Posts by Pat:
“Be Good to Your Old Man”
A dad is someone who
wants to catch you before you fall
but instead picks you up,
brushes you off,
and lets you try again.
A dad is someone who wants to keep you from making mistakes
but instead lets you find your own way,
even though his heart breaks
in silence when you get hurt.
A dad is someone who
holds you when you cry,
scolds you when you break the rules,
shines with pride when you succeed,
and has faith in you even when you fail…
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Sometimes it is so difficult to be the kind of parent in the selection shared above.
- To let them grow,
- To let them try,
- To let them fail,
- To let them develop their self confidence.
And do we allow our parents to have grown, tried, failed, develop self confidence? Or do we blame them for how we’ve turned out?
And what about the skills of letting ourselves grow, try, fail, develop self confidence?
A speaker once addressed a high school assembly on the subject “Be Good to Your Old Man!” The students were expecting some trite Sunday school moralizing. Instead the talk turned out to be something entirely different, an insight that made a lifelong impression on some of those youthful listeners.
What the man said was, “Be careful what patterns you form today in thought and ac
t, for it will have much to do with the person you will become in later years.”
The “old man” is the person who will evolve out of the person you now are. The child is the parent of the adult.
No matter what the past, we cannot change it. But we can take charge of our life today and control what all these things do to us in our present experience.
We need to forgive all those who we feel have hurt us, neglected us, or in any way frustrated our good. (including our parents!)
More, we must forgive ourselves, those little children who are the parents of who we have become today.
Forgive and let it go. We are the adults now.
We can open the way now for all things to work together for good, even if the “good” is the painful challenges that have forced us to grow. Growth is what life is about.
I’m reminded of the story of the two brothers with alcoholic parents. They were interviewed as adults and asked to what did they attribute their station in life.
The first man was an alcoholic, living on the streets who answered, “What do you expect, with parents like mine?”
The second was a successful businessman, active in his community, with a loving family. He answered, “What do you expect, with parents like mine?”
They had perceived their experiences differently, used them as an excuse or as a lesson and created their own lives as a result of that choice.
As Victor Frankl said so clearly in “Man’s Search for Meaning” after his experience in the concentration camps,
The two brothers made their choices and the consequences followed.
And if we understand that today we too are making choices that will determine who we become tomorrow (that we are now the “parent” of our future self) then we know we are not victims of our circumstances.
So, how are you going to be “Good to Your Old Man?”
Willpower (or procrastination!) part 2
Procrastination is often our response to the diminishment of our willpower. As we start “using up” our resource of willpower, we seem to find lots of ways to procrastinate, to distract ourselves from our feelings of frustration and/or inadequacy! I think many of us see ourselves as a “pro” at procrastinating. We learned it young, first […]
Never enough willpower! part 1
Don’t you just hate it when your willpower falters and fails and you hit the snooze button, roll over and skip your early morning exercise, again? We’ve read that willpower is a “finite” resource-easy to use up, often long before we’ve got that new habit established. So, what’s a gal like me to do with […]
Life is..?
Did you ever get lost on Google? I spent an untold amount of time searching for quotes that I could include when I write about what “Life” is to me. And I found so many fascinating quotes that I decided that this post would just be a summary of my favorites. I narrowed it down to these […]
The not-so-ugly duckling
Remember the Hans Christian Andersen’s story of The Ugly Duckling? As a child, I found the story distressing to me with those bigger birds pecking on the poor homely “duckling” who finally ran away. The misery and the loneliness, the winter when he froze in the ice…I was unhappy for him until finally in the spring the mistreated bird […]
Pushmi-Pullyu
Do you remember Doctor Dolittle, the man who learned to talk to the animals? First there was the the book for youngsters by Hugh Lofting. And later the movie starring Rex Harrison. Or are you too young?? If so, check it out! The animal I remember the best is the pushmi-pullyu, an imaginary creature resembling […]
Who else has ever crammed for a test?
Cramming versus the Law of the Farm! Did you ever “cram” in school? Goof off during the semester, then spend all night before the big test trying to cram a semester’s worth of learning into your head? In our social culture we sometimes think we can dismiss natural processes, cheat the system, and still win […]
A week ago, “Boston” hadn’t happened
Life changes in the blink of an eye. And we just think that it can’t happen to us. My son has run in a number of the Boston marathons over the years, so last week’s events came home to me a bit sharper than it might have otherwise. But whether as an individual or […]
Spring Cleaning and Your Life
How does spring make you feel? Does it lighten your heart as it does mine? It feels like a new beginning, a fresh start that begs me to open my internal windows and release the stale and tired emotions I’ve carried all winter. I feel a light breeze of peace and positivity wash over […]