Conversation tonight with R., my 10-year-old.
Me: We have to get you guys earning some money so you can buy each other some Christmas gifts.
R: What? You mean we have to earn our own money to buy them (meaning brothers and sisters) presents?
Me: Yup.
R: (Perplexed and whining) That stinks! Why would I spend my money to get them a present, when I could just use the money to buy something for myself?
Me: What do you mean?
R: I mean, if I go to the trouble of working to earn money, why would I spend that money for a present for someone else. I could just buy myself something with that money.
Me: Oh, so if it is my money, then you don't mind buying something for others with it, but if it is your own money, you want to buy things for yourself?
R: (Relieved that I may finally be getting his point): Exactly!
Monday, November 30, 2009
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Don't forget to unlock the door
When I was a child, one of our favorite things to do was stay the night as a family at my grandparents' house when they were out of town. There were all kinds of games to play and movies to watch. And they had a spa in their backyard.
But then there were the downsides of staying in a strange house. For example, creepy noises in the night and unfamiliar surroundings to encounter when stumbling around in the dark after hearing frightening sounds. Usually, the noises were my imagination. But, one night, they were real.
Around midnight, after I had been fast asleep for a few hours, I heard a thumping sound. "It's your imagination," I tried to convince myself. But then I heard it again: thump, thump, thump. I figured if I stayed in bed and ignored it, it would either go away or my parents would hear it and investigate. But the noise continued...thump, thump, thump. And then I heard a voice, "Tim, come open the door." It was my dad, pounding on the front door. I unlocked the door and let him in. He was wearing only a small bath towel. I guess he noticed the puzzled look on my face, because he offered an explanation: "We were in the hot tub and locked ourselves out of the house." That explained the door knocking, but it didn't explain why he was standing in the buff with only a towel for covering. He then proceeded promptly to the back door and unlocked it, letting my equally-sheepish-looking mom back inside. She also wore only a towel.
The nex
t day, I learned the full story. My mom's sister suggested that she (my mom, that is, not my aunt) and my dad go skinny dipping in the spa after the kids went to bed, so they thought they would try it out. But, they locked themselves out and couldn't get back in. My dad tried to get through the side gate, but it too was locked, and the key was inside. They tried pounding on the back door, but no one responded. So, my dad donned his towel, and like a Matador mounting a bull after the kill, pounced onto and over the fence so that he could try knocking on the front door. Mind you, the fence was one of the types with spiky metal rods on top, which I'm sure added to the excitement of the occasion.
The strange thing is, it's not like my parents ever did anything very adventurous. Maybe this was why. Or maybe they did adventurous things regularly but never got caught (until now)?
My young ten-year-old brain made a quick mental note: "If you ever sneak out to skinny dip with your wife in the middle of the night, make sure to leave the door unlocked." Of course, that could lead to interesting problems of another kind if your children are not heavy sleepers. Still, consider some advance planning, please.
I never went in my grandparents' spa again after that night.
But then there were the downsides of staying in a strange house. For example, creepy noises in the night and unfamiliar surroundings to encounter when stumbling around in the dark after hearing frightening sounds. Usually, the noises were my imagination. But, one night, they were real.
Around midnight, after I had been fast asleep for a few hours, I heard a thumping sound. "It's your imagination," I tried to convince myself. But then I heard it again: thump, thump, thump. I figured if I stayed in bed and ignored it, it would either go away or my parents would hear it and investigate. But the noise continued...thump, thump, thump. And then I heard a voice, "Tim, come open the door." It was my dad, pounding on the front door. I unlocked the door and let him in. He was wearing only a small bath towel. I guess he noticed the puzzled look on my face, because he offered an explanation: "We were in the hot tub and locked ourselves out of the house." That explained the door knocking, but it didn't explain why he was standing in the buff with only a towel for covering. He then proceeded promptly to the back door and unlocked it, letting my equally-sheepish-looking mom back inside. She also wore only a towel.
The nex
t day, I learned the full story. My mom's sister suggested that she (my mom, that is, not my aunt) and my dad go skinny dipping in the spa after the kids went to bed, so they thought they would try it out. But, they locked themselves out and couldn't get back in. My dad tried to get through the side gate, but it too was locked, and the key was inside. They tried pounding on the back door, but no one responded. So, my dad donned his towel, and like a Matador mounting a bull after the kill, pounced onto and over the fence so that he could try knocking on the front door. Mind you, the fence was one of the types with spiky metal rods on top, which I'm sure added to the excitement of the occasion.The strange thing is, it's not like my parents ever did anything very adventurous. Maybe this was why. Or maybe they did adventurous things regularly but never got caught (until now)?
