad about are things that were beyond our control. I have always had a major temper problem with my kids. It frightened me how angry how quickly I could become. I yelled. A lot. Over-the-top! Part of me always felt “trapped” inside, watching myself do those things, unable to stop myself, hating what was going on, but unable to stop, no matter how much I prayed about it or had others pray for me. A year ago, I was (finally!) diagnosed with Bipolar II, a somewhat milder version of the more infamous form most likely to make the news. Suddenly, I understood what was going on all for those years. (I’m on medication now that has made a wonderful difference.) Although I know intellectually now that I was not responsible for those bipolar-induced anger episodes, it doesn’t stop my heart from still aching over the pain my family went through.
So… what does all this have to do with insurance?? As far as God is concerned, all those mistakes of parenting are COVERED EVENTS! Yes, indeed. Says so, right there in our insurance policy. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus.” Romans 8:1. and “If we confess our sins, God, Who is faithful and just, will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” I John. 1:9 and “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” It means just what it says. Whether we need forgiveness for doing what we knew we shouldn’t, or grace for doing wrong out of ignorance, for not doing what we wish we had, or for doing what we couldn’t help, it’s all COVERED! He never says, “Well, you should have known better, so this one you’re stuck with.” or “I told you so!” or “How could you?!” No, His forgiveness and grace cover everything, mercifully, freely, with abundant grace.
The insurance commercial shows everything rewinding back to where you have all your old life intact, as if the disaster never happened, but of course, we know real life isn’t like that. Forgiveness and no condemnation don’t mean we get a “do over”. The fact that God has covered our sins and short-comings, doesn’t necessarily change the situation we’re in – but it should change our perspective and how we deal with whatever we face. We may still feel sadness over the past, but rather than wasting precious time and emotional energy beating ourselves up over things that can’t be changed, we need to extend to ourselves the same compassion that HE does. He remembers our frame far better than we allow ourselves to. We cannot change the past, any more than Paul could erase his haunting pre-conversion history, but, like him, we can press forward and change what we’re doing now. When we see through God’s perspective of being covered, He can help us remember that while we are responsible for how we parent, our kids are responsible for their response. We’ve all seen kids come from great families yet end up going wild, or from terrible families yet turn out great, haven’t we? It’s simplistic – and even egotistical – to try to take all the blame or credit ourselves for how our kids turn out. What a relief to let go of that burden! I think the most important thing about grasping what it means for all our sins, errors, faults, short-comings, and regrets to be covered is to understand that God is bigger than our blunders, and we can trust that He will use even our blunders for His purposes. There is nothing we have done as parents that is beyond God’s ability to deal with. Nothing we have done has ever caught God unawares or unprepared. He’s never yet said, “Oh, my goodness, I didn’t see that one coming. Now what on earth am I going to do??” Unlike the insurance agent who must wait for the call to know of a claim, He not only knows the call will come, but is already planning the repairs before we even know we’re going to need them.
We’re not just in “good hands” – we’re in the Best. We don’t just have a “good neighbor”, we have a loving Father. Our Agent paid a premium no one else could pay to get us our policy, and there are no exclusions on it. Relax! He’s got us covered!
Shedding the “shoulds”
Posted on: September 10, 2011
Ah, the “should”! I don’t mean the actual “right” and “wrong” type of should, as in “You should be truthful on your tax return.” I mean that vague “should” that you somehow feel obligated to live up to; the ones imposed by the nameless They, by family, by strangers in the grocery store, or even by ourselves. I mentioned “the mother that lives in my head” the other day. I think we all have some version of her, a mental construct of someone who we imagine would be living our life better than we’re doing it, and who is constantly criticizing us for all the things we “should” or “shouldn’t” do. There is no end of things about which we can create a “should”. Sometimes the “should” is entirely arbitrary, such as manners. That’s why culture to culture differs so. Here, it’s rude to belch; in Japan, it’s a compliment to the cook! (I think my son thinks he’s Japanese…) Some of our “shoulds” may have some basis in reason, but really, when you get down to it, are still just a matter of opinion. Ever read the debates in Dear Abbey about which way the toilet paper “should” hang? Talk about a tempest in a teapot! Some of us are more susceptible to the “shoulds” than others. How many “shoulds” are you carrying around?
