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home and greet her with, "Congratulations! Your dad and I are very proud of your accomplishment, but could you try to tone it down in class?"
The same was true of our younger daughter. Like her sister, she is a lovely, bright, articulate and friendly child. She also treats the floor of her room and the bathroom as a closet, which has provoked me to say on more than one occasion, "Yes, that project is great, but clean up your room!"
I've noticed that other parents do the same thing. "Our whole family was together for Christmas, but Kyle skipped out early to play his new computer game." "The hockey team won, but Mike should have made that last goal." "Amy's the homecoming queen, but now she wants two hundred dollars to buy a new dress and shoes."
But, but, but.
Instead, what I learned from my mother is that if you really want love to flow to your children, start thinking "and, and, and . . ." instead.
For example: "Our whole family was together for Christmas dinner, and Kyle mastered his new computer game before the night was through." "The hockey team won, and Mike did his best the whole game."
"Amy's the homecoming queen, and she's going to look gorgeous!"
The fact is that "but" feels bad"and" feels good. And when it comes to our children, feeling good is definitely the way to go. When they feel good about themselves and what they' re doing, they do more of it, building their self-confidence, their judgment and their harmonious connections to others. When everything they say, think or do is qualified or put down in some way, their joy sours and their anger soars.
This is not to say that children don't need or won't respond to their parents' expectations. They do and they
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will, regardless of whether those expectations are good or bad. When those expectations are consistently bright and positive and then are taught, modeled and expressed, amazing things happen. "I see you made a mistake. And I know you are intelligent enough to figure out what you did wrong and make a better decision next time." Or, "You've been spending hours on that project, and I'd love to have you explain it to me." Or, "We work hard for our money, and I know you can help figure out a way to pay for what you want."
It's not enough just to say we love our children. In a time when frustration has grown fierce, we can no longer afford to limit love's expression. If we want to tone down the sound of violence in our society, we're going to have to turn up the volume on noticing, praising, guiding and participating in what is right with our children.
"No more buts!" is a clarion call for joy. It's also a challenge, the opportunity fresh before us every day to put our attention on what is good and promising about our children, and to believe with all our hearts that they will eventually be able to see the same in us and the people with whom they will ultimately live, work and serve.
And if I ever forget, I have my mother's note to remind me.
Robin L. Silverman
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5
INSIGHTS AND LESSONS
Experience is a hard teacher, because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards.
Vernon Saunders' Law
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The Day at the Beach
Put your troubles in a pocket with a hole in it.
Old Postcard
Not long ago, I came to one of those bleak periods that many of us encounter from time to time, a sudden drastic dip in the graph of living when everything goes stale and flat, energy wanes, enthusiasm dies. The effect on my work was frightening. Every morning I clenched my teeth and muttered: ''Today life will take on some of its old meaning. You've got to break through this thing. You've got to."
But the barren days dragged on, and the paralysis grew worse. The time came when I knew I needed help.
The man I turned to was a doctor. Not a psychiatrist, just a doctor. He was older than I, and under his surface gruffness lay great wisdom and experience. "I don't know what's wrong," I told him miserably, "but I just seem to have come to a dead end. Can you help me?"
"I don't know," he said slowly. He made a tent of his fingers, and gazed at me thoughtfully for a long while. Then, abruptly, he asked, "Where were you happiest as a child?"
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"As a child?" I echoed. "Why, at the beach, I suppose. We had a summer cottage there. We all loved it."
He looked out the window and watched the October leaves sifting down. "Are you capable of following instructions for a single day?"
"I think so," I said, ready to try anything.
"All right. Here's what I want you to do."
He told me to drive to the beach alone the following morning, arriving not later than nine o'clock. I could take some lunch, but I was not to read, write, listen to the radio or talk to anyone. "In addition," he said, "I'll give you a prescription to be taken every three hours."
He tore off four prescription blanks, wrote a few words on each, folded them, numbered them and handed them to me. "Take these at nine, twelve, three and six."
"Are you serious?" I asked.
He gave me a short honk of laughter. "You won't think I'm joking when you get my bill!"
The next morning, with little faith, I drove to the beach. It was lonely, all right. A northeaster was blowing; the sea looked gray and angry. I sat in the car, the whole day stretching emptily before me. Then I took out the first of the folded slips of paper. On it was written: Listen carefully.
