Social responsibility

I was at a social event a while back, outside of my neighborhood, with people I sort-of know but don't know well. It was a small gathering.

At one point I was talking about Eldest and her job search (she's a senior now), and how she wants to put her computer science degree to use in a position where it would make a difference in the world. She's not interested in working in finance, and not interested in start-up shopping services, and not interested in designing violent computer games. She's looking at companies at the intersection of computers and education, and at firms that build computer games that improve health outcomes, and at places that make applications to accelerate relief services after natural disasters.

One of the women turned to me and asked, "How do you teach a kid that kind of social responsibility? Kids feel so entitled these days!" Then the doorbell rang, so I didn't get to answer.

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Had I had the chance to reply, my reply would have been, "You can't teach social responsibility... you have to live it." I would have also said that there's no guarantee. I don't know what proportion of what parents teach their kids gets tossed out; I've always guessed it's about 30%. It's probably a different 30% for each kid, too. Kids make their own choices, and some of them will end up having values very different from ours.

All we get to choose is the input. This one of the things I think many parents struggle with mightily: even if we do it all "right", at best we influence rather than control the outcome.

We're also notoriously blind to our sins of omission. What we teach our kids consists not only of what we say is right and wrong, but by what we show them. We can assume our children know we believe we should take action to alleviate human suffering, but they don't see what happens in our heads. They don't even see the check we put in the mail for typhoon relief. If we remember to tell them about the check, we forget that they don't necessarily know a) the thought process that went into our decision, b) whether the amount we sent constitutes a real sacrifice or simply an allocation of funds, or c) what our role is in alleviating suffering in the world.

We may forget to talk about how suffering is a constant for many people, not a weather-driven exception. We may forget to muse aloud about how hard it is to remember that others suffer, and how hard it is to remember -- in the midst of thinking about what we'd like to eat for dinner -- that we are the means of making the lives of others better.

When someone else's extreme suffering intrudes on our feelings, we have social sentiment. Social responsibility is what we do day in and day out.

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I think it helps not to have extra money to donate to causes. Kids, after all, learn by doing, not by writing checks.

They learn by shopping for the food pantry ("Let's buy the good stuff, because think of what a bummer it would be if you had to go to the food pantry for Thanksgiving dinner supplies. And think how happy you'd be to see something really yummy in your bag!")

They learn by coming with you when you deliver the meal to the mom with a newborn. ("I betcha Sam's mom is exhausted. So I made them supper to make her day a little easier.")

They learn by having to deal with your absence when you're at a community board meeting, or when you shlep them along to put up fliers for an event, or when you send them on an errand to help a neighbor.

The main thing is that they get the picture by connecting the dots... and there have to be a lot of dots for the picture to make sense.

Happy 15th, Dancer!

Quick, but more later

I've been working on a couple of posts, but mostly just working. Here's my latest over at Guideposts.

Bad tooth, redux (and resolved)

I headed to the dentist this morning, to have That Tooth extracted. You know the one: the last time they tried to get it out, they broke my jaw, instead.

I got a letter from my insurance company last week saying it won't pay for the previous "extraction", because the dental school hasn't sent them any documentation. Hmmmm. I think one of three things happened: 1) the dental office didn't send documentation because the tooth is still in my mouth, 2) the insurance company has cut back on file clerks, since they'd just assured me last week that they'd reviewed my dental records and there'd been no malpractice, or 3) someone's out to make me crazy.

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The resident came in and was puttering around. My dental student -- who was going to be observing -- got things ready. The two chatted a bit. The dental student had already shot me full of numbness, and was beginning to put the nitrous oxide to my nose when I stopped her. "He's not going to touch me until he has the decency to introduce himself," I said firmly. Startled, he did.

This is one of the advantages of middle age: if someone younger than you is doing something that's just plain wrong, you have few qualms about saying so. A decade ago I wouldn't have spoken up.

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It took longer to extract than you'd expect. I thought a lot about how much worse it would have been a hundred years ago, or if I lived in the third world today, or if someone were doing this to me as part of an human experiment during WWII. I offered up whatever suffering I might need to endure, asking that it might be used to alleviate the suffering of others who are undergoing worse pain, including our friend Ken, who is undergoing a major procedure today.

It wasn't too bad -- except when the dentist was twisting a piece of the tooth and I could feel the pressure. Then I had to consciously relax my muscles again and again, and let the process be what it was: scary. It was during a moment like that that my jaw had snapped.

After it was over and I was stitched up, my student dentist asked gently, "How are you now?"
"Not as scared as I was!" I replied.
"Me either," she admitted, "I was praying the whole time!"
"Me too," I said.
"This is a bad memory that will stay with you a long time," she said ruefully.
"Naw," I said, surprising even myself, "The only thing we need to remember about hard things is that we got through them. Learn what you can, and be glad it's over. We'll both be okay."

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All that said, I'm feeling pretty proud of myself. And sore.

Miscellaneous thoughts on miscellaneous feelings

Yesterday I took Dancer to a doctor's appointment. It was at a clinic that's only open in the mornings, so she had to miss school. The clinic, of course, was slow. We needed blood work done. Then I discovered I didn't have Dancer's insurance card, which was okay for the clinic but not okay for the lab. As my brain scrambled, I talked out loud, trying to figure out how to come back without having Dancer miss another morning of school. My daughter said, "Mom, calm down!"

