Family Life
Failure to Communicate
I often feel that our ability to communicate is falling into the trap of diminishing returns. New forms of communication, at their start, are very pure. They focus on connecting people in a very personal and intimate way. Over time, external pressures on communications providers cause a dilution of the purity. Communication becomes less about sharing a story, experience, or memory, and more about a transaction.
Take email, for example. When AOL was the big kid on the block, you seldom had new email every time that you logged on. Yet, when you did have email, it was something worthwhile. It was a note from a friend or relative sharing something with you. Today, you likely get dozens of emails every single day, most of which you delete sight unseen. Email is now a chore, a bore, and a ball weighing you down.
Social media is trending in the same direction. Platforms come and they go. Some explode in popularity and go out in a great ball of fire. Others, like Facebook, remain, but die a long, slow death. They take precious hours from your life and, as they become more transactional, fall further away from the ultimate goal of connecting people in any real way.
I mentioned to Alison the other day that there will come a point where we stop calling our cell phones a “phone.” Most of our communication isn’t done over voice calls, but rather texts, emails, and apps. I think that if we’re to build authentic human relationships, we need to be more intentional about connecting with one another and move our communications outside of the transactional channels.
Voice calls, video calls, text messages, and letters are the channels in which to foster and develop better, more intentional, relationships. While some may argue that text messaging isn’t real communication, I beg to differ. Text messages are like passing notes in class or the telegraphs of old. They’re non-intrusive (unless the receiver makes them so), short messages passed between two people. We need to bring back personal letters. Letter writing takes time, but it’s a time honored tradition that expresses not just the thoughts and emotions that you wish to convey, but that the person is worth the time you took to author the letter. Voice calls are always great, but seem to be slowly falling out of favor. Connecting with relatives whom you don’t see often can best be done using voice calls. Most exciting for us is video calls. I find it particularly exciting with young children because it allows for our relatives to see and interact with Benedict in a real way, and vice versa.
We all desire better communication and connection with one another, and yet few of us make positive steps to improve. Identify those in your life with whom you’d most like to connect with, and take intentional steps to make those connections happen.
Learning Happens Everywhere
Learning is a life-long pursuit and chances are, at one point or another, you’re going to sign up for some program of study in your adult life. You may be working on a degree, certificate, training program, leadership/management program, new job training, or even just taking up a hobby. The task of undergoing schooling so many years after you completed your last phase of education can be daunting. Yet, it’s a challenge worth taking on.
I recently began my study towards becoming a Flight Instructor. I have a Pilot’s License and now I’m ready to challenge myself and my skills as a pilot by working towards that higher rating. There is a tremendous amount of study required, multiple written tests, multiple oral tests, and multiple flight tests. It’s no easy task, and rightfully so. As I sat down to gather the resources to begin study, I felt overwhelmed.
Many adults go back to school decades after their last formal education, and for me, I’ve only been out for six years. I still feel the pressure of relearning good study habits and a bit of test anxiety. My choice to pursue this study was totally voluntary, meaning that I chose this pain. Learning new skills and expanding your knowledge is always worth the pain.
We’ve created a system in the United States that tells us that learning happens in the classroom; if you’re not in a classroom, you aren’t learning. That is a destructive worldview because it discounts the multitude of learning opportunities. Exploring your neighborhood, going to a zoo, going to a museum, listening to a lecture, and even reading a book are a few of these opportunities. You can literally learn anything you want from books and so, by being an avid reader, you are increasing your intelligence. In fact, when boiled down, university study is essentially reading with guided discussion and testing.
The mind is a terrible thing to waste. Be intentional about expanding your horizons and engaging in educational pursuits, formal or otherwise. Challenge yourself and be a role model to your children. Show them that learning never stops and that it is always worthwhile.
Give Locally
Until recently, Alison and I didn’t really have a giving strategy. Each month, we’d go over the solicitations that we’d received from various causes in the mail along with how much we had budget for giving. We’d write checks, send them out in the mail, and that was how we did things. There’s nothing wrong with that strategy. People were helped, good causes were able to move forward, and all was well. Lately, I’ve been rethinking our strategy because what was missing was a feeling of connectedness.