I stared at the two words. Why, I thought, the man must be mad. He had ruled out music and newscasts and human conversation. What else was there?
I raised my head and listened. There were no sounds but the steady roar of the sea, the croaking cry of a gull, the drone of some aircraft overhead. All these sounds were familiar.
I got out of the car. A gust of wind slammed the door with a sudden clap of sound. Was I supposed, I asked myself, to listen carefully to things like that?
I climbed a dune and looked out over the deserted beach. Here the sea bellowed so loudly that all other
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sounds were lost. And yet, I thought suddenly, there must be sounds beneath soundsthe soft rasp of drifting sand, the tiny wind-whisperings in the dune grassesif the listener got close enough to hear them.
Impulsively, I ducked down and, feeling fairly ridiculous, thrust my head into a clump of seaweed. Here I made a discovery: If you listen intently, there is a fractional moment in which everything pauses, waiting. In that instant of stillness, the racing thoughts halt. The mind rests.
I went back to the car and slid behind the wheel. Listen carefully. As I listened again to the deep growl of the sea, I found myself thinking about the white-fanged fury of its storms. Then I realized I was thinking of things bigger than myselfand there was relief in that.
Even so, the morning passed slowly. The habit of hurling myself at a problem was so strong that I felt lost without it.
By noon the wind had swept the clouds out of the sky, and the sea had a hard, polished and merry sparkle. I unfolded the second "prescription." And again I sat there, half-amused and half-exasperated. Three words this time: Try reaching back.
Back to what? To the past, obviously. But why, when all my worries concerned the present or the future?
I left the car and started tramping reflectively along the dunes. The doctor had sent me to the beach because it was a place of happy memories. Maybe that was what I was supposed to reach forthe wealth of happiness that lay half-forgotten behind me.
I decided to work on these vague impressions as a painter would, retouching the colors, strengthening the outlines. I would choose specific incidents and recapture as many details as possible. I would visualize people complete with dress and gestures. I would listen (carefully) for the exact sound of their voices, the echo of their laughter.
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The tide was going out now, but there was still thunder in the surf. So I chose to go back twenty years to the last fishing trip I made with my younger brother. He had died during
World War II, but I found that if I closed my eyes and really tried, I could see him with amazing vividness, even the humor and eagerness in his eyes.
In fact, I saw it all: the ivory scimitar of beach where we fished, the eastern sky smeared with sunrise, the great rollers creaming in, stately and slow. I felt the backwash swirl warm around my knees, saw the sudden arc of my brother's rod as he struck a fish, heard his exultant yell. Piece by piece I rebuilt it, clear and unchanged under the transparent varnish of time. Then it was gone.
I sat up slowly. Try reaching back. Happy people were usually assured, confident people. If, then, you deliberately reached back and touched happiness, might there not be released little flashes of power, tiny sources of strength?
This second period of the day went more quickly. As the sun began its long slant down the sky, my mind ranged eagerly through the past, reliving some episodes, uncovering others that had been completely forgotten. Across all the years, I remembered events, and knew from the sudden glow of warmth that no kindness is ever wasted, or ever completely lost.
By three o'clock the tide was out and the sound of the waves was only a rhythmic whisper, like a giant breathing. I stayed in my sandy nest, feeling relaxed and contentand a little complacent. The doctor's prescriptions, I thought, were easy to take.
But I was not prepared for the next one. This time the three words were not a gentle suggestion. They sounded more like a command. Reexamine your motives.
My first reaction was purely defensive. There's nothing wrong with my motives, I said to myself. I want to be successfulwho doesn't? I want to have a certain amount of recognition,
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but so does everybody. I want more security than I've gotand why not?
Maybe, said a small voice somewhere inside my head, those motives aren't good enough. Maybe that's the reason the wheels have stopped going around.
I picked up a handful of sand and let it stream between my fingers. In the past, whenever my work went well there had always been something spontaneous about it, something uncontrived, something free. Lately it had been calculated, competentand dead. Why? Because I had been looking past the job itself to the rewards I hoped it would bring. The work had ceased to be an end in itself; it had become a means to make money, pay bills. The sense of giving something, of helping people, of making a contribution, had been lost in a frantic clutch of security.
