Our Children Are Counting On Us

"Half the world hates

What half the world does every day
Half the world waits
While half gets on with it anyway..."

––Rush, Half the World 

The hopeful yet trite saying that most people are good must still be somewhat true, otherwise half of us would always be hating the other half. 

[Pause] 

Maybe that's not fair, to think that half of America, or half the world, hates the other half. That's an over-simplified view of the human experience, even in the realities of today. However, the history of humankind has shown us again and again how easily others are marginalized and trampled underfoot, usually by those in power and the way the wind blows. Plus, our biological human history has been a continuous struggle between the want of experiencing immediate and irrational gratification and self-preservation, and the painful emotional dissonance of rational evolution. 

In other words, we're mostly feeling beings who sometimes think, no matter the amazing human accomplishments throughout history. I certainly raise my hand in full admittance here. 

As a species, we have evolved rationally, ethically, and spiritually, and every generation tests this progress by demanding evidence and pointing out how fallible we are. My wife Amy and I are experiencing that right now with both our teen daughters. Two questioning kids on their own paths to independence and their own identities who grapple with the human-condition realities of today. 

Our oldest Beatrice currently has an honors World History course that we help quiz her on and we always get the tough ethical questions of why. They're studying World War II now, the Holocaust, and development of the atomic bombs the U.S. dropped on Japan to attempt to end the war. Why were over six million Jewish people exterminated? Why did we kill over 200,000 people with the atomic bombs?

And the list of questions goes on and on. Just like I remember doing when I was a teenager. All the hard questions, all the time, and never feeling satisfied with the answers I received. "Most people are good, and sometimes we do bad things, and God forgives us all." 

In my lifetime since, I've always wanted to believe that we've evolved ethically and spiritually, but over time, especially today, I don't think I've ever seen so many poor male and female role models in government leadership, business leadership, and everyday personal leadership who fully embrace, justify, and normalize misogyny, harassment, sexual assault, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, corruption, grift, hate, and violence. 

And I go back many decades now. These detrimental ideals are embraced, then denied, and then forgiven. But they never go away. The fragmented and biased media coverage hasn't helped. The constant misinformation hasn't helped (artificial intelligence and automation has fueled this, too). Finding God hasn't helped either and has perpetuated more hate than love. And the questions from our children pile up. 

Author James Baldwin wrote, "I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain." That's why I recommend more study of inclusive empathy, understanding, and love, to be empathic allies, but that would mean folks would have to deal with their pain, the pain of why we hate and what we have to give up and give in to do that, and again, human biology fights that tooth and nail. 

Amy and I agree we've been judgmental about others and about current events we've discussed in front of our children, about how we see the world and the poor role models around us (and the good ones too), but it's never done out of malice. Anger and frustration sometimes, but never malice. This is why we've worked on as adults and parents is finding joy in the success of others, of those overcoming obstacles and improving their lives and mental health, and more, and how we can help or support their success. In other words, what it's like to have empathy and understanding where others are at, and why they are where they're at. Something our teens remind us of every single day with their adult commentaries. 

Blessings to all those poor role models out there in the world today. I hope some of them can turn it around, for the sake of all our children and grandchildren, and especially for the sake of their own children and grandchildren. 

Because think about what all the children and grandchildren see and hear and what it does to them, how it taints their perception of others and the world. We can choose to love and understand, or we can choose to hate and minimize. Of course it's not a simple dichotomy; human experience is definitely more complex than we acknowledge and the gradations of good and bad are gray at best sometimes. Again, we're mostly feeling beings who sometimes think, so let's "get on with it anyway" and think more about how we're feeling, why we're feeling, and what to do about it that's inclusive for everyone. 

Amy and I believe we can be better, and we can do better. All our children and grandchildren are counting on us. 

The Aggregate Power of Our Safety Plans

“All this time we're hoping and praying we all might learn, while a billion other teachers are teaching them how to burn…” —Rush, Peaceable Kingdom

There are no absolutes. There is no black and white. There are only filtered perceptions and reactions to life experience, the shadows at dusk of what is truly right and wrong.

