I found this in a notebook when I was clearing out “stuff”. I wrote this way back in 2007, before I ever started this blog space and when I still drove my four kids around to things and often drove them crazy. Written before I knew how quickly those years of parenting would pass and written, well, during everything that mattered.
First in a Series of Incremental Sight-Changes : How to Be Proud, Without Being Prideful
By Jane Tawel
May 8, 2021
About a year ago, I began to recognize this phrase I said to people I was close to, and that I said to them fairly often I think, as something that I assumed was true, but in actuality was an off-brand. The phrase is: “I am proud of you”, and I said it as something that seemed good but was, in fact a trued line that had gone slightly askew. So, I began to try to see how my use of this particular phrase, and my feelings of this particular sentiment, and my expression of this particular kind of love, could be examined more closely. And I have found, often to the chagrin of my pain-center and not as a boon to my pleasure-center, that one should never examine something closely if one is not willing to change and be changed. The cocoon can be such a safe, closed space to stay in, and emerging has always meant one of my wings gets dinged; sometimes rather badly.
My greatest learning curve in everything has been my relationship with my children, and so it has been with the idea of my “being proud” of them. But anyone can learn some of the things I call “incremental sight-changes” through other relationships. I have learned much, and examined with no small degree of pain from change, in many of my relationships — with my husband, my friends, my co-workers, my parents, teachers, and Carl and John, two unhoused men I have known, just to name a few. To examine means to learn. Sight must have an object to see. And love must have an object to love. And when you love someone, really, really love them, you try to see things through their eyes, hear things through their ears, feel things with their feelings, and walk, at least a little ways, alongside them in their journey. So, for the past, oh, about a year, I have been walking a ways with the idea of “being proud” and trying to shift my point of view closer to the Golden Mean of True Love.
I now have four adult children and it occurred to me, oh, maybe about half a year ago, that they don’t really want me to be proud of them. So I stopped. Or I tried to stop anyway. At least, I stopped saying or writing things in public forums like “I am so proud of _________(fill in blank with specific child’s name)_______. Because what I began to realize is that by saying I was proud of something they had done or had become, I was taking at least partial credit. By being proud I was saying “this thing about you, is because of something I have done, so I’m going to make it also about me by being ‘proud’”. And that just became a flawed way of thinking for me personally. It became, for me, wrong on so many levels. I suppose it would be just as flawed for me to say that I was “proud” of Carl or John, my unhoused, un-jobbed friends for spending their money a certain way or for the new sign they made to attract drivers to their cause.
One of the Great Revelations of all spiritual pursuits and worldview masters, is that we are all unique individuals, and also all part of each other. We are parts, and we are parts of The Whole. We may willingly and gleefully share in the pride of another individual, whether that is by clapping for someone we love, or posting a quote by someone we admire, but in reality, we also share as part of the Whole. We also take part, although often unwittingly, in the foibles and errors and sins and grievous bodily or mental harm done by “that other person” to other persons. Without that recognition of our part in the bad stuff that happens to others and the bad stuff people do to each other, and unless we empathize with all and take into ourselves the “otherness” of the other in all its spectrum of good and bad, we can’t honestly grapple with what it means to “take pride” and “take part” in someone else’s life. My examination of the idea of being proud without being prideful has taken me a tiny step closer to the sort of humble love that I think is true love — the True Love of humble and great people, saints and sinners alike; and the True Love of the Eternal, and the humble changing and Universal Cosmos; and the True Love of a humble Natural World and the Natural Order; and the True Love of the humble servant love of The God Who Sees.
I am learning not to be proud of my children. First of all, a sort of side note here that may seem like a sidetrack, but won’t be, I hope. When they were growing up, I got to home school my four kids for a long, long time in an environment where they could learn without being graded or judged for how well they learned. It was one of the greatest revelatory journeys of my own life, in personal, intellectual, emotional and spiritual ways, ways truly too deep to measure. And while very few parents and families are as privileged as I was to be able to afford home schooling their kids, and then trust that if a kid is learning, they don’t have to necessarily be compared to others in order to learn more, this attitude was something I tried to let effect my teaching later on in traditional school environments and also to encourage my children when they entered what we called “regular school”. And furthermore, even if I hadn’t home schooled I hope I could have eventually learned this important mindset change: What someone, especially one’s child, accomplishes should be first and foremost about what a person or that child FEELS from the accomplishment, not what a person, and especially a child GETS from the accomplishment. Which brings me to the first “Sin of Pride” — The first sin that pride leads us to commit is loving the praise from others and the products or promotions we get, rather than being present in the moment of learning and loving, and being completely immersed in how awe-some it feels to experience the journey of discovery. Feeling proud suddenly whisks us from the immediacy of joyful celebration in discovery to analysis and storage. We take pride and let it rush us to the exit door, where we can hoard the experience, trying to keep the awe-some feelings for a future rainy day. Feeling pride is like taking constant selfies in life, rather than seeing what is happening in your life, right in front of your eyes.
The second great sin of pride, maybe especially for me as a parent, is like a pyramid scheme. It is often, unbeknownst to victim and parental perpetrator, an act of sabotage to take upon oneself the glory for what one’s child has done. If you are not a parent, think about a time that you shared in a co-worker’s accomplishment, even though they did most of the hard work. Or if you can’t hark back to when you were a child, think about a time a boss took credit for something you did and then damned you with faint praise by saying something like, “I couldn’t have done it without Jane” (Darn right, you couldn’t!) As to the parental pride, we usually quite subconsciously and innocently do this. And sometimes, frankly, I think that “said-parent” does the “I am so proud of you, kid” thing in order to make “said parent” feel better about the job she or he has done as a parent. (I think spouses or partners do this with each other too, and that is a whole other ball of wax that can lead to a wonky relationship, but I will assume a reader can discern this by comparison and experience. I know I am.).
This kind of pride in a loved one’s accomplishments feels as if it should be good, but here’s the thing — I know all too well, that the yin of pride has a yang of regret. Everything I have felt proud of that I observe in my children, has an equally strong reversed feeling of regret at all the mistakes I have made. Mistakes that have saddled those same beloved ones with emotional baggage, or physical insecurities, or intellectual burdens, or spiritual quandaries. And when you get to be as old as I am, with as many wonderful and amazing adult children as I have, who still are as absolutely and completely human as I have ever been, you realize that even the mistakes you make with people you love (adore and love more than you do your own life) — your mistakes and sins are part of their lives, too. And those mistakes, ultimately, need forgiving. Your children need to be allowed to forgive you, just as much as you need to be allowed to forgive yourself. True love can’t exist only on the fumes of pride; it takes regret and forgiveness as well.
The flip side of the pride coin is the regret side, and any honest person in any kind of relationship will have to at various times admit to both. The fact that any one still loves me, and has retained enough “good” to be proud of from who we are together, is as miraculous as the fact that anyone has forgiven my errors and survived my sins against them. Now if I could love myself enough to replace my pride with forgiveness for my sins against others, self, God, and the world, that would be a way to see true Grace. The thing is, it is only Grace that has allowed my children, of all people, to retain the good things and the certain parts of them, that I am apt to be proud of.
It is helpful for my own growth as a seeking human being, to accept that just as it is the grace of God, or the incredible luck of a Universal Luck of the thrown dice, that my children have survived the world of woes and very, very scary, no good, bad stuff things that parents can’t protect them from or control in the world or in their children’s lives; my very lucky and grace-kissed children, have also survived me, and they have weathered and soldiered through their parent’s own brokenness, and sinfulness, and just plain “oopsy-so-sorry-about-that” mistakes. And if their surviving and even thriving despite my sins and my mistakes is a gift of God’s grace, then all the amazing wonderful things they are and have and do accomplish, are all also from that same source — God’s grace. And so it is with my boss. And your co-worker. And your friend. And my husband. Grace has gotten through the barriers of our pride and egos with a humble presence that defies our own pride in accomplishments. Grace is the glue that makes us all One. Grace is that which by appearing weak, becomes strong, and can be the mitigating force against false pride. Grace is the gift that keeps on giving without a hint of recognition. Grace is the open, welcoming arms of a God that asks us all to enter into their Circle.
