Goodness

I actually wrote this several years ago, but the opening paragraph was the inspiration for the name of this blog, so I thought I'd post it here.

As one travels along the path of life, delighting in, fighting through, enjoying and enduring those experiences, that combined, define a lifetime, there are those incidences that leave you a little “different” than you were before. Some are massive, life changing events – good and bad - that by definition change the entire course of your existence. Others are but a pebble or shiny stone that could be stepped over and missed entirely, but when picked up and examined are recognized as a rare jewel that can change your life.

I received one of those shiny stones on Christmas a few years ago in the form of a book called Grandmother’s Memories to Her Grandchild given to me by my Grandma Law. It is a treasure, to be sure, full of funny stories and recollections, some of which I’d never heard before and others I’d heard a hundred times, but of which I never tire. The book follows a basic question-answer format – questions posed by the author are followed by blank lines filled with my grandmother’s distinct handwriting. It is a glimpse into her life in a way I’d never really seen her, and it reveals the essence of who she is and what it is that has shaped her into the person I admire so. And this essence was perhaps most keenly expressed in her answer to one question:

That which I value most in life is:
My belief in God. The love of my family. I had the love of a good husband for 65 years. The years we had together blessed us with a daughter and husband, and a granddaughter and husband to be very proud of. What more could one ask of life?

I must admit that I’d read the book through several times, walking past this shimmering jewel without really pausing to appreciate its value. But then as I read it through for perhaps the third time, I attempted to answer this question for myself, and suddenly I found myself re-evaluating my whole life.

My grandmother is a good woman.

Good is a word we tend to use too easily and too often inappropriately, its impact diluted through misuse. Used to describe a plate of fried chicken, good implies passably tasty, but not great – good ain’t as good as better, and is a far cry from best. We use good to describe the girl whose made a mess of her life with two illegitimate children, and a drug problem but who wouldn’t dream doing anything really bad, like robbing a liquor store or killing someone. Suddenly we hear ourselves saying, “She’s got a lot of problems, but down deep she’s a good person.” Really? If she were such a "good" person, would she make the types of choices that lead to all of those problems?

The kind of good I am talking about implies character, integrity and a sense of moral decency. The kind of good I am talking about is the kind of good that does the right thing even when it isn’t the easy thing. The kind of good I am talking about is the kind of good I hope will describe me someday. And I never really thought about that until now.

I don’t believe one can simply aspire to goodness. Greatness perhaps, but not goodness. By definition, one might think that goodness is good, but greatness is better. I believe that the opposite may be true. I believe that Goodness is far more complicated and the two don’t necessarily go hand in hand. Greatness implies talent coupled with a deep dedication. A great musician, a great author, a great athlete. Goodness implies character and one can’t simply aspire to be of good character. Rather, it is the result of one's values, one's priorities and one's dedication to keeping their integrity in tact. I venture to say there are many who aspire to greatness who haven’t much goodness in them.

My grandma may not have had an extraordinary career, written a best-selling novel, made a lot of money or be world-renowned for a remarkable achievement. Perhaps by the world’s standards there isn’t much interesting about a Nebraska farm wife who worked hard all her life. But she is extraordinary. She is remarkable. She is a good woman.

Now really, what more could one ask of life?

My Life As a Mom

I’m a stay at home mom to a darling 6-month-old boy. And I’m 40 years old. Not the time frame I’d envisioned when I was contemplating my future in my high-school years, but after being told that motherhood would not be a possibility for me, I’m grateful. While pregnant, I often joked that the difference between being pregnant at 20 and being pregnant at 40 is that at 20 you say “Oh, babies, they’re so CUTE! I can’t wait to dress him up!” and at 40 your thinking “Oh my gosh, I need to plan out how much we’ll contribute towards his first car and we’ve got to get that college fund started right away!”

Carson is all I’d ever hoped for and even the cloudiest day is no match for his illuminating little smile. The love I feel for him is so beyond the realm of what I even thought possible, words are inadequate to describe it. Like any mother, I think mine is the most beautiful child that ever existed. Of course, mine really is.