Until I was nine and my sister seven, we lived with an alcoholic who year after year escalated violence against our mother. Drunken rage drove our birth father to blame her for his self-hatred, and he'd berate her, and he'd beat her, and then self-loathing would spiral him into dysfunctional regret.

That regret led him to always say how sorry he was, and how much he loved us, and how much he loved her. The holidays were the times when the most bittersweet poignancy welled up in his eyes, and ours, with his signature Dorothy phrase, "There's no place like home."

I always want to believe that. To believe that he really meant it, that he'd truly rehabilitate and he'd stop hurting her and we'd all go back to being a loving family. But he didn't. And then we left.

Right after that we experienced a whole other level of dangerous family dysfunction, and yet I always wanted to believe that it would be okay. Hope coursed through me as if hit by lightening (and it still does). We had some family and friend intervention and help through these experiences, and our mother did her best to care for us, but until I was nearly 13, life was far from being a safe family haven. For at least two decades after that I felt helpless and I channeled my impotent rage into depression and unhealthy relationships as an adult.

Thankfully, our girls haven't and won't experience this, since we have everything to do with it. And many other people don't experience this either (although what's reported versus what's not is telling -- God bless those who have experienced it). And although today most of us don't experience other kinds violence -- especially terrorism and war -- it's all around us and being transmitted to us via traditional media and social media, all with the competing slants and filtered perceptions.

Because of what's happened of late in Beruit and Paris, I've thought about how we'll respond to our girls if (and when -- if not now, in the future) they ask about what happened.

Prior to taking Beatrice and Bryce to New York City earlier this year, the Mama read the girls the story about the Man on the Wire, Philippe Petit's 1974 high-wire walk between the Twin Towers of New York's World Trade Center. She told them we weren't going to see the buildings because they weren't there anymore. The "whys" ensued and then the Mama proceeded to tell them there were bad men who didn't like the buildings and who brought them down.

The same story was repeated when we visited the 9/11 Memorial Museum. The Mama and I went on solo tours, but we didn't bring the girls through the whole thing together. They did see some of the damage on display, however. But then, we were both overwhelmed and we had to quell our own emotions from our 9/11 memories.

Why did we do that? Why didn't we share them and the why of emotion with the girls? How do you explain that to a four and six-year-old? And unless they experienced it directly, why would you explain it to them in any greater detail?

That answer has been clear to us now more than ever because my wife is a Kidpower instructor. Kidpower is a global nonprofit leader in personal safety and violence prevention education. Instead of using fear to teach about violence prevention, the Kidpower Method makes it fun to learn to be safe, building habits that can increase the safety of young people and adults alike and that can last a lifetime.

Talking about worries and fears creates unnecessary anxiety without making kids safer. According to the Kidpower program, protecting kids from adult feelings helps to reduce anxiety and increase competence. You do what you can to protect children from hearing details, speculation, and any and all media coverage as much as possible.

But when you do have to explain some tragedy to your children, instead of trying to keep them completely insulted and inside, for fear of what may or may not happen, talk about your family safety plan, and take the time to make safety plans and to discuss, review, and practice safety skills with your children and teens if you don't already have one.

You should always project calm and confidence as the adults in charge, and this will help your kids, too. For example, Kidpower references studies that show even during wartime when people went into shelters from the bombing, the children were far better off (less traumatized) in the shelters where adults were singing and being positive that they would all get through this, than in those where the adults were acting and projecting fear. In fact, read this column about singing in an Israeli bomb shelter.

Then go out into the world with your children and help teach them so that they can practice making safe choices together without radical judgement. There are just too many teaching otherwise.

Again, there are no absolutes. There is no black and white. And yet, it's unfortunately always easier for us to take sides and cry out in the wilderness our subjective takes on justice and injustice. The nuanced complexity of family violence, global violence and extremist terrorism is barely accessible to learned adults much less children and teenagers.

So instead let's stand together through awareness and vigilance while making our own safety plans, knowing that we're all susceptible to violent tragedy. Many of us will go through our lives unscathed, just as hopefully many of our children and children's children will as well, but together the aggregate power of our safety plans may just change the world.