On the things we think about

When I was a kid (truthfully, until recently), I sometimes asked my mum what she was thinking about. I always thought she was lying when she’d say “nothing in particular” or “what I need to buy from the store” or “what I will cook for dinner”, etc. The thing is that I would always be preoccupied with thinking about other things, things with little direct connection to my life, things like what it must it have been like to describe and name a new illness such a AIDS or (even tuberculosis if you were Robert Koch), why does it matter so much to people whether their religious beliefs will be proven right or wrong after death if they’re dead anyway when they see the definitive truth, etc. I wondered why mum never told me that she would think of things like this. Surely, I thought, everyone has abstract thought they dedicate time to. Why would mum not tell me what her “other” non-mundane thoughts were about? Surely a person has more than everyday-survival thoughts, right?

In the last few weeks, due to some difficulties that have affected my family, I have ended up becoming a guardian for my teenage nephew. And you know what? I have finally come to understand that my mum was not lying to me; she was just too busy being a parent to me and my four siblings to have time for non-mundane thought! I have in the last few weeks found myself actually thinking about and planning things that I would normally have left until the last minute, the boring stuff, the mundane stuff: what would be appropriate meals, what would be appropriate discipline, what are appropriate expectations, etc. It really does take up time to be thinking, more so because of my inexperience at this. Yet in a way it is also, I think, a blessing because having someone depend on you forces you to return the centre of Urie Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory of human development. Sometimes a person can spend so much time thinking about how to change the world, how to change the future, about how things of the world should be, that you can forget that changing the world starts at home, with families, with ourselves. 

On saying the right thing

Just a very quick blog today on things I’ve realised over the years about what to say in certain situations. The times I’m talking about are when someone is crying or sad; when someone is mourning; when someone is in trouble and worried; and pretty much any other time you’ve thought “I don’t know what to say”. The problem is that though we think there is a ‘right’ thing to say, the real answer is that these are the times when we don’t need to say anything at all. The only thing you need to be doing when you find yourself in a situation where you don’t know what to say is to not say anything at all and just listen. Yes, really listen. Pay attention, become interested, and if you must say anything, then say that which you feel, “I don’t know what to say”.

On excuses, reasons, and choice

I met someone some time ago who had some personality features I didn’t quite like. We were close for a time and so I told her that some of the things she did bothered and sometimes even hurt me. She told me that it was all because that’s just how she was, that that’s how she had turned out after been raped as a teenager by her father. Of course, that is a terrible thing to happen to anyone and I know it takes a lot of courage to tell your own story. And, of course, I also realise that childhood sexual abuse really does mess you up in so many ways! The strangeness of this particular situation was that this friend said to me fairly often “that’s just how I am” and reminded me about her father. I knew; I wasn’t going to forget what she had told me – it was something deeply serious! However, after so many times that she told me that that’s how she is and it’s due to the childhood sexual abuse she had suffered, I remembered that she wasn’t the only person this had happened to. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a very sad and disturbing thing and every single person this happens to will experience it differently and will be affected differently by it in the long-term. However, I felt that with me she was using it as an excuse for her behaviour so as to avoid apology, or – God forbid – change.

I have known a very many people who have been sexually abused as children and not everyone was as mean as this ‘friend’ was to me; they weren’t obligated to be mean by reason of their terrible experiences. When I remembered this, and at the last straw with this friend, I walked away from it all. Yes, I know that people with histories of abuse in childhood are more likely to have a personality disorder in adulthood than those who never had those experiences. And yet I also believe in the human potential for change. I know that you can take away every choice from a child when he is abused. I also know that at some point a child becomes and adult and all adults have the choice to continue to be victims to the past or to progress from there. It’s a choice. My friend wasn’t without awareness of how her personality and the things she said and did hurt others (myself included), and she was a very smart woman academically and creatively. When I told her that something she did or said hurt me, she didn’t say “I’m sorry. I will try not to do it again”. No, she would say, “that’s just how I am. You know with what my dad did to me”. Yes, I knew that. I also knew he wasn’t currently doing that her; she was no longer a victim, she was just choosing to continue to wear the victim cloak as an excuse not to alter her adult behaviour. Finally, it hurt me too much to continue to be her friend when she found it easier to say “this is how I am” than to alter her behaviour to prevent hurting those that were simply trying to be a good friend to her.