Few topics spark the level of passion – or strength of opinion - inspired by the working mom vs. stay-at-home mom debate. And it is a debate that raged within me as my due date approached. I’d always been a huge proponent of staying home with your children and sacrificing whatever you had to in order to make that happen. Easy enough to say until I faced making those sacrifices myself.

The most obvious is impact hit our pocketbook: It meant selling my beautiful brand-new convertible with plush leather interior and buying an inexpensive economy car. It means that “having dinner” no longer involves a menu and waitress but rather a pan and stove. It means that my cosmetics bag is no longer full of Chanel and Estee Lauder but Cover Girl and L’oreal. It means that, at least for right now, I can’t spend a dime until I talk to my husband about it and accept the fact that many times the answer is simply going to be “no.”

But perhaps what is requiring the greatest adjustment, is redefining my sense of self. I’ve been working for almost 20 years in some capacity or another and my job has always provided me not only with a paycheck, but with my sense of purpose and my social network. Every friend I’ve made in the last two decades is someone I’ve worked with. My job has been where I feel capable and competent. Where I get my kudos and pats on the back. Where I feel the satisfaction of accomplishment. Where I've always felt like, well, me. Now I spend my days at home with a little guy who’s social skills are limited and isn’t much on positive reinforcement.

In light of both of those adjustments I understand why so many working moms claim they can’t afford to stay home – financially, emotionally, or both. When the difference between mom working or not is the difference between a roof over your head or not, I get it (when that roof is over a 3000 square foot house with a BMW in the driveway, I admit that I don’t get it quite as much). But at the end of the day, I had to admit that being a stay-at-home mom simply won out over working no matter what my “mental arguments” were. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t things that I struggle with. It also doesn’t mean that I stand in judgement of every woman dropping their child off at Kindercare. It just means that when I reviewed the arguments in my head, there simply wasn’t any really good reason for me to be at work all day and there were dozens of reason for me to be at home. To name just a few:

No one will love him throughout the day like I will. It isn’t that I don’t think that there are people in the daycare industry who love children or that there aren’t those people who love nothing more than spending their days hugging babies and developing little minds, but no one else cares as much as I do that he always have a clean diaper, that he has adequate tummy-time throughout the day, that he gets books read to him or that he has enough one-on-one time to ensure his needs are met.

I want to be the one see all of his “firsts”; I admit it, I’m selfish. I want to see his first teeth, watch him take his first steps, hear his first words. He is the child I’ve waited for most of my adult life. I don’t want to hear from the woman handing him to me over the door at daycare that he walked for the first time that day.

Quantity of time ensures that quality time takes care of itself. When Carson and I are together, there’s no pressure. I definitely work activities into our day – I read to him, I play with him, but if I want to sit and rock him and just look at his little face, I can do that without worrying that I’m not doing enough somehow. I’ve heard countless stories of working parents who don’t want to discipline their children because they don’t want a moment of their limited time together to be "unpleasant." When they’ve got 2 hours between dinner and bedtime, they’ll do whatever it takes to stop the tantrum as quickly as possible so they don’t have to have the unpleasantness of – and temporarily unhappy child that is the result of - metering out discipline. Obviously with a six-month-old this isn’t an issue yet, but as he grows up if Carson and I have 10 hours together every day, him being unhappy for an hour because he didn’t get his way isn’t a big deal. I have the time to commit to making sure he’s happier in the long run, not just for the moment.

Carson gets my best every day. This for me was the issue that won the argument in my head. He doesn’t get a mommy who’s exhausted from a day at the office or frustrated from a meeting that didn’t go well. By the time I'm cleaning up the dinner dishes in the evening, if I'm worn out, well, that's okay because we’re looking at the end of our day together and Carson has already had my best hours. He got Mommy while she was rested and ready for playtime. Don't I owe him the best I have to offer? The best of me? Would I really be giving him that if I were working and trying to cram it into the 2 hours between dinner and his bedtime?

