The Irresponsible Generation?

I don't get this attitude that I see so much of today. Blame laid anywhere but on oneself. Yes, times are hard, but they've been harder.

And sure, there's always some of that involved....

How do you not know you are going to graduate High School when you have been working for twelve years to get to that point? What happened to being responsible for oneself? Thinking for one''s self, thinking outside the box to get to where you need to be?

There seems to be some kind of a virus going around that absolves people from being responsible for themselves. It's a super virus among many conservatives, to be sure. You'd think in twelve years during K-12 years one would figure out they are one day going to be out on their own.

"I am 17, and my parents are going to kick me out on my 18th birthday in August to make me homeless. What do I do? I don’t have a driver’s license or a bank account."

Seriously? I suppose we can blame our parenting? I was a bit of a mess when I left home at seventeen. But I had a driver's licence, I got a job that started the day after HS graduation. I took responsibility and figured it all out on my own. My parents weren't any help, they assumed I'd do what I needed to. And I did.

It was painful. But no one helped me, I helped myself. I had no other choice. My parents weren't highly educated. My mother only got to ninth grade. My step-father graduated high school, but wanted little to do with me and was a blue collar warehouse worker. There were no expectations from them for me which was a good and a bad thing. Good emotionally. Bad career wise. But then, I had to figure things out for myself before I moved out and because of that, I handled my own situations after that.

What helped me more than anything was a friend back then telling me something important. He had said:

"Be responsible for yourself, because no one else will be. Yes, your parents may be to blame for your emotional problems or more. But once you are an adult at eighteen you need to accept responsibly for yourself. Even if your situation is not your fault or responsibility, take that responsibility on yourself. Because by accepting it you will be far ahead of the game."

And so I did that. It took a while but it was worth the pain over that next year or two as I adjusted to stop blaming anyone but myself for everything. In taking that responsibility, it gave me a brand new and more productive perspective.

We're seeing this lack of responsibility even in older generations now in things like the issues about Russian and even Republican disinformation campaigns. For over two decades now we've seen this kind of behavior in the GOP and with conservatives, with the NRA, with the tobacco industry, the car industry, and with many global corporations. Selfishness, greed, "me before others", this simple overall lack of accepting responsibility for our own actions and situations. Win at all costs, even if we are liars or abusers. I may even be in part an explanation for much of the sexual abusers we're now hearing about in the media that led to the "Me Too" campaign which was long overdue.

Once I had accepted responsibility for myself and my actions, my life got better. Eventually. It hurt, and it was painful. It took over a year to accept it, to get used to it. but life got better from that point on. It took a while for my living situation to get better but my mindset, my emotional state, my life orientation, even my friend's attitude toward me (and mine toward them) was instantly enhanced. And the rest of my life was all the better for it, than it would have been.

America needs to start doing that overall. Not just about our children, not just about ourselves. Not just about family, but about community in general and about our nation.

Perhaps in some ways we've confused a generation in our being so oriented to not do to our children what our parents did to us, in our being overly PC, in being too protective of our children. Perhaps our parents, even if misguided, actually (even if inadvertently), knew something we were msising?

I suspect one day this generation will get their act together, raise their kids differently and  (hopefully) do a better job than we did so their next generation will get it together overall and for us all.

Perhaps this is in part what is wrong with our government too. Not about our children obviously but about their parents who are now in power. We can see some of them, their attitudes, selfishness, being focused only on theory and defective agendas, not on humanity, process, or people, and not on our children.

Or perhaps this next generation will be even worse off? Well, hopefully not.

Our hope as it always is, is in our young. We need to invest in them, their education, healthcare, mental health, social health, and our own understanding of parenting them. I can only hope, we all can only hope, that they will be our hope and our future.

A future that will eventually get better than the ridiculous nonsense that is currently saturating our culture and our country,

The Art of Kid Talking

Originally posted on Facebook in 2013. I cleaned it up a bit for posting here as I felt it relevant to share again.

I've had many interesting discussion with my son and daughter that I suspect will be going on for a very long time. The are in their mid and late twenties now.

Even when my kids were very young I used to carry on some very interesting conversations with them. My now ex wife would be gone away at horse shows around the Pacific Northwest region and southwest for a week or even three at a time and so I had a lot of time with the kids.

You're missing some truly valuable resources if you don't see how smart the young can be, or even people with semi or even at times severe mental difficulties.

I'd talk to my kids about things way beyond their ability to understand them, just to entertain myself. I'd simplify them enough so that we could actually carry on a conversation, but they frequently had some very interesting and wise things to say.