So, the second sin of pride is this, not recognizing God’s Grace in everything. We Midwesterners used to say, “there but for the grace of God”; and I have tried to keep this as prayer whenever I am empathizing with someone else in pain or sorrow or need. It is God’s grace alone that I am me, and not that poor person, whether he is victim or perpetrator. Being grateful as opposed to proud, for something I have or am, means that the glory goes to others and to The Great Other. Being humbled and humble, means I am becoming more a part of the whole of humanity, more whole myself, and more “holy”; for holiness is above all, humble and humbled.
As Jesus said as recorded in Matthew 5:45, “the rain and the sun fall on the good and the evil”. I can thank God for all the many small mercies of grace in my children’s life, and also thank God that by grace, my children and my God will forgive me for all the errors, “sins known and unknown”, that have hurt others, and especially hurt the very people I love most in the world. And when someone hurts me, or hurts the planet, or hurts another human being, I can humbly say, “there but for the grace of God”. And when someone needs something, and I have much more than I could ever need, I can stop my pride from getting in the way of opening my own arms and hands, and without a hint of pride, give freely with a heart full of “there but for the grace of God”.
This humble acceptance of the grace of what we have been gifted and what we share in common, not in what sets us above and apart, this is what tempers pride. In that very same verse, Jesus says, that even if we don’t understand it, if we accept that God’s grace and Goodness are for all humans, all the Earth, all of us and each and every one of us, the “good, the bad, the ugly” (and the mean, the broken, the plain icky, and even the most trying, irritating people of all — the parents); if we can with humility accept that God’s grace is for all, then we can “show that we are children of Our Father, Who is in The Heavens” — and the God that also lives in each of us. God is beyond our pride, since He is beyond even our greatest ideas and understanding. In accepting Who God is, then I can also accept that everyone is, in a sense, also beyond my own petty pride and beyond my own greedy understanding. To put away, to “shoo off”, my need to understand God and yet, still love Him; and at the same time to try, not to understand, but simply, with humbled love, to “walk alongside” another human being from his or her point of view, in that place in my soul, is the beginning of freedom, and the beginning of wisdom; and in true freedom and wisdom, resides True Love. Letting go of the pride of understanding means I am humbled enough to be awed, rather than proud. And being awed, by God, the World, others, my partner, and for me, being awed by my children, is how I come closer to be a “child of The God Who Sees, and a part of the radically loving and Whole Kingdom of The Heavens”.
Whether parent or child, the Third Sin of Pride is the double-edged sword of “the sins of the ancestors” passed down versus the “the future belongs to our children” passed forward. We seldom want to see the bad “stuff” we have as being passed down, as Exodus 34:7 says, “to the third and fourth generations”. But we also often balk at giving credit to our ancestors for our healthy but random DNA or for the third or fourth generation hand-me-down virtues and character strengths. Four children later, and I have learned that those we influence, want to get their own credit for what they accomplish and that if I am claiming too much pride in them, then I am taking a percentage of their credit away. This is true for spouses, friends, bosses, students, partners, and true especially of our children. As a child it has been true of me, as I have explored those sins and virtues I know to have been passed down through blood, genes, personality traits, and the whole “nature versus nurture” gamut. Being proud for the good bits and foisting onto someone else the bad bits, is a great temptation, perhaps especially for those of us who have survived parenthood and are still clinging to the life-support of being a parent of adult children. This also makes one of the manifestations of the Sin of Pride #3 this: Being proud of someone else, takes away from having the right kind of pride in yourself.
Instead of saying to a student or a child or a friend, “I am so proud of you” (which secretly my whole being is when something wonderful happens for or in them); I am trying to remind myself to say instead, “I am proud to be ____ (Fill in blank with title, such as teacher, mom, friend, etc.)__________. For example, “I am proud to be the mom who got to be your mom”. Or “I am proud that I was privileged to be a teacher who taught you to like poetry”. Or “Hubby, my dear, I am proud that I was able to find the perfect gift for your birthday”. Speaking aloud this kind of pride, is like using a two-way mirror to see something just that little bit out of your range of sight. By being proud of something I was “privileged” or “gifted” to do or be part of, the other person gets to keep all their glow for themselves, and I find the true meaning of feeling good about myself — which is always most known in the act of giving myself away for another with no thought to what I get out of it.
We all deserve to feel that kind of pride that comes from giving a part of oneself to the Whole or the wholeness-making of another. Feeling the pride of doing and being what we do in love, shores up the glitchy defenses we have against the consistent onslaughts of anxiety and ego. That kind of being proud, will also, however, help ease the pain a bit, when a person has to take credit for something they should not be proud of and needs forgiveness for, by self or another. Knowing that we share responsibility for our lives together, and yet still are our own unique amalgam of good and bad, mistakes and sins, pleasures and pains, faults and miraculous wonders, are things we can together be proud of and glory in. These things are what make us as human beings, both communally and individually special, special in the Universe of Specially Created Beings. It is what makes us as humble human beings worthy of a God Who Sees us.
Pride was once considered one of the deadly sins, but in modern Western cultures at least, we have come to feel that not only is pride “okay”, but that it is desired. When the current generation of students was asked what they would most like to be, the number one choice wasn’t doctor, teacher, tailor, or book maker, but “famous”. We have somehow come to believe that being known by many for little, is more desirable than being known by few for much. We have replaced the long arc of holiness with the TikTok of fame. We idolize ourselves and others we take a pride in connecting to, whether that is child or political hack. And while we think of pride today as a deserved kudo and may cling to our right to feel pride in self and others, we are daily reminded by newspapers and personal acquaintances alike, that pride is still the cause of many, if not most downfalls. As the Proverb says, “Pride still goes before a fall” — and then it lays there in the rubble with us pretending to clear the way for us to use our excuses about our skinned and bloodied souls.
Pride leads to other less pretty sins, in the short or sometimes long run; sins like greediness, lies, even murder — whether real or the murder kept hidden in one’s thoughts. A list of the sins that pride opens the doors to, would take us into a tome of explanation and extraction, and hence, is a topic for both another day, and for spiritual masters, and seekers much more advanced than I will ever be. Instead, let me reiterate my personal explanation and explore. My recognition of how what felt good and seemed good — being proud of my children — was actually not such a good thing, has helped me understand what “deadly” sin means when it comes specifically to my pride. To be dead is to be “unconscious”, to be “unaware”. This idea of “deadness” versus “aliveness” is one of the great expanded and expansive metaphors in the Hebrew and Christian Bible. In the letters of the Apostle Paul in the Bible, there is much food for thought about what sin really is, not just the personal effects of “wrong choices” but the systemic, religious, state, and corporate sins of the world. As far as being “unconscious” of what our actions do to us and to others, and what they mean in a greater spiritual meaning, the following thoughts from Paul are paradigm shifting:
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience — among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved — and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:1–10)
What a profound understanding of grace, Paul had; and also of the real consequences of our taking a false pride in our accomplishments and of deadening our souls with trespasses against humble love. Again, that is something everyone should explore in their own journey towards healing, loving truth and important relationships. It is the endless circle of exploration for rabbis, priests, gurus, and spiritual guides and theologians, who are much more able than I will ever be, to keep trying to illuminate. And while, I am aware that many may not agree with me on this idea of feeling pride in others, especially our children, let me suggest that my exploration of pride may at the very least hold a key for you to explore what sins, what “lesser things”, what outside influences, or what personal struggles, or “deadening remains from the past” make you feel “dead inside” or less than conscious of the moment, the person you are with, or your own most valuable feelings and actions and very own treasured “being”.
Pride may not be the word everyone thinks of when they think of what I am trying to describe. But for me, I have simply found the pride I sometimes (often!) have in my children to be my own little personal slippery slope. Once I feel pride in what they do well or right or who they are that is good or wonderful, it is a quick jaunt down the slope and I can find myself at the bottom of where I am judging them for what I consider is not right or not good and judging myself for what is unwell or unformed within me. And at that point, I can either blame them for what is not right or good, or I can blame myself for what I have done or been that has not been right or good, or I can let go of it all. See what I mean? I can’t have it both ways.
Pride goes before a fall, a tumble down the slippery slope of judgement, in this case. I know that this is often due to my great worries and anxieties for my beloved ones’ safety, health of mind, body, soul and spirit, worry about their happiness or relationships or — well, just the world of worry some of us folks carry with us like a constant pulse in the heart of our personhood. I worry without end that my beloveds will end up more like me than I would like — God forbid. And this type of worry is so obviously a deadening sin as well, is it not? And yet I keep picking at my worry like the age-old parental scab that it is.