For example, take fashion. Who elected those Fashion Elite to dictate what is or is not acceptable? I grew up with some very strict fashion rules, such as: Don’t mix patterns; plaids don’t go with polka dots don’t go with paisleys don’t go with anything but solids. Stripes were a little less strict; you might wear them combined with certain floral or other prints if you did it carefully. Certain color combinations were taboo, too. One did NOT attempt the union of say, purple and orange and red. It simply wasn’t done. I never cared about dressing fashionably as far as following all the current styles and such, but I confess that I internalized many of these more general pseudo-rules. Then I had kids, who each had their own ideas about what did or did not go together! Not that I didn’t still try to instill some of my fashion prejudices, of course. I mostly lost. But really now I’m glad of it. Why would I want my kids to carry someone else’s “shoulds” around? And God’s sense of humor is showing lately: my dear daughter-in-law, who majored in fashion design and has tastes very different from mine, is outfitting the nursery for our impending third granddaughter in …. purples and oranges and reds! 😉
There are a lot of “shoulds” that weigh parents down. Your child is a year old – he “should” be talking! My child is two and a half and not potty trained?? She “should” be by now! There are all the contradictory “shoulds” of parenting: You “should” spank; no, you “should” use time-outs. You “should” give an allowance; no, you “should” pay for doing chores. You “should” give your kid a computer; no, you “should” keep your kid away from computers until she’s 30! Education is a virtual MINEFIELD of “shoulds”. Your child is 5; he “should” be able to spend several hours sitting still at a desk being quiet. My granddaughter is 6; she “should” be reading by now. Your daughter is in 5th grade now; she “should” be able to do this math. My boy is a high schooler now; he “should” be getting A’s in every subject. Homeschooling, which, ahem, pardon the term, should be a place of freedom, (some shoulds are warranted!) is often just another guilt-load of “shoulds”. You “should” be spending 6 hours a day doing schoolwork; no, you “shouldn’t” spend more than 2. You “should” be pushing your kid to excel, studying an encyclopedia of subjects, each in-depth, so your kids transcript looks like something from Harvard; no, you “should” let your child do whatever he wants, study what he wants, when he wants. You “should” do it this way, you “should” do it that way, yadda yadda yadda till your head spins!!
The reality is that kids are all very different and that the normal age range for walking, talking, potty training, reading, and every other accomplishment you can think of is far, far – FAR – wider than parents are led to believe by our culture and/or the public school system. There’s no reason our kids shouldn’t be allowed to be as differently abled as the adults we know – Joe is a great CPA, but don’t ask him to write a magazine article, and Jane is a great organizer but don’t ask her to be treasurer, and Fred can fix anything but isn’t good at coming up with new ideas. Homeschooling is generally just as successful no matter which philosophy of it you practice. There is absolutely nothing set in concrete when it comes to how education should be done, in what order, at what age. There generally are no absolute “right” and “wrong” answers in parenting, either – and God’s grace is big enough to cover our blunders, anyway!
We need to be careful who we listen to. As one of my favorite proverbs says, “Just because a blind man tells me I’m ugly, I don’t have to believe him.” Just because someone tells us we “should” do this or that doesn’t mean they’re right! If you’re a parent, it’s a good thing to read books and talk to other parents – but never let that advice outweigh your own instincts. No parenting expert in the world is an expert on YOUR child. You are! If you’re homeschooling, research the different approaches, then choose the one that feels like the best fit for YOUR family, not just what sounds like it worked great for someone else. If you want to wear plaids with paisley, go for it. So what if you don’t do all the “shoulds” Good Housekeeping says? If you feel under pressure to meet some “should” that you can’t explain “why?” or “who says?”, and you don’t want to do it, just DON’T. I’ll bet the world won’t implode.