Out of the mouths of babes.

We seldom do that. Which is sad. For all involved, because it builds critical thinking in them as well as self esteem in their being treated as equals. They usually don't get enough of that. It's actually even solved problems I've had.

One time when my daughter about four, we were on the floor, playing in her room. Out of the blue, she asked me what was wrong.

I was actually having problems at work. So I honestly told her that I didn't think she could help me. She said, "But maybe I can." I laughed. It was ridiculous. She was four. I worked in IT, in a high level computer and internet job. I'd been on some of the top teams in America as a Senior Technical Writer at a large communications company.

But then I figured, purely for her benefit at first, what did I have to lose? And maybe she could simplify things in a way that I couldn't, because I was too close to the problem. If for no other reason. I have a Bachelors Degree in Psychology. I should be able to pull this off, after all. And she was an interesting kid. I won't go into that now but there was something very unique about her. Other people noticed it just in seeing her.

So I got serious, really thinking about it. About how we don't chance things. How we see things so often in such limited ways, in not thinking out of a box and so on.

I thought, what the hell. I simplified the problem down enough for her to grasp and then sat back and listened. And she solved my problem!

At first I took her comments and couldn't figure out how it fit my situation. I almost dropped it right there. But I tend to be tenacious (tenacious "D" fan that I am, or even otherwise). I took the tact of, what if it actually did fit? Maybe I just wasn't applying her answer properly. Perhaps I wasn't seeing it clearly.

As I thought about it I found more and more over those next few minutes that did fit. The more I thought about it, the more I realized...she had actually solved the problem.

From then on, I asked her about other things. I asked my son, who was five years older than her. Like I said, we had some interesting conversations over the years. Especially from that moment forward.

We have so much wonder and wisdom in our lives that we frequently just disregard it. And it's sad. Sad for all involved.

Pathetic really, in how we don't make use of all that we have available to us.

Surviving Our Decisions in Life

There is a lot going on right now. Race relations in America are strained, most notoriously between the Black community and police. There is a lot being discussed on that topic and I needed a break from it. I will just say until we fix the systemic issues involved, simply fixing racism won't fix this issue.

Black Lives Matter. Police Lives Matter. Most Blacks are good people, most police are good people. Some of what is going on has to do with guns, which is another issue. Cops are fearful as well as some of them being racist. Some of the police departments are oriented toward negative expectations about their Black community. Some Black communities are oriented toward damaging themselves.

As I said there is a lot being discussed elsewhere, and a lot that should be discussed on this.

However for this week's' blog I'm taking a different, albeit a somewhat relevant direction....

I admit it. I've made mistakes in life. We all have. Some of us just recognize it more than others. Or at all.

I've thought I was doing the right thing in the past, or that I was doing what seemed reasonable, only to find much later that I had over time gained the wisdom to see reality more clearly with the distance I had gained from those times and events. I always reflect on things.

I reflect on them even in the moment, as they are happening, considering them through various layers of meanings, and perspectives in real time. What some friends and family have called, "overthinking". At times it is a great benefit, at times a great detriment.

Yet, no one can see everything. And we all have our filters. We all are defective. We all are capable of great harm, as well as great good. Those who do not recognize that are called foolish, if not stupid. Those who see it and revel in their great good, who seek it out at all costs are called saints. While those enraptured by their capacity for great harm, who seek it and pleasure in it are called evil.

I've been married, let's say, three and a half times. I count that one as half as we hadn't actually gotten legally married but were together longer than what common law marriage is usually considered to be, though we do not have that in Washington state. But I felt she deserved that acknowledgement for our time together, for any burden I placed on her, for the great times we shared. To be fair to myself, she was at time a burden too, she had her own demons.

I don't know how she feels about all that. Because she appears to not want to talk to me anymore. Not since our last phone call in about 1988 and in some ways, I don't blame her. Sometimes it's best to move on, to leave the past in the past. Still as I pointed out, I like to reflect and part of that is to reconnect, review and put my understanding of myself, who I have been, in proper perspective.

I want to think I'm a good or even great person, but I've fallen down on that after reflecting with others on their shared memories with me. The flip side of that coin however is that I have also discovered after years of feeling bad about something in the past, that others saw my now ancient actions as having been far above expected behavior, and greatly appreciated. You just never know.

I prefer reality, both for myself and others. I want people to have a realistic view of what actually happened in the past. I want to be seen for my actions, either good or bad, accurately. Yet, sometimes, you cannot achieve that closure. And that, can be painful. So I've learned to let it go when that happens.