My worry, like my false pride, is what takes me down the slippery slope of losing my faith in the existence of a God Who Sees or even really a god who cares all that much. My worry is a panicky feeling that the world and my world are on a fast-track to disaster, or that old insecurity that I am unworthy of love — God’s or anyone else’s. But what I have come to realize is that sometimes my pride is simply my worry taking a field trip. My pride is too often the spy in the camp of my fears.
The Sin of Pride works two ways for many of us, doesn’t it? My pride can lead me to a false sense of ego-security and a god-like judgement of others. Alas, it is also true that my pride can quickly lead me to fall down the rabbit hole of never seeing anything I do or “my people” do as wrong, or unhealthy, or at least not the best choice. By feeling pride in the “sinner”, I forget that they too are sinful and not just in need of my and God’s pride in them but my and God’s grace for them. (Side note: This kind of rampant often unrecognized pride is a great sin of individuals, but also of systems, nations, and organizations, perhaps none more glaring than the pride of religions gone wrong. To feel proud of one’s religion may be the ultimate “sin against the Holy Spirit”. See Thoughts of Jesus for more on this.) The flip side of not “judging” others, is not being discerning and truthful with others, or ourselves. This means my pride can be worn as a mask to hide my mistakes or transgressions against others, or ignore and justify my and my group’s self-justified sins against love and truth. Because pride can not only horribly mar and disfigure true love, but can tragically mar and disfigure love’s truth.
All of this does not take away from the fact that I hope my children know that I am bursting at the seams with joy in knowing and observing and listening to them, at what they have accomplished, who they are becoming, and how they are growing in character — I just don’t want to call it my pride anymore.
I was lucky to have a mother who always let me know she was proud of me (and still lovingly does). Not everyone is as lucky as I have been as a child with a proud mother, and that is a horrible burden that far too many children of all ages still have to carry throughout their lives, the burden of never feeling good enough, never feeling that the someone who should love you most, has never seen their worth. Perhaps those parents are too proud to give away their sense of entitled ego, even to their own children. What a tragedy that kind of pride is and I can only hope and pray that those children who have suffered that kind of ignorance and ignoring, will meet people, at least one person, who will say to them with love, “you are someone who can be proud of who you are and I am proud to be a part of your life”.
I can remember quite clearly, a time when my mostly absent father said he was proud of something I was doing. It was when I went to visit him and had taken up running. When I came back sweaty from my run in the Midwestern heat, a humid heat already on the rise in the early morning, my father, a man of few words, told me how impressed and proud he was that I had taken up running. It took me by surprise, and since he was not a runner, it was something I treasured as sincere gift of acknowledgement from him, about who I was. We remember and hold close those things that parents and teachers, mentors, and lovers say to us when they express a sense of pride in and for us, don’t we? Those times when a person, especially an influential adult, be it auntie or coach, special friend, or temporal co-worker, expresses a feeling of being proud of us can be life-changing. Words of praise given freely, given without any co-opting nor qualifiers, can shape our futures and heal our pasts. But we also remember the things we were made to feel we lacked, the times there was an “absence” of whatever we needed from the adults who were life-shapers, even if that “lack” was expressed in the same breath as pride; and so those of us who are in any position of influence, friend, parent, teacher, or partner, must carefully tread the path of pride we express in someone else.
And that brings me to the fourth and for now, final illumination I have had about the Sin of Pride. Pride is often felt about something done in the past not something in the present, and by claiming it, we rename it, and change its meaning and importance. Whether the thing that brings us a sense of pride is something done by one’s self or those we want to make appendages to our own pride, our “other people”, whether, partner, spouse, student, worker-underling, or child, the fact that it is something that occurred in the past or is something in our character that is a result of something from the past, gives the patina of pride the glow of Fool’s Gold, and not real, solid gold. And this is how several sins may sneak in among our good intentions, like weeds in the fields. Sins often sneak by without detection, by taking us out of the present moment, full of God’s Grace in the Now, and escort us back into the past or misguide us into the future life we can’t live in yet. Accomplishments depend on the past to keep breathing life into us, but so do mistakes depend on clinging to the dead corpses of our pasts. Both must be recognized as no longer belonging to the best that the present has to offer, whether my own present or my “other people’s” present “Nows”. The future can be full of hope, but also of fears. Pride can ruin both, past and future, by making us miss the moment at hand or be fearful we won’t accomplish tomorrow what we did yesterday.
The Torah and Bible, especially those books called the “books of wisdom”, have much, much, much to say about pride. To read the book of Proverbs, one cannot ignore that pride is contrasted over and over, and over again to both humility and the wisdom that comes from being humble. This, of course, is not to say that parents, children, non-parents, and all should seek the kind of false humility that is just a flipped over, flattened out, and disguised sort of pride. In fact, every spiritual guide and religion has a lot to say about pride. The word, “sin” may not work for all religions, so let’s call pride at least, an “inability to see true value”. Succinctly put, the Bible says that “the pride of your heart, deceives you” (Obadiah 1:3). Buddhism sees pride as a “distortion” and un-enlightenment, something based on transitory thoughts. It sees humility as empowering and lasting. This is in keeping with the truths of Judaism and Christianity as well. “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will exalt you” and “Love is patient and kind; it does not boast or envy; it is not arrogant”. (James 4:10 and I Corinthians 13:4). According to Islam, pride is a disease and the realm of evil. There is a Native American saying that goes something like this: “Greet each day humbly, and with all thanks for the Great Spirit above”. And in all of this, is something Universally true about pride, I think: Pride gets in the way of Spirit. Pride can masquerade as love, but true humility can never be disguised as hatred. And the ultimate shocking truth of all true religious or spiritual thought, is that even God never reveals Himself as proud. God has no need of pride; He just Is. God allows His Creation to speak for itself, and in His observation of who and what all are in their innermost being, God finds joy. This divine observance of life and of others’ lives, can also be ours as human beings created and creating in the image of the Divine. James 4: 5b and 6 reminds us to be humble because by God’s grace we are created to have a divine spirit dwell in us, not by anything we have done, but by God’s love for each of us. “God yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us. But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble’.”
My goal in this long exploration of the idea of pride is to explore my own false sense and faulty love of pride, not to take away that warm, fuzzy glow we feel in being a part of others’ accomplishments. And like any exploration that is imprisoned by words, it is faulty and flawed, lacking and incomplete, wrong and yet, maybe a little tiny bit illuminating. Our words merely try to crack open the doors of truth and enlightenment, and so I keep knocking on doors, and putting my foot in the door-crack to hold it open, and I keep peering through the small opening to see if I can see a little more of The Light.
Feeling that we have made a good difference in someone’s life, that we have done or been somehow “good enough” to counter all our foibles and sins, and let someone else — student, partner, friend, or child — have a better life, a stronger “shot at”, a deeper meaning, or a truer understanding of their own wonderful value — that feeling, those reflections, that comprehension of our own worth and value, makes us not separate from, but a part of others, and therefore a part of The Whole.
It is in recognizing that I am not apart from, standing on top looking down at, or riding on the coat-tails of others’ accomplishments and lives, but rather that I am a part of, standing alongside looking outwards and inwards, and riding humbly along God’s Waves of Grace, that lead me, and each of us who love, on towards a glory that we can only imagine. The Light of Truth and Love, embraced by humble presence, shows pride for what it is — a mere dim and cloudy reflected glow. Looking at others and myself with the humility of flawed human understanding but graciously divinely appointed love changes a temporal feeling of pride into a little of the eternal reality of joy.
Now, when I feel the warm glow of pride, in those I have been privileged to either walk alongside, or literally teach how to walk, I will try to grab on to its ultimate meaning before I speak aloud my sense of pride. I will try to grasp hold of that pride I may feel in someone else, to make me aware that we are all more than we appear to be on the outside, and that there is something in the human spirit that rises and rejoices with the Universal Urge to Be Utterly Amazing! When I feel pride, I will speak into that feeling, with a humility that God has granted me the grace to see yet another day on Planet Earth, a day to be better, do better, and to help any one I can help do and be better too. And my pride in others, especially my dearly loved children, will, I hope, train me to be present in the moment, when so much is being, not accomplished but Lived! And with the help of a humble heart, a desire for truth, and a hope in the power of love, I will work to be a part of and a presence in that which defies description, that which makes us whole.