Most of us are not called to be missionaries or to run charities, so instead we support those worthy actions materially. Our charitable dollars go towards enabling those who are directly involved in social work are able to help those who need it most. There is, however, the temptation for us to give money and wash our hands. We need to be connected in a very real way to our giving beyond our signature on the check.
An excellent way for you to be more connected to your giving is to do a sizable portion of it to local charities. Help people in your community, and watch your charitable dollars going to work right at home. This type of giving builds relationships between your family and the charity that you’re supporting, enabling you to perhaps even give of your time as well. Money gets food sent to a food bank, but it doesn’t unbox the food and put it on the shelves. Money buys an ultrasound machine, but it doesn’t talk to the scared pregnant teenager who needs to hear the truth of the baby growing inside of her. We need to do more.
There is great consolation and beauty in giving of one’s time because, in some way, it’s more difficult than giving of material resources. We place a premium on our time, and so when we give it away out of a spirit of generosity, we’re able to better serve the poor and vulnerable. Plus, an hour of volunteering bears more fruit than an hour of Netflix.
I most value the relationship that’s built between cause and donor. When you build a strong relationship, you’re in a position to shape vision, provide even more financial support, and understand that your donations truly are at work, helping people right where you live.
Our lives are busy, but by giving to local charities both materially and of your time, you’ll make a positive and lasting impact right where you live. Even more importantly, involve your children so that they can have a model of generosity that will shape the kind of adults they’ll be in the not too distant future.
Where Are Your Manners?
I follow the work of Shawn Blanc pretty closely. Shawn is a writer based in Kansas City who does a variety of work and writing based on doing your best creative work and the tools to help you achieve that end. Among his sites are Tools & Toys and The Sweet Setup. I like Shawn because he and I share very similar tastes, and so if he find a particular app to be very helpful, I will likely do the same. One of Shawn’s sites recently featured a book recommendation, “Emily Post’s Essential Manners for Men: Second Edition” by Peter Post. Emily Post’s writings on etiquette are the gold standard on the subject, and now her grandson, Peter, is carrying on her legacy.
The United States Armed Forces is a professional military organization that focuses as much on customs and courtesies as it does on accomplishing the mission. As the son of an Air Force office, this high level of discipline, attention to details, and the importance of manners was a part of my upbringing. My brother and I were responsible for getting my mom’s car door, I still always use “sir” and “ma’am” and I always send thank you notes. Manners and etiquette are both lost communication arts in modern society, the saddest part of which is that good etiquette reflects a high level of self-confidence and self-worth.
I picked up a copy of the book and am working my way through it with one goal: I want to be better at respecting Alison and interacting socially with other adults. As Alison gets closer to graduation and we begin job interviews, the way that I present myself in various settings will make an impact and could potentially make or break a deal. Beyond that, I want to act appropriately in a way that conveys a sense of respect and compassion.
While many of us fail to grasp fully what etiquette truly is, Peter lays out three exceptional principles that clearly illustrate the spirit of the topic: consideration, respect, and honesty.
Consideration is taking into account how others will feel and react to any given situation. Peter describes it as empathy. For example, if I’m at a dinner and I notice someone being mostly left out of the conversation, I can understand how that’d make me feel. I’d feel a bit awkward, uncomfortable, and frankly, put off. Understanding how that individual may be feeling, I can bring them into the conversation by changing the topic to something within their wheelhouse. If I know anything about them, I can ask a question about that thing and let them open up and feel included and comfortable. In order to be very good at the principle of consideration, it’s important to be a good listener. Hear and file away what people are saying, especially about their backgrounds. This is always a great starting point… who doesn’t love to talk about what they truly care about?
The second principle is respect. Respect is the understanding of how your actions will affect someone else. Our human nature often encourages us to do that which will make us feel good, which is why so many employees leave their companies on a bad note. They say what’s on their mind because they believe it is without consequence, but not action is without consequence. Hurtful words hurt, no matter what. Living in a spirit of respect will cause you to make decision that will build up your relationships with others instead of damage them. Respect may be steering away from topics of conversation that may bring up bad memories, not repeatedly reminding others of their faults, or even winning in a competition with grace.
The third principle is honesty. Honesty is conveying truth, but done in a courteous way. Instead of calling someone else’s idea stupid or inane, you could politely disagree by stating your disagreement with the idea without the need to attack or debase it. Honesty does require that we’re genuine, but that we are in a way that’s not brutal.
