Funny, how I can see now that I never progressed beyond that cold screen door.
Being grown, and full size, but as an adult always feeling not a part of the group.
Once I realized, and owned, being stuck at that screen door, it happened, the chains came off… “Davey-Do” stepped away from the door and looked to “me” to help him move forward, and grow up.
But how do you teach a kid that…
- He has more than one emotion
- That he’ll have to learn to label them separately
- And then how to “process” or “work through” them??? So that… he can be a mature man someday.
They really need to teach this stuff in school, like a real class… not only when you become a problem child… and have to take court ordered therapy.
As I work with “Davey-Do”, already a week into the new year, my stomach knots have loosened, and when they do tense up I know I’m close to something that we really need to work through.
The tactic?
I take the same tone that I did with my oldest son, when he was entering high school, looking to “make” the baseball team.
I told him, “This will sound weird, but baseball is a funny game, I’m not going to tell you that you gotta be #1.”
What do you mean?
“Well, in baseball, every year, some kid will have the year of his life, especially hitting.”
What’s the goal then?
“Top three. Do the work that will keep you in the top three. And don’t worry about the kid that has a great year, experience shows, he won’t even be around next year, I always found it odd that kids in little league who had a great year one year… wouldn’t even come back the next year, odd, isn’t it?”
And as my son grew through high school… that advice came true.
He was top three through 3 years… and being the game of baseball… and baseball loving persistent, dedicated effort… he found himself on top his senior year and looking at playing college ball.
We had to have that talk more than once.
But as I remembered it I thought, “Those are the conversations I was never able to have myself.”
So that is exactly how I talk to “Davey-Do” as we move throughout our day.
For example: The other night “the little guy” had an anger flare up at work. I had to explain to him… 1. He really wasn’t angry, he was feeling hurt, because everything was left “empty” when he arrived at work, and he wondered, “why do they do that to me?”; and 2. As a man, a man has a job to do, and he just “does it”, to the best of his ability, getting angry about it is a waste of time and energy, and he learned his personal character, now, is one of being a person who “fills things up.” Whether that’s changing out the garbage, reloading daily supplies, doing an extra bit of the heavy work, or ministering to a person that you notice is having some type of bad day… trying to leave everything full, for the next guy.
I had to tell him, “It’s the grown up thing to do. Even though a lot of grown ups do not act that way.”
Now here is where, in the past, I would get shot down.
I had other questions, as does “Davey-Do”.
He asked, “But when is it my turn? When do I get to be filled up? when does someone think about me?”
Smart kid.
So we talked about The Stoic Philosophy point of “external things do not control our internal emotions”.
Our discussion centered around the fact that we can’t control other people and their actions; we can only control how we react to external actions; we are not perturbed if we come into work facing a mess; we do not get perturbed if someone else starts to complain about how others do it; we are learning how a mature man looks at the world at large understanding how people are… and not being surprised when people do what people do.
“What then if they grow angry, wilt thou be angry too? Wilt thou not go on with composure… just so then in this life also remember that every duty is made up of certain parts. These it is thy duty to observe and without being disturbed or showing anger towards those who are angry with thee…” ~ Marcus Aureilus/Meditations
I came to appreciate this Proverb, once I learned it…
“Better a patient man than a warrior, a man who controls his temper than one who takes a city.”
~ Proverbs 16:32/NIV
I think “Davey-Do” got something out of that discussion. I caught him watching people a little different after that… along with sizing up his own emotional reactions when he had to “refill everything”… again!
Be honest with yourself… do you fill it up? Or do you leave it empty?
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