Pride doesn’t have to go before a fall or be the gateway to other sins. Pride can be the mirror that reflects this truth: We are more than we appear to be and we are much more together, than we ever are alone. To be proud is also to be present in someone else’s journey, and I hope to let my pride be the silent prayer of my children’s lives; a prayer not of worry, not for their success, but a prayer for the hope of their future glory and their present glimpses of true joy, by the grace of God. This is how to be “proud”, without being prideful, by understanding that in God’s gracious love and care, we are all sinful, sinned against, but all also, oh, so very worthy of the love of God and of each other. Love given in the humility of knowing that all we have is a gift, and all whom we have been privileged to know and live with, are a part of everything good, past, present, and future; that Love, is always, both goal and Source. Being a part of the whole of everything and everyone, the good and the bad, the successes and the mistakes, the “otherness” and the “sameness”, this is how we find the balance between being proud of ourselves, but humble towards others. Giving up pride helps us to sincerely mourn and rejoice with others, to feel with them, to feel for them, to exalt that which is in all humans that is worthy of glory, and look truthfully at the pride that leads to those sins we all struggle with.
Jesus spoke many profound things to those who would desire to be better humans and more worthy of being called “divine”. Perhaps no words of The Christ’s are more applicable to so many things than these, found in Matthew 18:3: “Truly I tell you, that unless you change and become like a little child, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven”. The wisdom in these words are too numerous to ever be fully understood by anyone, but applicable to almost everything we as adults encounter. Have you ever seen a little child come towards an adult, crayoned drawing in hand, full of the scribbles of his imagination and with a look of utter pride on his face as he gives it to someone he loves: “I made dis for you, Mama”? Have you seen a little child make a mess out of mud and call it a castle: “Come see my castle!”? Or have you gazed at the face of a little girl who has just tied her first shoelace, or a little boy who carefully transplants a ladybug from his shoulder to a safe leafy resting place, proudly saving his first life? Can you recall the first stumbling but proud words from the mouth of the child who has read her first words, or have you tasted the “delicious” concoction that your darling little one has made with all the right ingredients for love, but not necessarily for the delicious treat she imagines you are tasting? Try to remember the first time that a little toddler garbled the sounds, but not the sense of who he is — “me is Goo-won!” Imagine the delight in self accomplishment, when one first realizes with joy, “Me is me-Me!” Imagine how a baby feels about himself when he first realizes, “I have these things called toes. Aren’t they fun to wiggle and tickle? I am so proud of being able to wiggle my toes!” Think about children and how proud they are in the moment, their joy in the present accomplishment, a type of pride felt, without a single thought of comparing it to someone or anything or any time else. Oh, that look of pride in that little child’s face is the purest and simplest form of pride there is because it is pure joy in the journey of living.
That childish pride, is the “good kind of pride” that our First Father and First Mother felt when they walked naked and unafraid in The Garden. The pride of a child is the pride we should relish. It is that sense of just being in the moment with what we can do, not because we are a better person than someone else, but because we are a created human being with skills to learn and a life to enjoy. We all should be aiming to get back to and move forwards toward that ineffable sense of being, something beyond pridefulness, but also something beyond feeling unworthy of that which we were created to be — beings, gloriously free and joyfully proud to be alive.
And while I am still an insecure, prideful mess of an adult, with a little grace, I am also still an evolving, changeable, glory-up-ahead, like-a-wobbly-arrow-aiming-at-the-divine, human being. As a partner, friend, spouse, and above all a mess of a mother, I am proud of myself, that bit by bit, I am giving up my false pride-fulness in what has been done, and I seem to making progress towards feeling proud of what I am holding right now in my small hands. What I have now and who I am now doesn’t have to be amazing, for me to be utterly amazed.
I am, bit by bit, replacing my pride in my beloveds and in my own self, with a child-like awe in who my children and my dearest loves are and then trying to expand that love to an amazement with every person I will encounter today. As a child of God, I am trying to look, and truly see with the eyes of The God Who Sees, The God who remains as joyfully, lovingly, curiously, and awesomely childlike today as He has always been. Today it is well with my soul to be as a proudly childlike as I possibly can and to trust, that I am okay, and I am enough, and my mud-castles and scribbled words are things to feel proud of, just as my children are people that I hold out to God with a mother’s childish pride –“Look, See, Enjoy — these are for You”. This is my day’s journey toward becoming someone I can be proud of, a creature who is loved as dearly as a little old humbled but divine child is — Me-me.
For my children, Justine, Clarissa, Verity and Gordon and my Partner in it all, Raoul
And For Breanna Lowman, at https://medium.com/@breannalowmanbecause she so kindly asked me to write about children and wisdom, as she does so extremely well.
I was asked to write something wise about children, or rather something wise from children. And I thought, well, my own children are all grown now, off exploring the world with all the grace and aplomb that well-fed, well-loved children can muster as adults. I am proud of the wisdom they gave me when they were young, that they now carry out into the world, spreading it intentionally and randomly, like the dandelion fluff and seeds, they used to spread as they blew on the seeded-dandelions’ fluffy grey heads. My adulting children often call or come to see me and their father, and they manage to always blow out some of the fluff from our grey heads and it is good. So very good. My children converse with me now to teach me a thing or two, or just to share their lives, accomplishments, ideas — sometimes even to ask a bit of advice, as they would from a friend — and I feel that a person really can sometimes grow from the seed of parenthood into a flowering friendship. When my children are able to talk to me both as mother and friend, I feel something of me blown out and gone, like fluff, ready to grow something new, somewhere else inside me, or perhaps, something new out in the world; but I also feel something of me grow even deeper roots; learning from my own children makes something take root inside my life as a human being, a thing that is permanent, eternal, never-changing-always-changing, as the love of a parent, or the love of a child, always is.
Imparted wisdom is like a seed, after all; you share it, plant it, but it only grows if the soil is fertile and well-tended and nurtured. Parenting is a bit hit or miss, in terms of imparting wisdom and tending the soil of our children, but most of us try to do our best and then pray or wish on a star or a wishbone or a ladybug or a wish-flower, that somehow the good of our parenting will stick and that the bad will wash away from our children like dirt down a bathtub drain, after a day of hard play. We also have to hope and pray that even some of our mistakes or bad stuff, will grow into something our children don’t nurture as weeds, but will turn into something beautiful like dandelions.
I have written recently of “my” little wee birds at the bird feeder, and how much my time with them teaches me. And this morning, I was meditating on the birds again, and how much I love just sitting and looking at them and listening to them coo and sing and squawk, and I looked over at the array of pictures I keep on a little table, to one side of the big, front-room window I gaze out of. I looked at pictures of my children and the faces and bodies, and hair and clothes styles, from various ages of those dear children once mine; once my chicks, but flown the coop and nesting and soaring elsewhere. I remembered how privileged I was back when they were young to be at home with them. I remembered my four children when we were young, and their loud squawking games outside, and their quiet, cooing games inside in the hallways and on stair landings, and their songs and stories sung or made-up together in the labyrinths of their play-times, and prayers and songs and stories before dream-time at night, and the family road-trips with squabbling and singing in the back of the minivan, and trips to the library and nursing home, and grocery and toy store, and the dinners around the big table and the picnics in parks, and the bedtimes as we snuggled in a big pile, reading or singing, falling asleep like a floating pod of sea otters, drifting off to sleep in our big family bed. And I love to remember all the things we did together, but also all the things I didn’t do but was just able to be.
And I remembered how much I once loved, sitting somewhere in the next room, or nearby but off to one side, maybe doing “parent-stuff”, or guarding over them like the mother hen I was, and being there but slightly removed from their circle of activity, and yet, aware of them, watchful, observant, in tune with their tuneful voices, in my silent acquiescence, and oh, so very present and sometimes needed as referee or boo-boo fixer or to hear something “cool” or funny one of them just said or to see something amazing one had just discovered or to sometimes dry some tears because something incredible they had just made got broken. But mostly, as I thought about children and wisdom, I was reliving some memories of just being with them, doing nothing and being — Just me, with just them, just me alone but not at all alone, listening to and watching my children.
