The Advice of Stranger
I get so disheartened sometimes because I’ll say stuff to the [my] kids, real bangers, and I feel ignored. I see their eyes gloss over and their attention goes elsewhere… and I have experienced this with adults around me too. Maybe you have as well.
But to hear from a stranger? To hear it from a qualified stranger? One that you hired? Well, that’s an investment. That’s why we hired them. I have heard it said that can’t sell stuff in your hometown. More specifically, you can’t sell stuff in your home. And isn’t that true, often enough? Try giving advice to somebody close to you, even if they asked for it.
I got appointed medical power of attorney over my mom when she was sick. My family insisted; I was the one after all who worked in medicine… until I made decisions they didn’t agree with. Then I was controlling and abusive. Like when my mom wanted to leave the nursing home. She was on blood thinners and I knew that if she went home, she’d end up falling and hitting her head on something. The house wasn’t set up for someone who just had open heart surgery and had trouble walking on her own. I was reminded to “know my place” and how I would have to account for my decisions with my mom. So I capitulated. We should be allowed to fail, should we be so positively insistent. It is where our most carefully laid plans go to die.
I signed the papers, and she was discharged home. She started smoking, didn’t use her oxygen, and within 48 hours experienced a fall, striking her head and incurring a subdural hematoma: a brian bleed. Surgery was performed and her life spared, but not for nothing. She lived no more than a year after that moment and experienced persistent seizures that wound her on a ventilator, in a hospital, until coming home to die some time later. You simply cannot convince those who refuse to be convinced otherwise.
So you can’t sell to your mom. Well, maybe to your mom, but that’s just because she loves you so she entertains your bullshit. Is is because they see us burp and fart? Do we somehow lose credibility when the mask is removed to reveal that we are not as special as we think we are? I mean, even the Pope picks his nose. What does that say about you and me? What does that say about the Pope?
I , me, Chad, may not care what other people think about me, but that’s not completely true, and it sounds like as big of a lie as it is coming out of my mouth (it is good to read the things you write out loud sometimes). This is true for most of the people I’ve encountered. Not everyone. Some folks don’t give a shit at all about anyone around them, what they think, or how they feel. Not always out of malice, and always out of ignorance of themselves and/or those around them.
So I might talk a big game but I can get neurotic about what other people are thinking about me and saying about me, too. Some of that is probably a good thing. I care what my kids think about me. I care how my wife feels received by me.
I want and I wish that I didn’t worry about it so much, and I certainly will tell people not to sweat it when they feel that way, but to go to the other side of the pendulum certainly can’t be the best option. Somewhere in the middle, perhaps.
Yet, I still cannot help but have the conversation with myself. Is this a reflection in my life of what I do to others? Am I questioning or indifferent to every word of the people around me? Or is it the opposite? Am I gullable and believe everything that I am told? Perhaps if the stakes are pretty low. Perhaps in the past. Somewhere in the middle again.
Discerning of the information we receive, trusting of the heart from whence it comes.
It’s sound philosophy, but I can’t help but wonder if I practice what I preach. How I am received by those closest to me? Those who depend upon me, for whether they know it or not I so VERY much depend upon them, and their kindness, and their love.
And after all, we always want to take credit for the good traits in our kids and blame the bad ones on the people we don’t like.
“Oh look at Jonny and his chronic masturbation. He must get that from his mother. Yeah, you know her, the one that left the nunnery convent. She was disheartened that none of the guys in the church were into women…”
Do you wanna hear a real story? A true one that really happened? My ex mother-in-law and late grandmother argued over my mother’s dead body over whether my newborn son looked like his mom or dad. The funny part is it messed me up so good that it snapped me out of my own little world - mourning for my mom - to recognize the awkwardness of this moment in time, like someone had broken the fourth wall in what had become the dramatic sequence in my life, long enough for me to shift into MMA mode and ask “Are these two women about to fight?”
Judge Mills Lane always did know best, didn’t he? They didn’t go to fisticuffs, but the verbal back and forth…. was ridiculous enough to remind me in that moment just how wiggly this life can be.
“He looks like his dad….”
“No, mom…”
“Definitely his dad….”
“……………………..
…………………………………………………….
…..he looks like his mom.”
Like a dance…. take it lightly. Now I’m certainly talking to myself…
Good philosophy. Sound advice. Am I listening?