Sometimes it's just not worth the damage you get in seeking closure. Sometimes it is, and yet you will never find it for any variety of reasons. Sometimes that reason is another person's misperception of what happened. Sometimes, there is nothing you can do about that and you know, they will, you will, both die one day with that having never been rectified.

So when I think poorly of someone's actions in my past I try to keep that in mind. Maybe things weren't as I had perceived them, or how I remember them. Perhaps if we talked now I would discover what damage they did to me, was damage I had done to myself. Were things as I believed them to be, as I remember them? Certainly not always as I discovered in researching for a film I have written. It's now been at one production company, oddly enough, out of London. A very American mob film being reviewed by a very British film studio.

In 1974 I was eighteen. The screenplay about it is called Teenage Bodyguard. I came up with a more poetic title with, Slipping The Enterprise. The executive producer of the film studio said it reminded him of Ryan Gosling's film, A Place Beyond the Pine. I see it in two formats, as a biopic, what actually happened, enhanced to be more entertaining but sticking mostly to the truth of what happened, or a based on type of film where we could cut loose and just shoot for entertainment.

The story goes that I had spent a week with a strip club waitress back in 1974. A friend asked me to give a woman a ride who had been staying with him. When I got her to her new residence, she asked me to stay with her until she could leave town at the end of the week. IF I had a gun. Oddly enough, I did. And she could have made a worse choice in asking me. The local Tacoma mob back then called themselves, The Enterprise. They thought she had witnessed a murder. A murder that she believed they had committed but public records, even today seem to indicate it was a random killing by an anonymous killer.

During my research I came to discover that the "friend" I helped out in giving her a ride, was actually setting me up in a way. He was eliminating a threat to his safety by getting rid of the woman, and putting that threat squarely on my shoulders, probably rationalizing that wasn't the case and that I would drop her off somewhere (he didn't want to know, what was odd and the first warning sign), and that would be the end of it.

I had gone through decades of my life thinking we were friends and finally, over thirty years later came to discover he may have been putting my head on a chopping block. Life, isn't always how we think it is. Obviously.

I'm single now, unmarried since 2002. Single again since 2010 after a few girlfriends. Single to spend my spare time on writing and building a new career in order to leave an old one.

I had originally married the first time at twenty. Proud that I hadn't gotten married in my teens like some of my friends. After that marriage failed, I avoided marriage for some years. I was devastated that I had broken a vow. "My word is my bond", was a favorite saying of mine. In divorcing, I had broken my most powerful bond to date. I was proud many years later, of not having quickly jumped back into another potential mistake as so many do. See, I never wanted to break another vow.

After some years I did marry again. It was kind of against my better desires and I was pretty much pushed into it. Or pulled into it, depending on how you view it. Partially because I thought I owned who became my son's mother, for making me smile again. Partially because the woman from the half of a marriage had told me one day, long after we split up:

"Do something for me. The next girl who wants to marry you? If she wants to get married, just marry her. OK?" That kept resonating in my head for years. I had made her life miserable in not wanting to marry again. I told her we could end up together for the rest of our lives, I just don't want to marry again. But she never understood. We were both raised Catholic, but I was further down that road of casting off that desert religion for a more sane way of viewing life.

So I married again. I married out of obligation. Even though I knew it wasn't a good match for me. However in considering those who I had thought were a good match, they hadn't been either. So I thought if I tried someone I didn't think would be right for me, maybe I could get around making yet another mistake.

Of course, that one didn't work out either. Obviously. As a friend later said, "So you went from making decisions, to making no decision, or worse. Choosing what you thought was wrong. And you thought that was a good idea?"

Dumb and dumberer.

The final time I married (so far anyway, as I guess I'm always looking for my next ex-wife....), I thought I had I had found the sweetest young lady I could ever have imagined. It was 1995. My son was five and rife with ADHD. He was difficult to parent and I desperately needed a partner in raising him.

Life was good for a few years. Then things changed as they so often do. Life as usual got in the way of romance, killing it.

In the end, or even long before that, she wasn't any longer so sweet. In fact she got rather nasty, and then downright angry. I had thought just in keeping her happy, I'd have a handle on things. But some people don't want to be happy. Their expectations are too high and no one can live up to their expectations. I used to be like that in my twenties. I probably still have some of that lurking within me in a cancerous state, waiting to leap out at all the wrong moments. But I sincerely hope not.