In a flash of certainty, I saw that if one's motives are wrong, nothing can be right. It makes no difference whether you are a mailman, a hairdresser, an insurance salesman, a stay-at-home mom or dadwhatever. As long as you feel you are serving others, you do the job well. When you are concerned only with helping yourself, you do it less well. This is a law as inexorable as gravity.
For a long time, I sat there. Far out on the bar I heard the murmur of the surf change to a hollow roar as the tide turned. Behind me the spears of light were almost horizontal. My time at the beach had almost run out, and I felt a grudging admiration for the doctor and the "prescriptions" he had so casually and cunningly devised. I saw, now, that in them was a therapeutic progression that might well be valuable to anyone facing any difficulty.
Listen carefully: To calm a frantic mind, slow it down, shift the focus from inner problems to outer things.
Try reaching back: Since the human mind can hold but one idea at a time, you blot out present worry when you touch the happiness of the past.
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Reexamine your motives: This was the hard core of the "treatment." This challenge was to reappraise, to bring one's motives into alignment with one's capabilities and conscience. But the mind must be clear and receptive to do thishence the six hours of quiet that went before.
The western sky was a blaze of crimson as I took out the last slip of paper. Six words this time. I walked slowly out on the beach. A few yards below the high-water mark I stopped and read the words again: Write your troubles on the sand.
I let the paper blow away, reached down and picked up a fragment of shell. Kneeling there under the vault of the sky, I wrote several words on the sand, one above the other. Then I walked away, and I did not look back. I had written my troubles on the sand. And the tide was coming in.
Arthur Gordon
Submitted by Wayne W. Hinckley
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A Lesson in Cloud Recognition
It had been another long week of conducting training sessions throughout the country. I generally like to relax on the flight home, do some easy reading, maybe even close my eyes for a few minutes. I try to be open to whatever does happen, though. I usually say a little prayer: Whoever is supposed to sit next to me, let it be so, and help me be open to that.
On this particular day, I boarded the plane and noticed a young boy, around eight years old, sitting in the window seat next to mine. I love kids. However, I was tired. My first instinct was, Oh boy, I'm not sure about this. Trying my best to be friendly, I said "Hello" and introduced myself. He told me his name was Bradley. We struck up a conversation and, within minutes, he took me into his confidence, saying, "This is the first time I have ever been on a plane. I'm a little bit nervous."
He told me that he and his family had driven to see his cousins, and that he got to stay longer after his family had returned home. Now he was flying home, all by himself.
"Flying is a piece of cake," I tried to reassure him. "It is one of the easiest things you'll ever do." I paused, thinking for a moment, and then asked him, "Have you ever been on a roller coaster?"
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"I love roller coasters!"
"Do you ride them without hands?"
"Oh, yeah, I love to." He giggled. I acted as if I were horrified.
"Do you ever ride in the front?" I asked with a pretense of fear on my face.
"Yeah, I try to get in the front seat every time!"
"And you're not afraid of that?"
He shook his head no, clearly sensing that he was now one up on me.
"Well, this flight will be nothing compared to that. I won't even ride roller coasters, and I'm not the least bit afraid to fly."
A smile edged its way onto his face, "Is that right?" I could see that he was starting to think that maybe he was brave after all.
The plane began to taxi down the runway. As we ascended, he looked out the window and began describing with great excitement everything he was experiencing. He commented on the cloud formations, and the pictures they seemed to paint in the sky. "This cloud looks like a butterfly, and that one looks like a horse!"
Suddenly, I saw this flight through the eyes of an eight-year-old boy. It was as if it were the first time that I had ever flown. Later Bradley asked me what I did for a living. I told him about the training that I conduct and mentioned that I also do radio and television commercials.
His eyes lit up. "My sister and I did a television commercial once."
"You did? What was that like for you?"
He said that it was very exciting for them. Then he told me that he needed to go to the bathroom.
I stood up to let him out into the aisle. It was then that I noticed the braces on his legs. Bradley slowly made his way down to the bathroom and back. When he sat back
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down, he explained, "I have muscular dystrophy. My sister has it tooshe's in a wheelchair now. That's why we did that commercial. We were poster children for muscular dystrophy."
As we began our descent, he looked over, smiled, and spoke in a hushed, almost embarrassed voice, "You know, I was really worried about who would sit next to me on the plane. I was afraid it would be someone crabby who didn't want to talk with me. I'm so glad I sat next to you."
Chicken Soup for the Unsinkable Soul Page 16