My young ten-year-old brain made a quick mental note: "If you ever sneak out to skinny dip with your wife in the middle of the night, make sure to leave the door unlocked." Of course, that could lead to interesting problems of another kind if your children are not heavy sleepers. Still, consider some advance planning, please.
I never went in my grandparents' spa again after that night.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Looking for my mind
For what value of money would you be willing to rummage through smelly, week-old trash?
I withdrew $60 cash yesterday and folded it, along with a store receipt, into a neat wad and stuck it in my pants pocket. When I got home, I emptied my pockets and wondered why the receipt I pulled out looked so bulky. Even though it was only 15 minutes after putting the money in my pocket, I had forgotten completely. This morning, I woke up and began cleaning the kitchen. I grabbed the receipts and thought, "I won't need these anymore", as I tossed them into the trash. Hours later, it occurred to me that the $60 had been folded within one of those receipts and was now in the trash.
Unfortunately, I took out a lot of trash this morning and included all of the rotten, leftover food that was in the refrigerator plus a pan of chili enchiladas that was left out on the counter overnight. After spending the day ripening in the sun, the smell inside the large, black trash barrel was not pleasant. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever smelled trash this...fragrant. So, now it was decision time--is $60 worth what it would take to pull out and sort through this nasty pile of rubbish? I decided it was. Fifteen minutes later, with garbage juice up to my elbows and all over my shirt, I had been through the entire trash can and still had not found the cash.
I moved on to a few different trash cans within the home--maybe I had thrown the receipt into one of them rather than in with all of the juicy garbage. But, the money was not to be found in the dirty diaper pail (don't ask me why we throw regular trash into the diaper pail, but we do) nor in the small bathroom trash can that featured and inviting top layer of bloody tissue paper that my son left earlier in the day from one of his famous bloody noses. I can't believe how much blood it was! I hope he drank some orange juice afterward and laid down for a moment!
After an hour of looking, I gave up, not sure the whole thing had been worth it. I felt like I just got out of the garbage compactor in Star Wars, minus the creature that swam in the garbage juice.
So, what's your price for being willing to sort through ripened trash? $60? $100? $1000?
I withdrew $60 cash yesterday and folded it, along with a store receipt, into a neat wad and stuck it in my pants pocket. When I got home, I emptied my pockets and wondered why the receipt I pulled out looked so bulky. Even though it was only 15 minutes after putting the money in my pocket, I had forgotten completely. This morning, I woke up and began cleaning the kitchen. I grabbed the receipts and thought, "I won't need these anymore", as I tossed them into the trash. Hours later, it occurred to me that the $60 had been folded within one of those receipts and was now in the trash.
Unfortunately, I took out a lot of trash this morning and included all of the rotten, leftover food that was in the refrigerator plus a pan of chili enchiladas that was left out on the counter overnight. After spending the day ripening in the sun, the smell inside the large, black trash barrel was not pleasant. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever smelled trash this...fragrant. So, now it was decision time--is $60 worth what it would take to pull out and sort through this nasty pile of rubbish? I decided it was. Fifteen minutes later, with garbage juice up to my elbows and all over my shirt, I had been through the entire trash can and still had not found the cash.
I moved on to a few different trash cans within the home--maybe I had thrown the receipt into one of them rather than in with all of the juicy garbage. But, the money was not to be found in the dirty diaper pail (don't ask me why we throw regular trash into the diaper pail, but we do) nor in the small bathroom trash can that featured and inviting top layer of bloody tissue paper that my son left earlier in the day from one of his famous bloody noses. I can't believe how much blood it was! I hope he drank some orange juice afterward and laid down for a moment!
After an hour of looking, I gave up, not sure the whole thing had been worth it. I felt like I just got out of the garbage compactor in Star Wars, minus the creature that swam in the garbage juice.
So, what's your price for being willing to sort through ripened trash? $60? $100? $1000?
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Pride and Marriage
Why is it that *sometimes*, in marriage, we are so focused on the needs of the other partner? With patience, we empathize with them regarding their frustrations with life. We are their cheerleader, encouraging them to try new things and to keep going on projects on which they feel like giving up. We cry with them, hold their hand, look for small ways to make them happy and comfortable. They are always on our mind and their interests come first.
And then there are the other times. We feel like we need to look out for ourselves because no one else is looking out for us. We need to defend ourselves to the other person. We plead for their respect and put every effort into making the case of why they are not treating us well enough. We withhold emotional and physical closeness from the other until they make things just right, stacking the odds more and more each passing day against actually ever making things right again. We complain, sometimes to ourselves and sometimes to others, that no one fully appreciates us and no one realizes what a burden we carry all alone. We are ever on the lookout for examples that provide us with further evidence of the insensitivity of our partner.