As much as I’ve never spent a moment questioning my decision, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit there are some days I miss being in an office with other grown-ups having conversations that didn't involve a hungry caterpillar or an observant brown bear. But those moments are over-shadowed every time by the joy of spending my days being a mom to this little boy I love so much.

Norman Rockwell or Reality?

If there is anything my foray into the first months of motherhood has taught me, it is that I need to set aside any fantasies I had about the Norman Rockwell moments of family life and ground myself in reality. This Thanksgiving, being my darling 5 month-old son's first major holiday, was sure to provide a multitude of photo-ops, with his typically smiling face beaming enthusiastically over the turkey. Ah, but how reality can get in the way...

The turkey took longer than I anticipated, and Carson's mood began to deteriorate as our dinner time began to coincide with his naptime. Suited up in his finest sweater-vest and plaid shirt his smiles became frowns and downright sobs before the turkey was even ready to come out of the oven. I'd dreamed of the adorable pictures of his first Thanksgiving and the glowing comments of friends and family, but in the end I shuffled him off to his room for a desperately needed nap. Dave and I enjoyed our delicious Thanksgiving meal listening to Carson's steady peaceful breathing through the speaker of the baby monitor.

Was I disappointed? Sure, a little bit. I'd really wanted those pictures of Carson's smiling face enjoying his Gerber Sweet Potatoes while Dave and I feasted on turkey and dressing. But sometimes you just have to let it go.

We all know someone who just can't bear to lose that Norman Rockwell moment. They will go to any lengths, desperate to catch that picture that screams "look how perfect it all was" and if they have to cajole, bribe, threaten, or ruin the entire day for everyone in order to take that picture they'll do it. Ironically, what you end up with is a lovely picture of what turned out to be a miserable day. It’s all a facade. I hope I never go to those lengths for those pictures.

I think this serves as a microcosm for what we expect of our lives in general and how we react when things don’t go as we’d hoped. Sometimes as parents - well, as people in general, but particularly as parents - we get an idealistic view of how things will go, especially during the holidays. We put our children in cute outfits and expect that our desires for the perfect holiday and equally perfect photographs will go beautifully, with all of our visions fulfilled and perfectly preserved on Kodak Paper. But how often does that really happen? And how do we react when our plans go awry?

We’ve got to learn to be flexible and set priorities appropriately – after all (to continue with the photo metaphor), what’s more important: the photo or the people in it? We have to learn to accept our circumstances, our friends, our family members and especially our children for who they are, where they are. When we embrace our lives, our family and friends as they are rather than rigidly adhering to a set of expectations, it frees us to enjoy things as they are rather than focusing on how we thought it would be. Even more significantly, when we bemoan our fallen expectations we fail to embrace – or perhaps even recognize - wonderful opportunities presented by circumstances as they are.

I missed my Thanksgiving photos of Carson, that’s true. But what I gained was a wonderful time and great conversation with my husband – conversation that doesn’t really happen when we are managing an infant at the table – and for that I am truly grateful. Isn’t that what Thanksgiving is all about? Perhaps it was a Norman Rockwell moment after all.

Happiness: If money can't buy it, what DOES it cost?

Several years ago, a friend of mine shared with me a birthday card her adult daughter sent her. I’d often admired how she seemed to have successfully navigated that thin line between “friend” and “mom.” They seemed to have avoided the common pitfalls and potholes of mother-daughter relationships and though my mom and I are incredibly close now, I often wonder what it would have been like if we could have navigated my teen years and early twenties as gracefully – and peacefully – as my dear friend and her daughter seemed to. But as she shared with me the heartfelt comments thanking her for the gifts of wisdom and understanding, the closing line gave me pause – “and thank you mom for teaching me that my happiness is always the most important thing.”

