A Beautiful Woman Died Last Week.

A beautiful woman died last week.

This doesn't come as news to most.  Indeed, a beautiful woman dies every day somewhere - and to be honest, countless dozens leave us daily.  Some are old and have lived a long, plentiful life, others leave far too soon.  In the last two years, many beautiful women have left far sooner than they should have.  We remember their names:  Mischa, Myra, Mandy, Freda, Patricia.  Photographs, stories left behind of happier days bring their faces back, recalling fragments of shared conversations, walks and visits, dinners - times that seemed commonplace, but were truly magical in that moment.

My wife to this day will want to grab the phone and call Freda, just to tell her of some milestone in our kids lives, some funny event, or a wrong or hurt that happened.  She might even get to the phone before catching herself, realizing that it's been two years since cancer stole her best friend away from this world.  Every best friend that falls, every confidant that is eroded away by disease, every prayerful rock that is pulled up by domestic violence, they leave behind shadows, voids, wounds.

You can't blame them, it really wasn't their choice most of the time.  For those who get a diagnosis that says "you have days/weeks/months to live", that news usually helps them to really live for the first time, to find out what they're truly made of.  Once treatment begins, that diagnosis often changes from weeks or months to actually being months or years.  Some say it's because of advances in medicine, and there's truth to that, but I suspect it's more that the disease is slowed down by an infusion of life, of people finally living for what they want to do, instead of going thru the motions, mired down in the routine of life.  The fog of life is lifted and people finally see what is the most important to them.  Not the car, not the cleanliness of the house, or the job that we sell our lives to like prostitutes.  They discover the important things like time, relationships, sharing, and their legacy.  In fact, those with terminal illnesses in a twisted way are the lucky ones - they have the time to adjust, to change, to resolve differences, to say the things that were always left unsaid, to find that new path and pack as much into it as they can, for they know that their end is nigh.  Even if they beat the odds and recover from that which threatened their mortality, that mark and legacy changes them, for they know that time is a fleeting thing, and there's so much living to do in such a short time.

A beautiful woman died last week.

Her family had just moved to a new city because of her husband's job.  They had been in the city for two weeks, not all the moving boxes had been unpacked, the boys were getting ready to go back to school in a new environment, the house in the old city hadn't sold yet, there were tens of dozens of chores to do, errands to run.  Her husband was home that day, ironically his job was that or ER Doc, and he is trained to handle most any physical trauma.
But a blood clot dislodging itself in her system changed everything.  She had time to call her boys in to her, and comfort them - telling them of her love for them and her joy of being their mother, all while her husband was dialing 911.  Not days, not weeks, but barely hours later she was gone.  She still got time to honor her family with last words of love and hope, although too too briefly.  She didn't spend that time giving out to-do lists, not in any traditional sense anyway, and her concerns wasn't that the house wasn't as presentable as she would like it.

What of those beautiful ladies who do not get that time to share, to give last words of comfort, of absolution before leaving?  Accidents happen were a life is changed, gone, in mere seconds.  Drunk, sleepy, medicated drivers, angry people who can't take out their frustrations on those who caused it, but instead turn their rage against bystanders.  Natural disasters of wind, fire, water that change entire landscapes in moments -- and there's no time to react before those stories are ended.  Their shadows are of a different intensity, the edges of the void left by their passing are much sharper, more jagged.  The questions that surround those are not so rhetorical, but their focus is more concrete, so much that people left behind can only speak to the spirit, the memory of she that was.  Their closure is harsher - the slamming of a door instead of the dimming of a light.  But the blame left behind is more tangible - wither at the person who caused the accident, produced the violence, or even drove her to take her own life to get away from her existence.

Many, many beautiful women died last week.

Life is a terminal condition - we can only reasonably predict the beginning.  The middle is a mystery, a melange or experiences that shape us daily.  Who we are is we are right now -- and that's different that who we were a year ago, or who we'll be a year from now.  The end of our life, which we want to be a mystery so many years in the making, isn't guaranteed a fixed time or place - only that it will happen.  We feel some sense of sadness for those that are given a glimpse as to when that time and place will be.  In our humanity, we hopefully grieve, whether greatly or quietly, when we hear of lives being ended, whether they were central to our lives, or a news story, whether it happened domestically or abroad.  Religious purges, ethnic cleansing, territorial exterminations - whether we call it justified or unjustified, build support or show outrage because of it, fire, flood, earthquake, war, famine, pestilence, disease, terrorism, accidents, oppression -- all of these words and actions are given so that we can wrap our heads around a universal truth:

A beautiful human being died, their story has ended, and our lives can never be the same because of it.

So is it better to be Safe or Aware? Kind or Empathetic?

