Reconciliation...

I walked into the coffee mess this morning at work, did my café mocha routine, and as I was almost walking out of the break room I heard one of the other guys in the area reply to the typical “How’s it going?” query from someone else in the room with an “I haven’t gotten fired yet, so all is well!...” reply. I know this individual’s answer was an intent to humor the inquiry with a clever answer, and just as I stepped out through the door the final part of his reply reached my ears “…but it’s just past six in the morning, so the day is still young!” Again, I know he was just joking, but his answer stuck with me and has really made me think whether this kind of humor could actually be revealing a sense of worry of impending doom from this particular individual and many others. How sad would it be to spend at least 40 hours a week, every week, with the mental anticipation that you might get fired? Yet, even though I make an effort to steer clear from spending any significant amount of time near anyone that walks around with this kind of negativity, unavoidably their presence is more common than not. I am of the idea that it makes very little sense to invite into your life any significant amount of negative energy regardless of its true intent, such as humor, if at all possible. Instead, I rather get up in the morning and tell myself that “today is going to be a great day” and that “anything bad will only come into my life with the intent of eventually opening the door to something better!” I believe that in the past I have made the mistake of allowing my own negativity to trigger incredibly unhealthy decisions on my part. This is a pattern that I have consciously decided to break which in return has allowed me to stir clear from making wrong choices and also made me a much happier individual.

Yesterday, in the midst of a cell phone conversation with my mom she mentioned that the thing that she misses the most from her days of being a teacher was her interaction with kids. Immediately I questioned her reason since I would have easily guessed that instead it should have been her interaction with other co-workers. Her reply was honest and to the point, “I miss how the kids always made me laugh with their stories…” she said. How clever of her to recognize that not all social interactions are to be missed. Instead she pointed out that it was more rewarding to share with the kids because they brought a level of joy and newness to her life that could not be found in many of the adult interactions. This is not to say that she did not miss her friends and co-workers; what she meant to say was that of all the things that she got out of being a teacher for over 45 years, the most fulfilling was being able to absorb the innocent positivity that came about sharing with younger people. It never ceases to amaze me how much I am still able to learn from my mother at my age. There is a clarity in her opinions that can only be effectively described as “soulful wisdom.” Her words have always brought clarity when I am having a hard time focusing on something that is in my mind. Other than during my ignorant teenage rebellious phase, I cannot remember a time in which I have ever questioned her insight into anything that is directly pertinent to my life. More importantly, I cannot recall any bad advice either. On the contrary, the sooner I accept and apply what she teaches me, the quicker I recover from my mistakes.

OK, back to surrounding yourself with the right kind of positive input in your life. Who would have thought that the social interaction of an adult with teenagers would hold more value than interacting with other adults? The first thing that crosses my mind is how much I might be wasting in the way of rewarding experiences when I trade any of the time I could be interacting with my own teenage children with others instead. Obviously, the role of a parent can be correlated in many ways to that of a teacher. However, we all know how hard it is to communicate with our own teenagers. The fact that my mother was able to share beautiful, funny, and rewarding experiences with so many of her teenage students is more of a tribute to her ability to bring down the barriers and walls that typically rise between generations. In contrast, I can clearly remember many of my middle and high school teachers of which I am sure that neither I nor any of my classmates would have ever considered sharing with socially. So in retrospect I can pretty much confirm that this success achieved by my mom as a teacher was much less related to her role as an educator, and much more because of her personality and behavior towards these young minds in the first place. With this discovery I then deduct that the same might be true for any of us as parents. We should be able to gain certain advantages in our social interaction with our children if we are able to bring to the relationships the right kind of personality and behavior too.

Obviously the role of a non parental adult with a young adult is not the same as that of a parent with their kids. I have worked hard to make sure that my children don’t just see me as any other grown up, but rather as an authority figure in their lives for many important reasons. In the first place, how effective of a parent would I be if my children thought of me in the same way that they do my next door neighbor? To follow, my credibility as a role model is being constantly scrutinized by my children because of how close we are interacting between each other on a daily basis. These critical differences in my parental role have created a kind of wall that first need to be climbed and crossed before I am able to reach my own children in the say way that my mother was able to reach her students. So what tools do I have in my parenting trunk for me to whip out and utilize in order to climb, cross, or break any barrier that might present itself when I want to succeed in my effort to have a better social interaction with my children? The answer is obvious to me because of my relationship with my own parents. The tool that has constantly kept me, even while I was a rebellious teenager, in harmony with my parents is love.

Probably the most complicated and yet well known and experienced emotion in any relationship, especially in parenting is love. I do not intend to spend a lot of time giving you advice about love, since in reality there are only a few things that you need to know that is truly useful. The rest would be mostly wasted, since I am sure that any and all of you have a great deal of personal experience on the subject of love. To delve in this amazingly wondrous personal subject assuming that I know any more than you would be ridiculous. However, I will point out something that might give you a bit of peace of mind when you find yourself wondering why you make many parenting decisions the way you do in the first place. What surprises me the most about love is its ability to alter my mental state of clarity and cloud my judgment so easily. Because of how much I love my children I have many times kicked myself for haven allowed or disallowed many behaviors and actions on the part of my boys. Yet it is for this same reason that love has the power to overcome just about any barrier or obstacle that is placed in the way of my interaction with them. In parenting, love adds the sweet taste of true reconciliation which adds itself in a very effective way after forgiveness. In other words, because I love my children, not only am I able to forgive their transgressions, but I am also able to accept them just the way they are and allow them to be completely back in my good graces in the end. Think about it, it is not the same to forgive yet stay hurt, than it is to absolve and regenerate the relationship to its original state again. This is truly a thing of beauty that is one hundred percent obvious to me with my children, just as it has always been with my own parents.

I have climbed over the wall, laughed so hard that my belly aches and I am sitting in a great place emotionally because my parents taught me the true value of loving, forgiving, and most of all forgetting the things that have ever hurt me. This is how I not only intend to live, but have decided to be true to myself and my children. I have seen life take away from others some of the most precious part of an individual’s heart. I don’t want to have to ever regret not giving my all to children, so for this reason I walk towards their brilliant lives, and never away from them. Maybe this way one day I will be able to say that the thing I miss the most in my older age is the joy that my kids brought into my life during the years I was a father.

Dad