Why the difference? Is it us, or is it our partner?Is it the demands and stresses of life? Changes in the phases of the moon? Physical and emotional exhaustion? How can we so easily turn from defending, and doing everything we can to support the person we care most about, to tearing them down and blaming them, whether actively or passively?
Through the years of schooling, life experience, and work experience I've had, it boils down to one answer for me: pride. Pride ruins marriages. It tells us that we are not being appreciated fully or treated well enough and that we need to make someone pay a price because of it. It keeps us from apologizing and mending the small things and allows them to evolve into bigger things. It draws constant comparisons between who gets the most sleep, changes the most diapers, earns the most money, spends the most money, is called on most often by the kids for help, cares the most, etc. Pride has so many faces. The most dangerous of them are those that we do not recognize as pride because they have us so fully-convinced the other partner is at fault and we are the victim. Pride is easily offended. Slow to forgive. Conditional in support. Impatient. Unkind. Self-pitying. These are all of the ugly sides of marriage.
Some may find it odd that I would say pride, more than anything else, destroys marriage. Isn't it really extramarital affairs, addictions, and other poor choices that ruin relationships? While I believe there are certainly many innocent victims of such circumstances, my answer is unchanged. It is the pride of both partners that makes it so they cannot get past the challenges they face rather than the events in and of themselves. One prideful spouse will not admit a weakness and will not change. Another will never forgive, no matter how many years pass or or how repentant the other spouse.
The Arbinger Institute does great work on the subject of self-deception in relationships. It is tough reading, though, because it never allows you to place the blame for your unhappiness or self-pity on your partner. That is hard to swallow, especially for someone in a rocky relationship. However, they share story after story of success in helping people take full responsibility for their own happiness through forgiveness of others and through eliminating the trap of self-deception (which is pride at its finest, convincing us we've done no wrong and that we have been taken for granted and treated wrongfully by others).
Here is to more days of being a cheerleader as a marriage partner, and less of being a cynic.
And then there are the other times. We feel like we need to look out for ourselves because no one else is looking out for us. We need to defend ourselves to the other person. We plead for their respect and put every effort into making the case of why they are not treating us well enough. We withhold emotional and physical closeness from the other until they make things just right, stacking the odds more and more each passing day against actually ever making things right again. We complain, sometimes to ourselves and sometimes to others, that no one fully appreciates us and no one realizes what a burden we carry all alone. We are ever on the lookout for examples that provide us with further evidence of the insensitivity of our partner.
Why the difference? Is it us, or is it our partner?Is it the demands and stresses of life? Changes in the phases of the moon? Physical and emotional exhaustion? How can we so easily turn from defending, and doing everything we can to support the person we care most about, to tearing them down and blaming them, whether actively or passively?
Through the years of schooling, life experience, and work experience I've had, it boils down to one answer for me: pride. Pride ruins marriages. It tells us that we are not being appreciated fully or treated well enough and that we need to make someone pay a price because of it. It keeps us from apologizing and mending the small things and allows them to evolve into bigger things. It draws constant comparisons between who gets the most sleep, changes the most diapers, earns the most money, spends the most money, is called on most often by the kids for help, cares the most, etc. Pride has so many faces. The most dangerous of them are those that we do not recognize as pride because they have us so fully-convinced the other partner is at fault and we are the victim. Pride is easily offended. Slow to forgive. Conditional in support. Impatient. Unkind. Self-pitying. These are all of the ugly sides of marriage.
Some may find it odd that I would say pride, more than anything else, destroys marriage. Isn't it really extramarital affairs, addictions, and other poor choices that ruin relationships? While I believe there are certainly many innocent victims of such circumstances, my answer is unchanged. It is the pride of both partners that makes it so they cannot get past the challenges they face rather than the events in and of themselves. One prideful spouse will not admit a weakness and will not change. Another will never forgive, no matter how many years pass or or how repentant the other spouse.
The Arbinger Institute does great work on the subject of self-deception in relationships. It is tough reading, though, because it never allows you to place the blame for your unhappiness or self-pity on your partner. That is hard to swallow, especially for someone in a rocky relationship. However, they share story after story of success in helping people take full responsibility for their own happiness through forgiveness of others and through eliminating the trap of self-deception (which is pride at its finest, convincing us we've done no wrong and that we have been taken for granted and treated wrongfully by others).
Here is to more days of being a cheerleader as a marriage partner, and less of being a cynic.
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