I didn't think I was all that agitated, but then self-perception isn't everything. Sometimes what matters is how your kid perceives your level of worry.

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Long ago I gave my kids permission to tell me to stop if I start to rant. They do this. It helps. There are occasions when I get going and have a hard time stopping, but to have a kid comment, reasonably objectively, "Mom, you're ranting!" does tend to put a cork in it.

There are better ways to express frustration and anger than ranting. They're not easy to think of in the moment, but if someone points out what you're doing (and you don't want to be a ranter), you can usually hold it in until you think of a better way to handle your feelings.

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I hate nagging. To my way of thinking, to nag is the same as to take on the role of being someone else's frontal lobe. I don't want that job. I want others to have their own, functional frontal lobes. I am willing to prompt my kids. I am willing to remind them once, maybe twice. I am willing to work with them to help them figure out how to remind themselves. But I get annoyed if I have to nag.

I would buy supplemental frontal lobes if they sold them, like external hard drives. Wouldn't that be awesome?

The effect of fear

I recently read Cheryl Sandberg's book Lean In. I hadn't planned on reading it, because I'm kind of past that stage in my life, but I do have a college senior this year, and I thought it might be useful to her. It's extremely well done. Lots of wisdom, and very little rant.

One line at the end of the first chapter has been ringing in my head. It's taken from the commencement address Sandberg gave at Barnard in 2011. Her closing lines were, "So go home tonight and ask yourselves, "What would I do if I weren't afraid? And then go do it."

She's nailed something. She's nailed how fears, whether big ones or small, impact our lives. I love this. What would I do if I weren't afraid? Afraid that I'd fail, afraid that others would think less of me, afraid that I couldn't follow through, afraid that it's too much for me.

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Some years ago, while our family budget was undergoing yet another downsizing, I realized that I was far more anxious about finances than I'd ever been. I'd nipped and tucked at our expenditures until there was nothing more to nip.

I was feeding my family of seven on $125 a week (at New York prices), I was bartering writing services so my kids could do extracurricular activities, I was working part-time to make ends sort-of meet and I was homeschooling three kids, and Big Guy's vast array of support services made it impossible to move. I couldn't get a full-time job, because my kids were already on emotional tenterhooks due to Big Guy's volatility, and I didn't see how they could manage that big a structural change.

Basically, there seemed to be no way out. And that was before Andrew lost his job.

One day, in exasperation at my rising sense of general panic over not being able to make ends meet, I asked myself, "Okay, so what is it you're really afraid of?" The answer came back, I'm afraid we'll lose our home.

So I asked myself the next question. "And what would you do it you lost the house?"

My reply to myself: I don't know, but obviously I'd do something.

The effect of this on my spirit was astonishing. For I realized that the miasma of fear that I'd been living in had at its core the assumption that there was a cliff involved, a cliff that I and my family would fall off of if some sort of miracle didn't occur. The fact that I didn't know what I would do didn't mean I would do nothing. Of course I would do something. It wouldn't be optimal. It wouldn't be easy. But I'd do it. And that made the whole scenario a whole lot less scary.

Once I stopped being afraid, I was better able to do what I could do.

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I once chatted with a neighborhood dad about his daughter. He confided, "She's got so much energy I'm always afraid she's going to make mistakes and get hurt."

I laughed as I replied, "Oh, you don't have to worry about that! Of course she's going to make mistakes. Of course she'd going to get hurt. She's a kid! The key thing is whether or not she has the skills to recover, and how quickly she can bounce back."

Fear can make us focus on the wrong questions, preventing us from finding the right answers.

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What would I do if I weren't afraid? I'd write a book called Wisdom: Growing into Being a Better Parent and Person.

When I ask myself exactly why I'm afraid, the answer comes back that I'm afraid I'd discover that some of what I believe is insight gained from working through hard things is wrong, or that people would think that I think I'm wise (which I don't).

I'm also afraid that if I get started, another crisis will occur. Because my life kind of goes like that, you know. Except I would guess that if there's another crisis in the wings, it will happen whether I write a book or not.

Am I asking the right questions?

The Event

At the Event, with the wonderful head of the Parks  Department
for northern Manhattan

You may have noticed that I post relatively few pictures on this blog. That's not because I worry about privacy, but because I am photo challenged. My kids are probably the most un-photographed, un-videoed offspring in America. I tend to document life with words. 

The only mirrors in our house are on the medicine cabinets in the bathroom, so I also tend to be surprised when I see what I look like in pictures. I'm not certain if the picture above is a good resemblance or a bad one. But I do like the photo, mainly because I like Jennifer's smile, and I was happy when the shot was taken. As you can see, I'm several years older than when my headshot (in the upper left of the blog) was taken.

With the bigwigs at the Event. The senator has the mike.

Someone recently did a study analyzing Tweets throughout the city, and concluded that our park was the happiest place in Manhattan. The saddest place was one of the high-profile high schools. It's not surprising that being outdoors in beautiful surroundings makes people happy, or that toiling in a cement building with a couple thousand stressed teenagers leads to less cheery sentiments.

The park overlooks the Palisades; one of the Rockerfellers
bought the land so that the view could be preserved
and people could see what it looked like when Hudson arrived .

These photos are not, of course, my doing. I don't even know who took them. But I thought you might like to see them, anyway.