I remembered how almost excruciatingly delightful my whole being felt just to be in the same space as them. I remembered how my heart felt full to overflowing, just to watch over them, and to observe not just their accomplishments in crayon or creative imaginative role playing or the structures they built out of sticks and paper and leaves and tin foil and boxes and a huge belief in their own abilities to create; but I also remembered how incredible it felt to me to just look at a little arm covered in small-person peach- fuzz and often a good bit of dirt or mud; how lovely to see a tangled mass of hair fall over a face bent over a picture book, how awe-inspiring to watch tiny toes wiggle, or mouths open wide with cookie crumbs and laughter spilling out, or the absolute heavy stillness of a child who falls asleep in one’s arms. How glorious it was to hear the small shrieks of delight or giggles of shared “secrets” that of course no adults no matter how close could hear. How awesome even the arguments of dissent over what to play or how to play it were, as they began to navigate how to discuss and how to stand up for what they believed in or how to learn the art of compromise (“Okay, you can go first THIS time, but next time…”); and how I might even over-hear them apologize, and say “I’m sorry”, and how happy I was if they did, because it is so much harder to learn how to say you are sorry when you become an adult. Coos and squawks, laughter and imagination, boo-boos easy to fix, and tears that quickly dry, and the play and hard work of children growing-up, and I, having the best seat in the house — an audience of one mom, listening, watching, loving, learning, becoming more wise.
I think about all the things I loved not about “doing a mom” but about being a mom. Yes, I remember sadly all the things I messed up horribly and did wrong and can apologize for now, but can’t undo. And I wish I could have do-overs on it all, to live more fully all the good, and to at least get a bit of a better score on all the tests I failed. But the bottom line as I sit and remember? — -
I am privileged beyond belief to have within my memory, and within the depths of my heart and soul and mind, the visions and sounds and feels and feelings of all of it — all the fun, all the tears, all the laughter, all the fears, all of those days and nights of living with and loving with children. But the truth is, no one has to be a parent to learn from the wisdom of children — we just have to observe and listen to them and try to be more like them.
What my children taught me, among so many, many other things, but which seems so pertinent to our lives today in 2020, perhaps as never before since we were young because of, well, just because of everything; one very wise thing my children taught me was how full and amazing life can be if we only learn to look and to listen — to everything around us and to each other.
To become like a child, is to believe that love can turn weeds into wish flowers. To find the wisdom of children is to know that being is always more important and fulfilling than doing.
And as we all grow up and hopefully want to become better adults, maybe we all need to see ourselves as imperfect, but loving parents and to learn to delight in how beautiful the world and the people in it are, and then we can choose to take care of the world by truly listening to its needs and when it is at play and by watching-over each other.
We don’t have to be parents to be taught the wisdom of children, because we were all once children ourselves. Our child-like selves have much to teach us, if we will look at the world and each other with the eyes of the children we once all were. But today as I get ready to go play and splash in the soapy water of dirty dishes, and as I zoom around the house pretending to be a superhero, or I imagine what it would be like to fly like a bird as I walk to the grocery, and as I prepare tea for my silver-headed husband and listen — really listen — to him because there is so much to learn when adults talk; and as I cry hard with big tears and an ugly mouth screwed-up, over the unfairness of the games of cheaters and the meanness of bullies and over my own failings because life’s not fair and it hurts to get something wrong; and as I laugh loud and long at a joke I once heard; and as I keep a secret in my heart that I won’t tell anyone cross-my-fingers-hope-to-die-stick-a-needle-in-my-eye; and maybe as I take a nap after reading a good book, or as I just sit and stare at stuff cuz there’s nothing to do; or I just listen to the tick-tock of the clock of time gone-by and memories of lives shared — as I do my day, and live my life, I will try harder and let go more easily in order to let the wisdom of my childhood rise up in my soul and I will just be with me. I will wish on stars, and ladybugs, and wish-flowers, that the world and I and my husband and of course, my best teachers of all who were and are now my very own children, will keep growing like seeds, learning like children, and loving like good parents. I will wish on the wish-flowers of my very best hopes that my children will take more, have more time to just be — listening, observing, and loving what is right there in the same space they are, things that are not them but are with them and that they will know, as every child of the world should know, that they are never alone and they are dearly loved.
I will send seeds of wishes into the world with the hope and prayer that we will all know that we are all beloved children with much to learn, and much to teach, and much to love.
Today’s Wise Lesson from my children, Justine, Clarissa, Verity, and Gordon –
Listen and be filled. Observe and be at peace. Take in to your true self, that which is not you, but is still a part of you, and take care of it and tend it with hope and joy. And let the seeds of love and wisdom, planted in the hearts and souls and minds of all children, just as the seeds of the wish-flower do, go out from you and into the world so that all may flourish and grow and be beautiful.
Awkward Questions We Must Ask During This Pandemic —
Even if It Means Losing a Friend
By Jane Tawel
July 1, 2020
When I first became a mom and had my four wonderful children, now all grown and adulting, I loved being with them, caring for them, watching over them like a mother hen. And so most playdates included me. I was always a bit cautious about dropping my children off with other people, even if I knew them, was good friends with the parents, or possibly even was related to them. It wasn’t exactly that I didn’t trust them but….. I didn’t trust them. I mean I didn’t trust anyone but their loving dad, to truly love and watch-over and protect and care about my kids as much as I would. I never minded other parents dropping their kids at my house and was always a hawk on the sidelines trying to ensure safety to all the children, even the ones who were not mine. If I had to leave the swimming pool as a lifeguard, ALL the kids had to get out of the water (“But Mom we’re teenagers now”. “Too bad, out.”) The one time my kids were in a hot tub at a friend’s house, and I asked her to watch my kids while I went to breast-feed the baby, my daughter almost drowned right in front of my friend. Luckily her sister was there to save her. So, call me overprotective, call me a worry-wart, call me a helicopter mom — all true — if it was about safety and protection. I didn’t try to protect my kids from risk or failure, or learning or fighting their own relational battles — but physical safety — heck yeah! I believed that as long as I could, I would do my very, very best to protect them. Now, since they are young adults, the most I can do is caution and pray (and they will confirm I do plenty of both — still my job).
But then all the kids started getting old enough to want sleep-overs. It would have been rather weird for them if I had insisted that if they wanted to sleep over at a friend’s house, their mom — I — would have to sleep-over too. And of course, I didn’t do that. But I did often have to say no to sleep overs, especially if I didn’t know the family or other kids or parents that well. But even if I did know them fairly well, I would always have to ask this very awkward question: “Do you have guns in the house and if so, where and how to you store them?”
Asking someone if they keep guns at home is a bit like asking someone on a first date if that’s a pimple or a cold sore on their lip. Awkward! However, this thing about guns in this country is something people think very, very differently about, and so when you ask a very reasonable question, it feels intrusive because people see it as political. For me it had nothing to do with my view of guns or my view of my friends — it had to do with, “will my child be as safe as possible at your home, and do you consider this an important safety issue like I do?” This was something I had learned to ask as a careful, discerning parent, and yes, some people got offended, and yes, some people might have lied, and yes, some relationships fell apart even, but at the same time, asking might have made not only my kids safer but made those families safer too, if they found out they or their own friends were not treating gun ownership and storage with the seriousness it should be. I knew without a doubt, that even if it was an awkward conversation, I would rather my children and I be “safe and not sorry”. You see, my children’s lives are the most precious gifts I have ever, ever received and I wanted to treat them as such. I would never get another one of J, C, V, or G — my unique and oh, so special four children — and so I didn’t mind being considered a bit overprotective, even if it cost us a “fun time”; even if it cost us a friend.
Fast forward to 2020, and some of us who would rather be “safe than sorry” have got to start being “the careful parent” of our own lives and the lives of others. As Corona Virus continues to rampage through our nation, we may not be able to control other people’s foolishness or lack of care about their own or our safety — but we CAN control their access to us, do our best to not be unaware of or ignorant of their behaviors both in our presence and apart from us, and speak out when necessary. We do have the right, awkward as it may feel, and the responsibility to protect ourselves and our children, and our children’s children. We must truly take seriously any possible threat to our well-being, even if “those people” do not. But just like guns, some people see the safety precautions and their rights to do whatever they want with the weapons of this virus as a political issue. Don’t let them do that to you. It is not — any more than gun safety is a political issue. It is a life-issue and a safety-issue and an issue about how much we care about each other. And so it feels intrusive and awkward to bring the subject up, but if we start caring more about our health and safety and the health and safety of others, more than we care about our feelings or egos or politics, then we will make having these awkward conversations just one more part of the new normal. We will make asking the right questions of others a matter of caring about them, and we will willingly share with others what they need to know before they decide to meet with us. We will be honest, even with our most casual acquaintances and we will be truthful with ourselves when we ask, “is this event worth my giving up something in the future with people I love?” And dear, dear folks — we need to start having these conversations before we get together with other people.