Let’s learn to discern and shed those undeserved “shoulds”!
I recently finished reading a very thought-provoking book, “The Happiness Project” by Gretchen Rubin. Rubin decided that she would take a year to both study happiness and attempt specific projects with the intention of raising her own happiness level. She read scads of articles, books, biographies and essays on the subject. She chose an area of focus for each month and set specific resolutions relating to that area, marking her progress (or lack thereof) on a chart each day. These areas included such things as marriage, parenting, work, play, and physical well-being. Resolutions were as varied as “stop nagging” to “sing in the morning”, “get more sleep” to “make 3 new friends”. The book is liberally sprinkled with inspiring quotes from all her reading.
I’m on my second reading of the book now, this time taking notes. I don’t know that I’ll undertake a Happiness Project per se, but there are a lot of resolutions that I’ve thought of that I’m sure would make me happier – and make the household atmosphere more pleasant. Incidentally, I love her distinction between a “goal” and a “resolution”. A goal is finite and achievable; once you’ve attained it, you move on to the next one. A resolution is something to be worked on-going, whose point isn’t necessarily achieving perfection in it, but that in striving for it, we are better off than if we were not trying at all.
One of the quotes that has hit me most strongly is one by Voltaire: “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” How often it seems that we know the ‘perfect’ we should do, but because we can’t or simply won’t do THAT, we don’t even do the ‘good’ that we could.
As in inveterate reader of health articles, not to mention many a conversation with my doctor and lectures from various fitness nuts in my life, I know very well that I am supposed to be getting at least thirty minutes a day of aerobic exercise, plus doing at least thirty minutes of weight training three times a week. “You’ll feel SO much better” and “once you get into it, you’ll miss doing it if you miss a day” and yadda yadda. The simple fact is, I hate exercise. Period. I do! So the reality is that I am never going to do the perfect of exercise. But if I can make myself do ANY kind of exercise regularly, even just 10 minutes every day of dancing in the living room, it’s better than doing nothing. Better to at least do the good, than give up entirely just because I’m not going to do the perfect.
Many years ago, I got into hand-making cards. I bought a bunch of rubber stamps, inks, powders, stencils – all kinds of supplies. For several years I got a lot of enjoyment out of making cards for birthdays, anniversaries, and other special days. (I’d always been pretty big on remembering occasions with cards, so this was a change in the “how”, but not the “what”.) But after a few years, I found that I just didn’t have the time to do the cards like I had been doing. Oh, I still liked the idea of doing them, but I fell out of the practice. But I felt guilty for going back to sending store-bought cards rather than sending homemade ones. (Oh, the silly perspectives we sometimes take.) So what did I do? Yep. I just pretty much stopped sending cards altogether! Which do I really think folks would have cared more about: that they got A card at all – or that they got a hand-made one vs. a store-bought?
I haven’t done as many posts this week as I intended because…. guess? I started about 4 long drafts, each with a magnificent theme, but in each case, the thesis ended up splintering and wandering off in multiple directions like kids on a field trip – and I could never get them all back into the van. So, when I realized my Magnum Octupuses were going nowhere, did I try to come up with something much shorter, but cogent, so that I would at least be posting something? No. I posted NOTHING. I let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
There are so many areas of life where we can apply this maxim. Housekeeping? I can’t keep the house spotless, so I give up and don’t even try to keep it picked up. Dieting? I can’t give up all sugar, so I may as well eat the whole candy bar. Parenting? I can’t go to Disneyland, so I won’t even bother going to the park. Keeping in touch? I “owe” someone a long letter, but have time for only a short email, so I send nothing because I can’t send the long one. The perfect putting the kibosh on the good. Voltaire nailed this one!
Well… this post isn’t perfect. It might not even be good! But at least it’s DONE!
the susie solution 