For years I looked back over these past relationships, consoling myself in believing that those women did better after having known me. Now with many years distance from those relationships, with having gained more wisdom, with the clarity that comes from being single for a long time, and with actually seeing how their lives have worked out for them, I can see things perhaps more as they are in reality.

Were their lives all the better, or the worse, in having known me? Or were they just as they are for people in life? We experience, triumph or fail, heal our wounds, hopefully become the stronger for it and move on knowing our lives are richer for it all. For the pain, for the love, for the confusion and the frustration.

I made some decisions correctly to be sure, with the information I had available to me at the time. With my limited wisdom. I had the intent to do good, to be a good person. But there were things I simply hadn't known at the time. Things I couldn't (yet) see, no matter how hard I tried.

It all added up in the end to who I was at the time. Had I meant well? Yes. But I was also protecting myself. I was living the life but simply hadn't known everything. Or enough of everything, anyway. But that is how life is for all of us. Isn't it?

I didn't know what charisma was about, how it worked, or that with at least some people, I had it for them and in dealing with them. I should have known it though. I should have seen it. My siblings have it. Yet my own damaged self-esteem wouldn't let me see that I too, must have it.

It wasn't until I was about thirty that I experienced someone leaving me in a serious long term romantic relationship. I always thought that was a good thing. Until it happened. Then reality rushed up and kicked me in the face. I thought, I must be worth staying with if women didn't leave me. Sure I'd had short relationships, one night stands even, but I was always the one to break it off or leave (or so I viewed it up until that time).

Finally one day, as an adult in a long term, live-in relationship, I was left. I found that in never having had the experience of being dumped, I didn't have the tools I needed to deal with it. And in this case I was dumped hard (I discovered she was having an affair). I lacked the experience to know how to handle it. How to handle it in a non self-destructive way, that is.

I spent the next year and a half trying to literally party myself to death. To numb the pain, to kill the bad feelings, the destroyed self-esteem, to just end things. It wasn't an outward expression I could recognize so much as it was an inward desire, striving to get out. I was partying hard like a pro, not partying destructively like a fool.

And yet it nearly did kill me. Multiple times I almost succeeded though I never made it to a hospital. It truly was the lowest period in my life.

And yet, I'm still here.

I've learned a few things along the way. My second legal marriage ended in a similar way. A woman leaving me for another, just as the previous time. Even though she knew my story. Even though I had asked her to just leave me if she wanted out, not to abuse me by having an affair. Because the last time that happened, it almost killed me. But she used that information as a tool to hurt me. I had inadvertently given her ammunition, and she used it.

That speaks to who she was at that time as a person, more than what it says about me. We had a child together, I was working hard, trying to make it in life, trying to support a family and love them. I tried to be a good father and husband. But the women I've been with this last half of my life, wanted a good husband and father, in that order. And that too says much more about them, than me.

In having gone through that once already, and in not really wanting to have had a second marriage anyway, the second time around I found that I much more easily survived it. I realized at some point that I had actually lucked out of that marriage. I finally had a child but not the family I had always wanted. I had made poor choices, yet again. Or perhaps, good choices but for the wrong reasons.

Either way, life tosses you curve balls. Things come out of left field that you never expect. Things you may not have the ability or the life experience to properly ascertain and react to.

Here's the thing.....

If we try hard, if we pay attention, if we consider what is important, not always just about ourselves as the primary factor, we can survive and then later reflect on it all, knowing that we did our best.

Even if we failed.

It is much like it is in parenting. We all make mistakes. None of us knows what is right to do all the time. Each child, each person is different. There really are no cut and dried answers for all situations. But especially with children. If you protect them and most importantly if you simply love them, they will forgive many of your mistakes in their life and they will love you back. They will grow up to be good people. You will have succeeded in doing your job. Just help them to be the best person they can be, and not just what you want them to be. It's about them after all, not you.

They have to find their way too. It is your job to help them in that pursuit. It is that way with those in a romantic relationship with you too, or for that matter with any person in your life. Especially with those you most love and cherish.

So it is with so much of life.

If you are the good person others know you as, if others know you as a good person and you know you try to be the best person you can be, then life, people, children, will forgive your mistakes. Even your shallow actions. Still, they will love you back and you can go on knowing that you mean well, that you do well, that you have a way of viewing life that is productive. Not just for you or yours or just for your community, or only for your beliefs or your God however you define that concept.

But for Life in general. For all of us. And so in the end and most importantly, for you. And then, you can feel good about it, without regret.

Live. Love. Learn. Repeat.