And sometimes the hardest conversations are with the very people who are your best friends and your beloved family. Having to ask your parent or child, “by the way, before you come over, what have you done this week, how safe were your co-workers this week, and are you still wearing a mask and washing your hands like a surgeon”? Last week, when we were lulled into a sense of security (false as it turns out this week) that maybe we could have another couple over for a socially distanced, outdoors, bring your own food and utensils, keep it distanced and keep it short little get-together at our house, we made all the arrangements until I mentioned the time. Then my friend (who is 70 years old and has been quite careful about following all the protocols during the pandemic / quarantine) asked if we could make it later in the day since the day before we were to meet, they would be hosting a party for a friend’s son who was graduating high school and she would be hosting 30 -40 other people. Yep. True story. I was rather flabbergasted and yes, blindsided. So my hubby and I discussed it and I texted her a very kind, sweet text asking if we could delay the get-together and she was very kind and texted back, ‘of course we could’. But here’s the scary part — if she hadn’t mentioned it in passing, I would never have known how many other households I would be exposed to through her the very next day. I never would have known if she hadn’t let it slip that her “gun was loaded in an unlocked drawer” so to speak.
So here is the gist, the bottom line, the stern warning, the upshot, the please, please, please let’s all commit to doing this. We absolutely must start quizzing people about where they have been and with whom and for how long and what protections they used when they did it — BEFORE we get together with them. Remember that old adage that every one your mate has had sex with, you technically have also had sex with? Well, corona virus is like that, y’all, but the thing is — if you’re asymptomatic or have just recently been exposed — you don’t even know that you’ve “had sex” with the virus. So, abstinence is finally the right solution folks — and we do that by sacrificing pleasure for the long term health of all us, and by masking up, social distancing, washing like a surgeon, telling each other the truth, and making good (even when tough) decisions for those we love.
We can’t be embarrassed around each other or irritated if someone asks us about our exposure or if we have been following protocols with the Corona Virus — this is killing us folks! We certainly cannot keep being offended if someone asks us to follow the safety guidelines when we are with them and we must stand up to those who act offended by our desire to protect ourselves and our children from them — (do I need to say it again? THIS IS KILLING US.) Just like asking if someone’s guns are stored in a safe, locked lockbox, we have to start asking people if they have been “locking down” the threat of their corona virus possibilities. Just like I never believed (without proof) someone who would say, “oh don’t worry, I’ll watch your kids” or “how dare you ask, my kids would never do such and such” or “don’t worry I’m very careful with the gun I keep loaded in my bedside drawer” we can’t pretend that all of us don’t stretch the truth to protect ourselves from criticism or from having to change our behaviors. We can’t really keep expecting to believe that others are being careful to protect their own health or mine, unless we are willing to converse, and communicate, and dialogue. And we should not shy away from a little bit of questioning and a commitment to get some reasonable answers on the part of those we would like to be with.
I will promise to never be offended if family or friends quiz me about whether I am doing my part for their safety. I won’t get my hackles up even if my very own children say to me, “Mom, we can’t come over this Saturday because you went to such and such a place and were with such and such a group”. I know they are saying no to being with me in order to protect me and because they know how much I love them. They may understand my choices to do “such and such”, just like I might understand their choices or a friend’s choices and we may be perfectly fine, even in agreement with — even applaud — some of those choices to do things with other people or attend something that is important. BUT approval and agreement for each other’s choices as important enough to perhaps do something that risks our health, means that we will not be able to do “our things” together if it means we won’t be safe together — not until this horrible plague is over. And God willing, someday it will be over. Then — we can all literally and figuratively breathe easy, and “let the parties and concerts, and museum trips, and play dates and sleep overs begin!!
What it means to do the right thing right now by all that we have been entrusted with, is that we must be willing to be seen as overprotective if necessary, even if it costs us a “fun time”, even if we lose a friend, even if someone is offended. We just cannot risk the worst by hoping for the best. We absolutely must not send off our lives to a risky play-date situation or entrust our health to an unsafe sleep over. We must prove that we can trust each other, by honestly communicating with each other. And — If we haven’t already, we must begin to treat our health and well-being as the precious gifts they are. We won’t be getting any other lives with which to replace these very unique and special ones we have, and just like our children, our lives are counting on us to protect them.
It is time for each of us to plan for the “new normal” of our First Post Corona Virus Pandemic Lives. I say, “First”, because there will be more, not maybe, but definitely, if not Pandemics, then other world-wide paradigm-shifting events. My advice – Get Your Inner Kid Back On.
If we all begin to think and act like children again, I think we might have a better chance of not only survival but more enjoyment of life. If we hark back to attitudes, behaviors, warnings, and beliefs from when we were kids, we might deconstruct and then reconstruct where we have gone wrong as adults. Time to get our inner-kid and outer-child in gear, ramped up, and ready to roll.
I have included a minimum by the way of explanation or example in my list below of Lessons from Childhood. I figure every reader will have their own of both. If you have forgotten what your parents tried to teach you when you were a kid, ask them; they will not only remember but probably still have your score sheets for how well you did.
A lot of what we learned as children wasn’t learned from our parents, but from our time spent with our friends, and it has been interesting during this Pandemic Sheltering-in Time, to find out who our real friends are, and what we can learn from each other. Popularity doesn’t matter so much right now and neither does being the teacher’s pet. So, we are all reassessing, maybe a bit. What cliques do we want to belong to when we get out of this “thing”? And what purpose do we want to find in life beyond “grades” and “praise”?
During this world-wide sheltering-in, we haven’t gotten as much play time with our friends and family, but we have learned a lot and found creative ways to stay connected. We’ve actually had to be a lot more like kids again. We’ve managed to get to bed on time, and make our own lunches. We’ve had to find something to do if we get bored. I think a lot of us have remembered how fun doing simple things can be, and how much we love the people we live with.
There are many lessons that we can learn if we remember the lessons from our childhoods. They will be very helpful – critical even – for our life in “the new normal”. Here are some I think we should start with.
Important Life Lessons Learned from Childhood
Treat everyone close to you as if they might have cooties. They might.
Don’t let the people close to you breathe your air. It’s yours and your little sister can’t have it.
You can talk to strangers but don’t get close enough to them that they might grab you. Or give you cooties.
Smile with your whole face.
Enjoy every time you get to wear a mask by imagining every day is Halloween. Go up to people and say: “Trick or Treat” and see how much candy you can come home with.
Treat your money like a stingy allowance your parents give you. Remind yourself that your parents only give you an allowance so you can “learn how to take care of your money”. Remember, you won’t get any more until next week, so save it up for something you really, really, really want.
Save whatever you don’t spend of your allowance, along with any loose change you find on the sidewalk or in the couch where your dad usually sits. Keep it at home in a jar on your dresser. It will earn at least as much there as it is earning right now invested in the stock market.
Make good choices. You almost always have a choice. Some are good, some are better, and some are best. Take time to make the best ones.
It is better to be safe than sorry.
Plan for the worst, hope for the best.
Spend every free moment playing.
Get your work done fast, so you have more play time.
Go outside and play.
You have to include everyone and let everyone play, even if you don’t like them.
Everyone gets to be on a team.
It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you’ve played the game.
Clean your plate. There’s going to be a lot more starving children “over there”. Think of them and finish everything on your plate. Which will remind you to not let your eyes be hungrier than your stomach. Take only what you can (should) eat.
Eat your vegetables.
Don’t chew with your mouth open. It’s disgusting (and spreads viruses).
Clean your hands. You actually DO know now where they’ve been. Wash them. A lot.
Stop picking your nose. In fact, stop touching your face.
Practice makes, if not exactly perfect, at least makes you good enough to stay in the game. Keep practicing and you’ll get there.
You have to share. Period.
I call shotgun! (That has nothing to do with good lessons from childhood, I just wanted to call it first before we’re allowed to travel again.)
