Part 2: I know you are, but what am I?
You’re just
a big, fat, lying, stinky butt-head!
I know you
are, but what am I?
I find that
kids are just a lot smarter than we give them credit for.
One of my
favorite self-help books is The Four Agreements by don Miguel Ruiz. It purports to be a book of Toltec
wisdom. I have no idea if it’s actually
Toltec or not, and frankly I don’t care if it was handed down by aliens from
Rigel 7. It’s good stuff and I’m
consistently amazed how often I refer to the Agreements. I won’t give away all the good stuff here
(because really, you should just read it for yourself), but the gist of the
book is four pretty simple statements:
The first
one is “Be Impeccable With Your Word”.
Second, “Don’t
Assume”
Third, “Don’t
Take Anything Personally”
Fourth, “Always
Do Your Best”
In
practice, one of the take-away messages from combining these four Agreements is,
“Don’t let your internal poisonous feelings about yourself spill over to your
interactions with others. In fact, while
you’re at it, stop drinking all that poison. It’s going to make you sick.”
Pretty
simple stuff, right?
Maybe not
so much. At least not for me. I don’t know about the rest of you, but
self-loathing? It’s an active hobby for
me. I can sing you an album of my greatest
hits entitled, Reasons I Hate Me, including Bonehead Things I’ve Done that I’m Still
Embarrassed About, 104 Reasons I Hate My Thighs, I’m Not Smart Enough For This
Job, Sweet Resentment, I Know You’re All Laughing Behind My Back, and My
Parents Are Secretly Ashamed Of Me.
Oh, you
have that album, too? How about that?
OK, so here’s
the really ugly thing I learned about me while learning to parent Daisy
Mae: Every time I put her down, every
time I told her she was lazy, disrespectful, slobby, bitchy. Every time I insisted that she should comply,
“BECAUSE I SAID SO”. Every time I
imposed a completely ludicrous, arbitrary or unreasonable constraint on her
time and energy, it was actually less about her and more about my own feelings
of insecurity. Every time my voice
echoed so loudly in my ears that I couldn’t hear her, it was actually the voice
of my own self-loathing making all that noise.
Now, let’s
be honest. Teenagers are lazy, disrespectful,
slobby and bitchy. And they smell funny (true story). But really? That’s their problem. And Daisy Mae is actually
smart enough to know what she’s doing. In
fact, when she’s being bitchy and disrespectful, it’s because her self-loathing
Greatest Hits are playing in her own head. The sad reality is that a lot of kids in foster care have the live, platinum, double album of self-loathing greatest hits. So what the heck do I gain by listening to her album, much less singing along?
As a
parent, I became a lot happier when I recognized my own insecurities and
baggage and learned to turn them off when dealing with Daisy Mae. What does
that let me do? It lets me be more
objective in qualifying rules and consequences.
It lets me not take it personally when rules get violated. It lets me not drink poison when she hands it
to me. (Oh yeah, that poison thing? It goes both ways) and it lets me hear her
out on issues of rules and conduct (hers and mine) without feeling threatened. Oh, and it lets me teach her some new songs, like Wow, You Are So Good At Teaching Others, I Love Your Sense Of Style, That Dinner Was Wonderful, and You're Going To Be Remarkable! Am I perfect at it? Not by a long shot. But it’s better that it was around our place, and the less I let my insecurities and self-loathing cloud my interactions, the less she does as well.
And here’s
the bonus: In not sharing my self-loathing greatest hits with her, I find that my own album plays at a much lower volume than it used to. Who knows? Maybe I can
stomp on that Greatest Hits album one of these days. (Yeah; not holding my
breath on that one.)
You’re a
beautiful, successful person.
I know you
are, but what am I?