Be Kind, Be Safe, Be Obedient.  This is a mantra that my wife uses when teaching both our kids and the kids in her classes in Sunday school.  It's a philosophy she's come up with in order to help our munchkins to make judgments when interacting with others, or (and is more often the case) to explain why they're in trouble when we talk to them after an incident.  In essence what she's trying to put forth in language that small children (3-8 years old) can grasp is:

Be Kind, Be Safe, Be Obedient.

Be Kind -- Play nice with others, don't be mean to them, treat others just like you'd want them to treat you.

Be Safe -- Play, work, interact in such a way that you burn off energy and enjoy things without putting yourself or others in harm's way.  Accidents happen, but do what you can to minimize the potential for injury.  Things like throwing rocks, running down hills, going into the street all have high potential for injury - so please don't do those things.

Be Obedient -- There are adults in your life that have experience above and beyond what you as a 3-8 year old have, and they see things that you might not.  If they care enough to correct, teach, direct, and/or warn you -- they're not doing it for the glory of correction -- they're doing it to better you and keep you safe and protected, and ultimately to further your growth.

Now, I know that this is what she means when she uses that particular phrase:  Be Kind, Be Safe, Be Obedient.  I can appreciate that those words are simple enough to be understood by small children, for the most part.  Whether they listen or not is a different story, but that's a different direction than the one that I'm currently on.  My thoughts though, are not that this particular mantra is wrong, but that it's not quite right.  Those particular words, although they sound good and most would not argue against them, when being ingrained early in a child, can lead thoughts away from more creative and potential growth endeavors in teenage years and adulthood - without the child really knowing why.

Unfortunately, there's not a similar thought bubble or catch phrase that works as well that encompasses my changes to that mantra, because a more mature understanding would be required, but here's my adjustment to her saying:

Be Empathetic, Be Aware, Be Respectful.

Be Empathetic:  Know your feelings, and understand that other people have feelings too, and know that your actions can impact their feelings in both a positive and negative way, and do your best to make their interactions with you be as positive as they can be - without sacrificing honesty and integrity.  One can be kind without going outside of their comfort zone to actually relate to how the other person is feeling, and it can have overtones of insincerity.  But it's very hard to be empathetic without coming out of a personal comfort zone, and it's far more sincere and relatable, and more powerful in building the trust and friendship between two people, whether on the playground in a sandbox, or over a coffee at the local hangout, or across a meeting table trying to negotiate business.

Be Aware:  Know your environment, whether physical, business, social, or intellectual.  Familiarize yourself with the potential risks that surround you, and acknowledge them for what they are, and figure out how to counter or minimize them as much as you can, but do not fear living because of them.  Experience, Experiment, Encounter, and Grow -- and all of these will further your Awareness, so it will be a constant cycle.  Safety sounds good to most normal people, but progress is not safe, risk is not safe, change is not safe, and honestly life is not safe.  If we have our kids key off of the word "be safe", it will eventually mean more than what we originally might be using it to mean.  But awareness is a concept that allows for growth, allows for change, allows for a dynamic life while adjusting for the amount of "risk" that the individual is comfortable with.

Be Respectful:  Know who is interacting with you, and their relationship to you.  There are those in the world who deserve respect due to position, due to title, or due to connection.  There will be others that you will come to respect due to who they are as a person.  Both will have valuable input into your life, whether in a teacher-student role, mentorship role, or job/profession role.  For people in positions of power, such as teachers, police, employers, politicians -- know the difference between respecting the position versus respecting the person.   There are very knowledgeable people who should be respected due to their accomplishments and role in society, even if there is little that could be deemed respectable about their personal life.  Conversely, there are people who are great mentors and who develop great respect in life due to the way they carry themselves and their personal integrity, even though they may not be in a profession that normally engenders great respect.  In either case, everyone has something to teach, something to offer, and as such is deserving of respect.
 
Note:  What the difference is between respect and obedience, at least in my eyes, is that when someone is respected - they will naturally engender obedience.  To require obedience implies a turning off of responsibility for critical thinking -- don't think about what I'm telling you to do - just do it.  In a way, requiring obedience is actually easier because it doesn't require the one teaching/making demands/putting forth the plan/barking orders to justify or explain why they are making the request/demand/whatever.  It does streamline processes, because it works on an action-reaction model that works in areas where excess critical thinking isn't required or desired.  If every decision is actively questioned at every point in the process, especially from every element in a large organization, it can be a drawn out process to get anything accomplished.  However, if critical thinking is removed from every level of a hierarchy, and blind obedience is required - flawed and/or potentially harmful decisions might be enacted without the proper checks and balances in place to protect both the organization making the decisions as well as those who would be directly impacted by the decision.