Turn the lights out when you leave the room, do you think I’m made of money?!
God helps the one who helps himself (and who helps others).
Honor your mother and father so you can live long on the earth.
Parents, as long as they live, will never stop being totally irritating for trying to tell their children how to live. We owe it to our parents to irritate them right back so that they know how to live.
Remember, our parents brought us into this world, and they can take us back out. Of course, now we know that we can take them out too, if we aren’t careful.
Be careful.
Do as I say, not as I do.
It is time for us, the “children” of the world to appreciate the lessons of the parents, and to do the right things they have tried to teach us to do (whether they actually did them themselves or not). We should all be grateful for what we learned as children and appreciate the life-lessons of our elders. We should grieve for all the people who didn’t have parents, or at least, have good parents, but all that means is that those of us who did have good parents, need to do the heavy lifting and the hard work. As the good parents told us, “we should know better”.
No matter who our parents were or are, we can try to believe that they tried to do their best with their children, and now we need to try to do our best for the future of our children, and our children’s children. It is a critical time for us to do much, much better. Better than our parents, but also better than we were all doing before this whole thing happened.
Whatever the unsettling, even catastrophic “thing” is that happens in our lives, our families, or our world, we need to remember and re- believe that human beings, like children, have an infinite capacity for creative do-overs.
Let’s call “do-overs”, okay, Kids?
Adult Friends of Mine Playing – 2016
We are a world-family, and if we didn’t know it before, we should recognize it now. We can do great things, if we all work together like a happy, hopeful band of children. Let’s begin to look at the world with the same eyes and hearts that children do when they are rebuilding a fort, singing rounds in the back of the car, going on a team scavenger hunt, making breakfast to surprise mom, working in the garage with dad, making mud pies in the yard, selling at a lemonade stand, playing hide and seek, or jump rope or hop-scotch, or doing any of those things we used to think were fun and important because we were doing them with people who were our friends and our family.
If we get our “inner-child” back on, we might find that the greatest games in this Game of Life, are played best, when we play nicely with others.
Let’s love each other as if every older person were our very own beloved parent and let’s love every younger person as if they were our very own beloved child.
Let’s act like children again in all the right ways.
And finally, the most important lesson of all that we can take away from this time, and that we need to believe as sincerely and as deeply as children do is:
You are the very, very, very best gift in the world. You are loved to infinity and beyond.
My son, Gordon and I playing, wearing noses he made for us
The Wonderful Thing About You, is You’re the Only One
By Jane Tawel
September 2019
I took a personality test today. Well, a pathology test they called it, which, I don’t know, sometimes in our modern era, personalities and pathologies seem sort of like the same thing. My results didn’t surprise me but I guess they sort of flummoxed the researchers (see below) and skewed the statistics, both results which definitely do fit my personality. Ha!
Here are my results:
MULTIPLE RESULTS: “You appear to have two or more equally prominent Pooh Pathologies. It is possible that you are an equal fit for all of those characters. On the other hand, it is also possible that you simply answered the questions in such a way that you ended up with tied results, even though, in reality, you do have a definite Pooh Pathology. Whether you really are an equal fit for all of these characters, or you just happened to get an equal score on all of them, we are unable to say; we are therefore also unable to give you a more personalized description. But you can consult the chart above to see which of the characters you scored the strongest on.”
Well, I could have saved everyone some time, because I really didn’t need to consult this particular chart. I have already scored myself and all my family members, years ago, on my own personal Winnie The Pooh Personality Test.
I don’t put much stock in either tests or statistics, but I had to take this silly test because any thing remotely related to brilliant worldviews, psychological delvings, and thematic explorations by great artists, like A.A. Milne, are to me, like drawing a magnet across the face of an old Wooly Willy Toy.
My children and I loved the “Winnie-the-Pooh” books and every single one of us had (and have) Pooh character names. I even had a Winnie the Pooh poem read at my wedding. It was called “Us Two” and my grandfather (and we could never be sure with Grandpa if he was being serious or making a joke) asked out-loud during the service why my sister was reading a poem about “poo”.
The reasons for each of my family member’s nicknames, seem obvious to me, but then, it’s my story melding with Milne’s, much as Milne melded his adult-view stories with his own son’s children’s tales. My husband, even before our wedding, has been long my own “Winnie the Pooh”. My eldest daughter, dubbed herself “Tigger” early on. We still call my second daughter,“Roo” to the point that some people think it is her birth name. When my third daughter came along, she was our own cute little, anxious sounding, “Piglet”; and my son, well, I must admit there are many days he sounds exactly like his nickname implies, as the grumpy, pessimistic “Eeyore”. As the best mate of the silly ‘ole bear and the mother-figure to my children, I have had a role with many of the same skill sets and jobs as Christopher Robin. And just like Christopher Robin, as my children have grown up and left my story to start epic tales of their own, it has been hard for me to grow-up and leave my stories with them and my best-est, most beloved playmates behind, and find another “me” to be. Maybe that is why this test failed to tell me who I am. I am not sure myself who I am yet, in this new chapter.
It is funny how all the names rather suited all of us Tawels, though I do not think any of my family members have pathologies. Tendencies though… well, it is rather flukey how the nicknames fit a bit of the person each of us is. A.A. Milne in “The Winnie-the-Pooh” stories, was definitely onto something about adults versus children. But Milne also knew that adults and children could have so much more in common, if only the adults had a bit more imagination and the children had a bit more say. Milne recognized that adults always have the same fears and foibles that children do and that children have the same abilities and wisdom that adults do. It’s just that real children, no matter how old, know how to laugh at themselves and how to admit they are wrong so they can try again. Adults, no matter how young, forget, but children know that there will always be enough if we share, and that the world needs more celebrations than it needs more money. Children know that intelligence without humility is a sure way to end up lost and rambling alone in “The Scary Woods”. Children know that being “stuffed” full, but without empathy, makes one an animal and a pretend animal, at that. Children know that if you go through life without love, the Heffalumps just might catch up to you. The great thing about Milne’s characters is that each was just a little part of the great big “whole” that we call being a complete human being. We all have a bit of Tigger and Eeyore and Christopher Robin and Pooh in us. And to play along with my Grandpa’s pun, we would all get along much better if we could just accept that everyone has Pooh.
But as Tigger said of himself, The wonderful thing about my own loved and very individual family members, Tigger and Roo, and Piglet and Pooh, and me and Eeyore, is each individualistic one of us is “the only one”. And today, although according to the test, I may not have a discernible Pooh Pathology and though I may have multiple personalities, each struggling within me and wondering which of them I’ll choose to manifest today; the wonderful thing about me is, I’m the only one.
Be the you, you are today. Not the “best” you; not the “favorite” you, not the “dream” you, just “The You” that makes this great big “Hundred Acre Forest” of a world something that needs you at the table. After all, the wonderful thing about you is, you are the only one.
Going to the Los Angeles County Fair always gives me a giggling “superiority complex” when I compare it to the “real” fairs of the Midwest I grew up going to.
I will never forget the first time I took my four young kids to the L.A. Fair. They had already been to our Indiana Kosciusko County Fair by then. Our Kosciusko Co. fair is small potatoes compared to the gigantic, wondrous, and multitudinous State Fairs of the Midwestern States, but it’s still a real fair, with barns of competing 4H entries, with scores of animal and crafts barns, and a midway to rival the Mouse’s, and all that. The first time that I, with great excitement, took my young kids to the L.A. fair, I remember so clearly that we had been strolling around a while and my children were already hot, and sweaty, and cranky, and hating the whole “fun” day. And of course, my kids were kinda hating me by then for “forcing” them to go to a Fair. You aren’t laughing if you have never been a parent of young kids, and you aren’t laughing if you currently are parenting young children whom you are forcing fun things on, like going to fairs and amusement parks. BUT if you once upon a time were a parent of young kids, and you have survived them, then you are laughing with recognition at how much your kids once “hated” you for the fun things you took them to.
So the first time I took my four young children to the L.A. Fair, I finally walked up to and asked one of the Los Angeles Fair workers, “Where are all the animals?”
I was standing in what I thought was a little kiddie petting zoo area and I had been looking for the gigantic row upon row of horse and cow and sheep barns. And this young worker guy looked at me like I was crazy and pointed to the four small pens of dejected looking guinea pigs, the three pens of wilting in the heat rabbits, and the five scrawny goats and two sarcastic looking cows in a small enclosure, and he said as if speaking to a blind idiot, “They’re right there”.