If we’re able to successfully incorporate these three principles into each situation that we find ourselves in, we’ll gain the esteem and respect of those around us, and mutually reap the benefits of positive human relationships. Everyone wins when we walk away from a social situation in which we’re all built up, included, and respected.
The E Word
One of men’s greatest flaws is our inability to express, process, or deal with emotions. We know two emotions: passion and anger. The depth of the human experience is lived through the vast spectrum of emotion, each eliciting a different set of responses and lessons. Our female counterparts are often blamed for being too emotion, but I believe that it’s precisely their ability to intuit and live through their emotions that they’re able to live more fully alive.
I think that men downplay emotions because of how we believe that we will be perceived. We’ve been told that emotions are weakness or that they cloud our judgement. As a result, we’ve come to believe in two types of emotion, good and bad. The problem with marginalizing those emotions that we consider to be “bad” is that they may be telling us something that’s either untrue or a lesson that we need to learn.
I’ve been working on being more perceptive as I approach the end of two years as a stay-at-home dad. I work, yes, but my primary daily responsibility is the care of our children and our home. Benedict is always happy, energetic, and engaging when other people are around, but during the day when its just he and I, I oftentimes won’t get that same level of energy and expression. That makes me feel like he’s bored with me and so I perceive myself feeling the emotions of inadequacy, failure, and disappointment. When I vocalize those feelings to Alison, she reassures me by sharing her knowledge of personalities, adolescent behavior, and human growth.
Consider if instead of processing those emotions, I kept them inside. Those feelings of inadequacy, the most baleful and dangerous that a man can experience, would gnaw at me to the point of obsession. While I’d be sidelining those emotions, I’d likely become more cold, distant, and cutoff from Benedict resulting in a less vibrant relationship. Over time, it would be incredibly destructive, all over emotions that were both unprocessed and based on a falsehood.
This is what’s at stake when we fail to embrace who we are a humans and live through the emotions that we experience. Emotions drive behavior whether we deal with them or not. Although we may not be as perceptive as our female counterparts, we can perceive if we’re sensitive to how the day’s events impact us. The beauty of marriage is that we have a very safe place to express our emotions, to get an outside opinion, and perhaps even advice on how to proceed.
Emotions are not the enemy, failure to process them is. Be connected to who you are and live more vibrantly in harmony with your emotions.
A Balanced Social Life
The interview season is in full swing for Alison. We’re about 18 months from graduation and her schedule is full of calls, phone interviews, and soon we’ll be travel to conduct site visits. It’s very exciting to finally see all of her work paying off, but it’s also exciting for us on the social front as well.
Medical school and residency are not conducive to a robust social life. Certainly there is time for socialization and many of her classmates have been successful in pursing social adventures. However, the changing nature of the schedule, along with onerous work and long hours preclude us from having the type of social life that we desire.
All of that is about to change. In recent weeks we’ve been talking about our future and our plans, and we’ve come to the realization that our lives are about to fundamentally change in a way that we’ve never experienced in our married life together. Our schedule is about to be our own… how will we use it?
I think that Alison and I both share a deep longing to be an active family in our parish and to connect with other young families. We’ve had some success so far, but not in the way that I experienced as a child growing up. After Mass we’d always spend time standing around and chatting with friends from the parish, our priests would be regular guests in our home, and we often went out and about town on errands.
Now that we have a family, and now that we have two cars again, I’d like to see us step into that level of engagement. It’s the way we as humans are made. We’re social beings who long for interaction, engagement, and connection. I want to share our table with friends and help in the local community.
A social life as a family is very different from the social life of a student or a young professional. It’s refined and has the objective of engagement as opposed to interior objectives. Having a solid social life is more than just beneficial for the parents; it’s a great life for the children who get to experience what it means to be human.
The Entitled, Envious Millennials
I read an interesting opinion article in the Wall Street Journal that took on the issue of a generation of disrespectful children. In the article, the physician writes about his experience of children being overtly disrespectful to their parents during his office visits. While the author acknowledges that not all children misbehave, it’s much more prevalent than it was 20-30 years ago. Interestingly, he cites research that demonstrates that disrespectful children, “are more likely to grow up to be anxious and depressed, three times more likely to be overweight, more likely to be fragile, less healthy and less creative, compared with respectful children.”
