Tag: character

Who Shapes You?

Lately, I’ve been reminded how outdated some of my thinking is. Some days, it feels like all of my thinking may be outdated. That is excessively harsh, I expect.

I was raised with the understanding that growing up meant we experimented with life through its various stages to test ourselves and discover who we are.

As children, we try different things (our parents usually make sure we do!) to see if they take hold in our lives and psyches or whether they get tossed. Do you really want to go back for another season of ballet lessons this year? Or maybe you’d rather try karate on for size? Or raising goats?

Today the message and mantra floating around in the Great out there seems simply to be: “Be whoever you need you to be.” To be accepted. To be hired. To be liked. To be loved.

And if whatever that is doesn’t fully synch up with who you are or what you believe, there’s a reason for that:  “Hey. We all need to pay the bills.”

Be yourself? Don’t be ridiculous! Nobody wants any part of that. Listen instead for these insightful messages! “Try this eyeliner with that mascara” intones some teenager, who chirps: “Your eyes are really going to “pop.” (For a time, that saying conjured up quite an image that alarmed me. Until I learned that it meant the eyes would “stand out” and not “pop out.”)

I’ve had a lot of opportunities in my life. I’ve been able to marinate in numerous environments and activities long enough to give me invaluable feedback about who I am and who I am not. These experiences and preferences and I dare say, passions largely influenced and still influence my day-to-day choices and preoccupation.

I grieve the abject superficiality out there in the Great Beyond and yes, the silly sameness of the expectations placed on the current generation. “You are only as good as your last Tik Tok post.” Apparently. And what is the soul-nourishing learning about self that comes from these noisy, public, repetitive posts? “I applied my eyeliner in that video WAY better than she did.” Un-hunh.

That is supposed to build character and inner resilience??

Intrinsic qualities like patience and discernment and willpower aren’t easy to determine in someone at first glance. But they often might be assumed as qualities in someone possessed of quiet grace. Something who doesn’t have anything to show off about or prove.

Maybe that’s when maturity kicks in. Unless you choose to grow old without growing up … that’s common.

I was thinking about things in life that take time to mature to a point where we can enjoy themin their finest incarnation. Their peak of perfection.

Cheese. Fine wines. The vapors and rhythms that swirl in old buildings where the outpourings of legions have been comforted. A love or marriage you have nurtured from Day One (and a few days no doubt before that) with unwavering devotion.

Those values seem to have gone the way of the Dodo bird. But I’m not convinced all that many people are totally buying into the superficiality and sameness. Little wonder the therapy industry is booming and antidepressant sales are off the charts.

When the environment you are in (i.e. the world) does not feed your dreams and passions; if that environment does not allow you the time and space you need to explore yourself in pursuit of your chosen interests; failure to thrive is not a surprising consequence.

The danger is waking up one day to find you “beside yourself” instead of “inside yourself.” May not seem all that far but, trust me; it is a hell of a lot of ground to cover to get back to you when you’ve lost yourself. Or worse, never found yourself in the first place ….

The Unknown

Every day is basically an unknown. I remember periods in my life when it seemed things would always be the same. But it turned out they weren’t.

I think about the leap of faith it takes to jump out of bed each morning and face the day. We really don’t ever know what is coming.

I am presently grieving over the fate of a beautiful young black single mother not too far from where I presently live. She was killed in cold blood by an irate neighbor. A white lady if that matters. Guess it does around these parts of the American South.

The single mother’s kids had been playing outside and drifted onto the white lady’s lawn. The white lady threw a roller skate at one of the kids. She scooped up another kid’s iPad that was laying on the grass. Naturally, the kid ran to his mother for help.

When the beautiful black mother went to the white lady’s house to retrieve her son’s iPad, the white lady fired four shots through her unopened door. The white lady then claimed “self-defense.” Didn’t seem to matter that the white lady was the one that was aggressive to the black lady’s kids. The white lady told the 9-1-1 dispatcher that she “felt threatened” by her neighbor’s presence at the front door.

I listened to an interview yesterday with Christian Cooper, the black birdwatcher who in NYC in 2020 was falsely accused of harassment by Amy Cooper, (no relation) a white woman who refused to leash her dog in an on-leash section of Central Park. Cooper calmly recorded on his phone the white woman’s hysterical phone call to police complaining “a black man was threatening her and her dog.” The video recording told the tale. The white woman lost her job, was roundly condemned, and faded into infamy.

Christian Cooper wrote a book on birdwatching and just landed a gig as host of a National Geographic birdwatching show. Finally, at least one story of a white person and a black person’s confrontation ended well. For Christian Cooper at least.

I don’t get racism. Not saying I have plenty of best black friends. Not saying I can comfortably put myself in the shoes of a black person’s day-to-day reality in North America.

It’s just that I know and have met too many wonderful people of all races and nationalities. Standards of decency for humans are pretty much the same around the world no matter what color their skin is. Character, class, and manners count more in any individual than their race.

So my heart is heavy and grieving for that beautiful young black woman’s family. I don’t know how her kids will make sense of their mother’s loss as they grow up. No more than their bereaved grandmother can make sense of the loss of a beautiful daughter.

And then there is the unknown of how justice will play out in this case, as if that even matters to those most intimately affected. This is the land of Trayvon Martin, a skinny 15-year-old black kid who was shot dead for just walking around his neighborhood. His murderer got off scot-free based on the infamous “Stand Your Ground” laws that exist in Florida.

And so it may well be for this murderer – already charged with the lesser violation of manslaughter. It is an unknown almost too terrible to contemplate. That she might walk free.

Whichever way it goes for the hate-filled woman who coldly and viciously took this young woman’s life, it won’t matter to her kids. All they’ll know is facing the unknown every morning of waking up for the rest of their lives without their mother.