If you have been to a “real” fair, you’ll understand my concerned amusement.
Yesterday my hubby, Raoul, and I trudged off in typical 95-degree SoCal-in-September weather, knowing what we were in for, and we still had a blast. We don’t eat the unbelievably expensive and completely always deep-fried foods (sorry all you deep-fried pickle and Snickers lovers); and we don’t ride the rides. But we love sitting in the blazing September heat and being amazed at the talent apparent in the little shows put on in cramped arenas by the jugglers and gymnasts and yesterday, by this super delightful Wild Bill Hickok Western Show. We like petting the animals that they DO have, and seeing the cow milking demonstration; and we always have to see the pig race show where the audience members get to cheer for their side’s pig as it races against other pigs — Hilarious! We enjoy strolling through the crafts barn (Although I have a sneaky suspicion that the crafts are the exact same ones every year, dust-ily displayed year after year, pretending to be newly made by young and old crafters lurking throughout our megalopolis. I think they just switch up the winning ribbons). And of course, you can’t beat a fair for people watching, although almost everywhere in Los Angeles is ripe for that.
All in all, a summer fair is tradition. And whenever and if ever you can, traditions are worth keeping. We missed you at the Fair, yesterday, my kiddos, but Dad and I are keeping up those traditions for you, even the ones you hated.
At the Fair, my husband I strolled and talked about how much we miss being with our kids, all now adults, and how slightly weird it feels to do things sometimes, just us two; things that we used to do with (and for) them. But we also confirmed that we are deeply happy to have all that we have and for our children to have all that they have, including the memories we share. And that’s the same way I feel about the silly, funny, small potatoes Los Angeles County Fair. I’m truly glad to have the fair that I have.
So take that, Midwestern Mega-Fairs. A Fair by any name, is still sweet.
Thanks for another fun day, Los Angeles County Fair! And until next year…
***Verse 1 of these poems was published separately on February 10 under the title: “This Small Heartbeat”. These poems are for my thriving adult children.
A Mother’s Poems
By Jane Tawel
Verse 2- A Haiku
by Jane Tawel
February 11, 2019
Metaphors slide skew
When I try to write of you.
Only love will do.
Verse 3 – an Ode
Beyond and Above Aphrodite
by Jane Tawel
February 12, 2019
Now I, the geek,
Will mimic the Greek.
But Odes to love of children
Are false gilden, not real gold.
Or so I’m told.
I strive like Psyche
To see you, hidden from me.
And in the process, burn you
Then angst ‘bout why you flew.
Wondering why
And wandering nigh’
I hold coins in my mouth
To keep the devils out.
Yet before long,
My righteous strength is gone;
Opening forbidden boxes that you might see
A mother’s lasting love in me.
Ah, Aphrodite’s love of child can not compare
To the cupidity of my every prayer
That you, my dear divines,
My treasures, as long as sun does shine,
Will find more Love, than all I’d give
And find True Love within you lives.
Verse 4
This is a poem I wrote several years ago that I thought I’d end these with for Verse 4.
Whoa
March 11, 2015
By Jane Tawel
To Justine, Clarissa, Verity, and Gordon
Whoa, slow down, where you galloping off to?
A second ago, you were a useless collage of limbs.
I had to raise your hands to clean.
I had to raise your head to drink.
I had to ask you questions then answer them for you,
You, without a word, or sound that anybody knew.
But I.
Whoa! Take care! You’re running much too fast.
You’re going to slip and fall — I know.
I’ve seen it happen in my mind
A thousand times a day.
Did you hear me? Can you hear?
Have fun! Be safe! Too fast!
Rely on me and all my knowledge present, future, past.
Love you.
Whoa…slow down… I missed what you just said.
I see the buttons, levers, gears.
My fingers fail where yours speed on.
I hear the words that used to mean
A different thing. A different thing.
Did I already say that?
You tumble forward, catch yourself.
I used to catch you when you fell.
I’m still here watching, waiting– holding out my helpless hands.
I was rereading a Facebook post that was regurgitated automatically for me. This is done thanks to Facebook’s ability to cow-like keep my entire life in separate Facebook stomachs and then sometimes daily, vomit those posts back out onto my current Facebook page, where I can chew on them again, deciding if I would like to re-post and thereby re-swallow the relative truth of said regurgitated post from days gone by. Here is the post hurled out for me today from 2012 – Six years ago:
Thinking of my kids and their changing lives: Quote by Buechner:”You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you.”
Last week I took Gordon to sign up for classes at a college where he will transfer next Fall. This weekend I will watch Verity graduate from UCLA. Last week Raoul and I were talking and mostly listening, with Justine and Clarissa about their thriving careers. When any of my kids are speaking about their respective fields, knowledge, work-days, etc., I sit there nodding but inside I am thinking, “Well, dear Fruit of My Womb, I am delightedly and completely punch-drunk proud of you but I don’t understand your specialized field of expertise at all So I will let your words wash over my head and heart but Child of Mine, you may as well be speaking Croatian because I don’t understand a word of this”.
Wow — my kids! They truly do amaze me. These are the beings who, as Buechner says, actually were carried in my stomach (okay, technically womb). But Buechner is too miserly in his analysis. I think I carry each of my Beloveds in every single pore of mine. Sometimes, I worry and I carry them in what I assume must be my metaphoric sweat pores –sweating my stinking worry like a work horse. Sometimes I fear for my children, who are never really completely adults in a mom’s heart. Fearing for them is when I carry thoughts of my kids in the cow-like stomach that is ready to vomit the fears out, knowing I will just regurgitate the anxieties in order to cow-like chew on the cuds of those fears again tomorrow.
But when you really, really love someone, you are, like Buechner says, not only aware of what the world holds for them but you are holding the world of them within you. I hold my children in my Buechner-esque stomach like a delicious warm meal that never gives me a love-stomach upset, no matter how full I am. I am daily filled by the world I carry inside of me – a whole world of love and admiration and thankfulness for my children’s and my husband, their father’s, continued presence in memory and reality in my heart, mind, limbs, and stomach. And once you have this kind of love-feast, well, then you tend to find gleanings of it in whatever field you roam. I have found it in my classes of students in loving learning together, in my friends in shared meals together; and even occasionally in a random snack of mutual understanding with a stranger.
Yesterday I stood in line at Target, a place I used to haul those four kids of mine to; and a mom of two had her little baby in one of the wraps that I used to attach my own babies with, tight to my chest. The baby was making that lamb-like crying only a brand-new minted infant makes. You know, that tremulous bleating that hits a new parent in the solar plexus. It is the cry an infant makes against an incomprehensible injustice. It is a sound that seems both so new and so old. It is the deep trembling wail dug deep from the depths of the world and raised up into the lungs of a brand new human being. And like old human beings tend to do, I turned to the new mom behind me smiling and said, “Love every minute of that sound. Someday, like I, believe it or not, you will miss it.” And that mom smiled back and for a brief instant, she and I were united in the warm love that understanding can fill even total strangers with, like shared repast fills stomachs. The baby kept bleating and the mom continued her traditional mom side-to-side dance to quiet the little baby wrapped tight against her stomach.
And I turned back to wait in line and even though no one could feel it but me, I still held in memory my little babies, crying and gurgling and cooing, wrapped against my memory-stomach. As those babies of mine go forth into the world, they are out there bleating new cries against the injustices still being dug from deep in the world. And I listen when my children let me, to their cries of joy and sorrow, their gurglings of gain and loss, their cooings with energy and weariness. And I hold those grown-up children of mine so very, very close to my heart.
Sometimes, now, when no one knows, and I am out there living in my world – maybe when I am lying awake at night, or standing in line somewhere; or when I am walking the old walks I used to take with my kiddos; remembering holding two of them by their hands, with one strapped on my back near my heart, and one wrapped tight against my stomach – Sometimes then, I pull up a memory from when we were all young together, my four children and I, and I chew on that memory like a cow with her cud.
AH! and my stomach is full. And my heart is fuller. And I am grateful for the meals of memory and satisfied with the feast of this life. And once again, I remind myself, that thanks to those I have loved, a whole world lives inside me.
Jane Tawel 