eleven bee

“When the wind blows over the grass, it always bends.”  — Confucius

A girlfriend shared an article written by a woman who described how she dealt with her husband’s mid (late?) life crisis.  She compared her husband’s hurtful words to those of a toddler throwing a tantrum, trying to get someone’s attention.  Her approach?  She opted not to engage.  He said, “I don’t love you any more, and I’m not sure I ever did.”  And then she said, “I don’t buy it.”

When I employ this technique in my own life, I describe it as emotional kung-fu, or maybe psychic tai kwan do. Perhaps aikido?  (Man, I need to study up on my martial arts.)

It’s amazing the result that this has on people.  Especially on those people who are used to being able to goad others on, to engage others in their drama.  When they throw a swing, and you bend with the force of the blow, it throws them off.  It baffles them.

I’m good at turning away from Kai’s four year old attempts to steer the mood of the house.  I’m less used to tuning that out from others in my life.  But the better I get… the better I get.

When I was in the thick of my self-indulgent teenage years, I remember having a conversation with my dad’s older sister.  “Why,” she asked, pointing to the black uniform, torn fishnets and absurd black eyeliner worn by my goth brothers and sisters, “do you think you all came to this?”

My flip answer, and I remember it precisely, sitting out in the sunshine on the deck in my parents back yard, was “I dunno.  Maybe we’ve just been through more than your average teenager.”

She had been watching me closely, and when she heard my response, she leaned back and looked away.  “My girls had to pull their dad off of me to keep him from beating me senseless.  You’d think that if anything that would have turned them to the dark side.”

And she was right, really.  Instead she managed to raise two remarkably sunny girls.  Sunny girls who listened to Michael Jackson, and kept up with the latest fashions.  (Both who grew up to be super cool, creative women, as it turns out.)  Meanwhile, I lived a blessed life, two happy, well adjusted parents, nice home, suburban education; I wanted for nothing.  “Been through more?”  What in the world could I have been referring to?

I think the predilection for darkness must be driven by something else.  My dad certainly had it, as did his brother and his sister.  My  mom comes from more straight-forward stock, her family having no time to ponder the big existential questions while dealing with issues of day to day survival. As far as I know, no one in her family ever showed any inclination towards depression.

I wonder if maybe moodiness or heaviness of spirit is part genetics and part opportunity.  I think there’s likely to be a depression gene out there somewhere, but I do think that it needs the right environment to really flourish. There’s a good chance that my little guys have this gremlin gene in their DNA programming somewhere.  And certainly living here in serene Stepfordton, they will not likely have to worry about their every day survival, and will have all the time in the world to indulge in their self-centered reflections.

Maybe that’s okay.  I mean, I went through that same phase and came out the other side in tact.  In fact, my trip to Depressionville was, I think, a relatively short one.  I had a handful of deaths in the family over a relatively short period of time towards the end of my high school career which I think helped put some useful perspective on things.  I remember writing my college application essay on my realization that all this wallowing in darkness seemed pretty silly, when weighed against all the other real issues of the world around me.

And actually, now that I stop and think about it a little more, I wonder if my preemptive strategizing about ways to prevent my boys from going through all that might just be another pointless exercise.  I can’t protect my guys from having to go through difficult times, or feeling difficult things.  And actually I think all that is precisely what shapes us.  For better or for worse, we are the sum of our all of our experiences, good, bad, and otherwise.

Or at least that’s how things seem to me tonight.

image from:  http://www.toycyte.com