I’m not suggesting that happiness is unimportant, or that one’s desire to be happy is somehow wrong or immoral - certainly not - but I do feel that seeking ones own happiness as an end in and of itself is a pointless exercise. Seeking happiness for happiness sake is simply doomed to failure. It’s a bit like trying to give grade-schoolers a sense of self-esteem by playing a game of kickball and saying “there is no score here – EVERYBODY wins.” There is no pride in “winning” a game wherein there is no competition. It’s more like everybody loses. You deny the winners a sense of accomplishment at having played a good game and you deny the losers the impetus to play better next time. It’s ridiculous and pointless and nobody really feels better about themselves for it, I don’t care what some crack psychologist says about it.

Setting out with a simple goal of being “happy” is similar. How does one go about seeking happiness and is anyone ever successful? I would suggest that one’s search for happiness as an end in and of itself is never successful. Why not? From a purely secular point of view, I think there are 4 primary reasons:

1) People confuse “having fun” with “being happy” People often confuse "fun" with happiness and try to be happy by focusing their lives entirely upon seeking one "fun" experience after another - sometimes to the exclusion of anything else. They party, shop, travel, eat, all the while seeking to find happiness in the fun of the "adventure", whatever it may be. The problem is that the happy feeling you get there is only temporary. Once the adventure is over, the feeling quickly fades and you're right back where you were to begin with.

2) “Having fun” is almost always primarily self-focused (how will this make me feel, make me look, etc) Partying, shopping, traveling, eating - all of those things put our focus squarely on ourselves and how entertained we are by the experience. It isn’t so much that they are inherently bad or wrong, but when they become all-consuming we can find ourselves becoming increasingly self-absorbed. It was in my early 20s, during a period where I spent basically all of my time focused on “having fun” that I found myself spiraling into a deep depression, so miserable all I wanted to do between nights out drinking and partying was lay around the house and bemoan my personal miseries. My mother, who saw this behavior as nothing more than ridiculous self-indulgence, told me if I'd spend as much time focused on caring about other people as I did focusing on myself, I'd be a lot happier. At the time I discounted her advice as insensitive and thoughtless. But as I've gotten older, I've realized that there is tremendous wisdom in her words. I fully recognize that there is such a thing as clinical depression and that chemical imbalances can cause depression as well - that's not what I'm talking about here. I'd be willing to wager that some of us who find ourselves under that black cloud of depression, aren't chemically imbalanced, we're relationally imbalanced. If you've ever talked to someone who is depressed, they spend most of their time talking about themselves. "I'm so depressed" "my life is such a mess." "I just don't see a point to it all." It is, in my opinion, why so many of the rich and famous seem to be plagued by chemical dependency problems - all they do is focus on themselves, their beauty, their popularity, their money and a life completely focused on oneself is destined for misery.

3) Getting for one’s self is a poor substitute for giving of one’s self Most things that are self-focused tend to be “getting” activities. You’re buying items for yourself, you’re eating food for your enjoyment, you’re taking the trip to satisfy your sense of adventure, you’re partying for your personal pleasure. But all of that getting doesn’t make you feel as good as giving. I really enjoy buying shoes and I always joke that the reason I love them so much is because it is the only thing I can buy in the same size I wore in high school. I love looking for shoes, buying them, wearing them and then kicking them off in random spots around the house and leaving them for my husband to trip over. But several years ago when I found myself getting into an emotional rut, instead of buying another few pairs of shoes, I decided to volunteer at the local community college as an English tutor for someone struggling to learn the language. I had the privilege of meeting and working with an amazing woman from Vietnam who nearly died getting to this country and who had worked hard to make a life for her children after she got here. But the tutoring wasn’t always easy. For one thing, it was a commitment - I had to show up whether I felt like it or not. Whether I was tired or not. Sometimes I missed fun things I wanted to do because I had to tutor that night. Sometimes I had to give up my wants – whether it was an evening decompressing in front of the TV after a tough day at work or a night out with the girls – because I was giving to someone else. Note that when I say “giving of one’s self” I’m not talking about money. For one thing, money is really easy to give. Some of us have more to give than others, but most of us, when we give money, we give only what we can give without impacting our personal wants and desires. I can donate $20 to breast cancer research and nothing in my life will change – I won’t have to skip any meals or forego that pair of boots I really wanted to buy. But if I gave $2000 that would really put a crimp in my style. I’d be missing meals AND the pair of boots as well as my weekly trip to Target and probably the electric bill. But that’s all relative. The billionaire giving $200,000, although that is a pretty impressive chunk of change, isn’t impacting his life any more than I was when I gave $20. In order to be effective, I think giving has to impact us a little bit because it forces us to focus on doing something good for someone else PURELY for THEIR benefit and not our own. It isn’t about “bragging rights” so we can tell everyone what we did for so-and-so – if the focus of our giving is the personal satisfaction we’ll get by telling everyone how generous we are, we’ve missed the point entirely. Giving of one’s self forces us to focus on the other person, not on ourselves. When I worked with Van, the time I gave was focused completely on her – not on me. But in the end, it was a tremendously rewarding experience for me, not only because I met someone I grew to respect and truly care about, but also because it made me appreciate all I had. Which brings me to my final point…