So, the challenge is for me to figure out a way to get these rather grown up concepts simplified to where young children can process them.  Either that or stick with Be Safe, Be Kind, Be Obedient until they hit eight or nine, maybe ten -- then make the change to Be Empathetic, Be Aware, Be Respectful - because then they'd be more able to understand the difference, and their development would be not quite so "me" oriented.  Maybe I'm overthinking it completely, but I look at some of the people I've worked with over the years, and I'm pretty sure that this change could do no more harm than what's already been done - and might improve things in the long run.

Why won't they play with me?

So I went to pick up my daughter from Sunday School, and I look in and she's playing Candyland by herself, with all the enthusiasm of someone waiting for a root canal.  Now this is not normal, she's normally running and playing in the gymnasium with the rest of the kids-burning off energy while waiting for the parents.  They call her name, she looks up and comes over making sure not to touch anyone else while she's leaving.

"What's wrong?"  "Nothing - I wanna go"

On the ride home, she let her mom know that nobody wanted to play with her.  Her two buddies that are normally there weren't there, and the other kids don't get her - and really have nothing to do with her.  She exists, they exists, but ne'er the twain shall meet.  She was nearly in tears the whole ride home, and as a Dad - I wanted to scoop her up, reassure her, say things like "their loss, it's ok, we love you, it's gonna be all right."

But it's not.  It most assuredly is not all right.

I thought back to my childhood, where I had 3 kids roughly my own age within a mile radius of my house, and we played together because I walked to their house, not because they came to mine.  We played together because of a lack of other kids to play with.  I played baseball with the nearest boy because he loved baseball, and I didn't care a fig about it.  But if we didn't play baseball - there wasn't a reason for him to play with me.  There was a girl further along who I would ride bikes with, and we'd talk and play various things, but again - we made it work simply because there weren't any other options.

In grade school, I had maybe 1-2 kids I would hang out with, in high school there were 3 in my grade who mostly understood me, and I understood them - and I probably had 8 friends in total over all the grades.  Now I had good (or at least cordial) relationships with most all my classmates - but there's a difference between ' good relationships' and 'friends'.  (Which is something Facebook really needs to learn, but that's a different rant).  My classmates knew that being around me, they had someone who could elevate their work and improve their grades and overall critical thinking.  But when it came to time to just hang out and visit -- be real about who we were and what we were about -- only a slim handful were in my corner - who understood me well enough to want to spend time with me.  When I've listened to my wife talk over the years about her school life, the story is quite the same -- lots of people to know, only a bare few that became good friends -- and a lot of trash talking from those both above and below in the social hierarchy.

In college for my first B.A. degree - the entire time I'd say I had 6-10 good friends at most, the rest were classmates and acquaintances.  In grad school, there were maybe two people who were good friends that I hung out with.  Second trip through college for my B.S. degree - not one good friend, only classmates.  The positive though was during that same time, outside of class - I met the woman who would eventually become my wife.  In my career and personal life, I dare say there's been another 8-10 people who I would classify as 'good friend'.  Even then, when my life transitioned from section to section, my friends and I fell away from each other, to the point of we have history - but honestly are no more than acquaintances now.  How could I, with that kind of history, honestly say to my daughter that what she's going through will change in any significant way?  I can sympathize with her, I can relate to her, but our personalities are very polarizing, and we just do not fit into the status quo in any meaningful way.

 I know there are several statements about "Kids don't see strangers, kids don't see race, kids just see someone to be friends with -- everything else is learned."  I agree with those statements, but she's to an age where the kids are developing their own personalities, and exhibiting what they've learned from their parents, their older siblings, and their older peers.  They're trying to define who they are, where they fit, and who they want to be with, and don't yet have the filters to learn how to be diplomatic.  They're noticing who's different from them, and relating it to the messages they've consciously and unconsciously been receiving for their life, all in an effort to establish a social hierarchy, and affix their place in it - usually by directly or indirectly putting down those who they feel should be under them in that hierarchy.  It's I think easier to find friends once you've discovered who you are, and once you've developed the strength of character to be yourself in spite of those who say "I won't be your friend unless . . ." or perhaps "the cool people are doing this . . . ."  But to those who are just starting that journey, and aren't quite blessed with the "popularity" gene, it is truly a tough journey - and one that requires a safe place where the wounded young can come to and be healed, fortified, reassured, and encouraged before wading back out into the fray.

Once we were home, she crawled up into my lap, and asked me why. . . . Why wouldn't they play with me?  I just wrapped her up, held her close, and said "because they don't know you like we do."  One day they might take that chance and get past the exterior, then again they might never chose to find out what a good friend my daughter can  be.  But she's gonna be her own person no matter what, and we're gonna love her through whatever comes.