4) Always focusing on the next way to “be happy” has a tendency to cause us to focus on what we don’t have instead of being grateful for what we do have. I’ve talked a lot about focus and it’s a word I’ve nearly worn out here, but it is really the crux of the whole discussion. If you are focused on the next thing to buy, you’re focused on what you don’t have. If you are focused on the next party, you’re focused on how you don’t feel right now the way you want to feel later. If you are focused on that trip, you are focused on how you aren’t where you wish you were. All of that focus on what you don’t have, how you don’t feel, where you aren’t robs you of the ability to be grateful for all you do have, the joy in how and where you are right now. One key to happiness is simply living with a sense of GRATITUDE. It has nothing to do with how much you have and everything to do with how much you appreciate what you do have. For an example of this, I need look no further than my elderly grandmother. Although her world has now shrunk to a small room in a nursing home, she is grateful for the years she had to live in a home she loved and the places she’s been able to travel throughout her life. Although her husband died 7 years ago, she is grateful for the years they had together and for the family she still has. She has all but lost her sight and can no longer do the crosswords and puzzles she loved so much, nor can she watch television or write letters, but she is grateful for the many years of joy she had doing those things. She has trouble hearing and her mind has weakened to a point where it is difficult for her to follow conversations much of the time, but she is grateful that until recently her mind was sharp and she was able to nurture friendships. She is often in pain and her body is failing her, but she is grateful for all the years of good health and all she was able to do. In spite of her difficulties, the losses she’s suffered, the pain that she is in, she never complains. She’s always just grateful.

Happiness is elusive to many, fleeting for most. It comes and goes with the seasons of our lives. Sometimes we're happy and sometimes we're not, it's as simple as that. But I don't believe we can ever attain happiness when we seek it as an end. Happiness comes to us when we live our lives well, when we care about others more than ourselves, when we make commitments and keep them and when we spend more time focused on bringing joy to others than taking it for ourselves. Most of all, happiness comes when we are grateful for all that we have in our lives. Our friends, our families, and our freedom.

Shiny Pebbles or Hidden Gems

We all tread life's path. For some of us it is a straight shot from here to there, with each stop carefully planned and the path carefully marked. For some of us, it is a curvy road with many twists and turns and no clue what might lie around the next bend. Some of us plan for the trip and attempt to leave nothing to chance, others of us fly by the seat of our pants never prepared for anything. Some of us hit the path at a dead run and can't wait to make the next lifemarker, and some of us meander along inspecting each tree, contemplating each rock, considering each bird as it flies by. Most of us fall somewhere in the middle of the two extremes, but whatever path we choose and whichever manner we choose to trod, as long as we take in breath, we tread along the corridors of our existance creating what is our life.

It is as we walk/run/skateboard along this path that we come across the occasional metaphorical "shiny pebble" that could be stepped over and missed entirely (and often is) but when picked up and examined it can be recognized as a rare hidden gem that can change your outlook, your perceptions, maybe even your life. This blog reflects my efforts to share, amongst other random thoughts, the shiny pebbles and hidden gems I come across in my very ordinary life.