Growing up in a military family, respect was a part of my upbringing. That military bearing that includes the “Yes, sir” and “No, ma’am” responses that I still give today without thinking has indeed resulted in my not having anxiety or depression, and I find myself to be healthy and very creative. I hope to bring up my own children with the same level of respect not only so that they’ll respect others, but so that they’ll respect themselves.
I think we’re really seeing this theme of disrespectful children all grown up in our society today. Millennials have gotten a bad reputation that is somewhat their fault, but is mostly their parent’s fault. A generation of poor parenting has resulted in perhaps the laziest, most entitled generation that we’ve ever seen. This isn’t just about Millennials seeking a better work-life balance, or a different set of employee benefits, this is about a real sense of envy and entitlement that is pervasive among America’s young adults.
We saw it vividly in Occupy Wall Street and even more recently in the university campus protests. Graduate students protesting because they want better pay, better housing, and better healthcare. We see it in protests in favor of a dramatic raise to the minimum wage, valuing the work of all positions as much as a first year teacher or non-profit administrator after four years of college. We see it in students protesting student loan debt and demanding that the $1.2T+ of outstanding student loan debt be forgiven.
At the heart of these protests is a lack of accountability and responsibility. These young adults are upset that they made a bad deal, based on bad information, and want someone else to fix their problem. Those graduate students who don’t like their benefits aren’t hostages, they’re free to go and get a job that offers the benefits that they want. If you’re unhappy with how much your company is paying you, go find someone else who will pay you more. There are more than a few entrepreneurs with only a high school education out there making way more than $15/hour. The students who took out ridiculous amounts of student loans did so of their own free will and in taking those loans promised to repay them.
Fixing today’s adults is hard, but fixing tomorrow’s adults is easy. Teach your children about responsibility and accountability, instill in them a solid work ethic, and tell them the truth: you are in the best position of anyone to fix your own life.
Life In Sync
I once read that we ought to make a major decision once and then manage it daily. That’s decent advice. I want to live a life in sync where I have clear routines that ensure that I do everything that I want to do, and, most importantly, that my home stays clean. A clean, tidy home is necessary for me to work and make forward progress. Nothing slows me down more creatively than a house in disarray.
I oftentimes find myself feeling trapped in my schedule. I have taken on the responsibility of running a web design business and this blog, in addition to caring for Benedict, maintaining our household, and pursing my own goals. I have a very full plate that often only allows for breathing room on Sunday. When I look at it that way, it feels oppressive. When I get down to the details, I find that I have no room because I’ve accounted for everything: work, play, exercise, chores, reading, rest, and goals.
Getting back on track when things are not going very well is costly. I lose time that could be billable hours, I get fatigued quickly, and I feel overwhelmed. Even though cleaning the kitchen will only take 15 minutes, I find myself paralyzed, helpless to do anything. It all goes back to managing the decision daily.
Routines are the oil that reduces friction in our daily life. When you’re able to see in your schedule everything that you wanted to complete getting done, you relax. When you recognize the genius of your calendar, you understand that the plan is set and all that you need to do is follow the plan.
Living a life in sync, where you execute your plan, is all about freeing up creative energy. The things that you need to do in order to be successful depend on each individual, but the overall message is the same. Set the plan, do the work, rest when the job is done.
Honor Your Mother
During the years when my dad was in the Air Force, he seemed to find himself frequently in jobs that deployed on a regular basis. As a fighter pilot, his squadron was often sent to the desert for 90 days at a time. While it was a somewhat manageable amount of time compared to the length of deployments that other service families have had to endure in the past decade, the frequency was fairly brutal. During those times of deployment, my mom was left mostly alone to care for us.
We hear in the Gospels that we should love our mothers, but I think that too often we don’t recognize the full scope of what they do for us. Watching Alison provide for Benedict in all of the ways that she does gives me greater insight into the time, effort, and attention my own mother gave me.
The fact is, moms go above and beyond. I’m reminded of a [YouTube video released last year about the “World’s Toughest Job]. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HB3xM93rXbY) In the video, applicants are involved in a video interview for a position that sounds borderline illegal, only to have it revealed that the job they are interviewing for is that of mom. The nature of moms leads them to be very nurturing, resulting in tireless work.
How can we best honor our moms? Calling her is a good start, but so are random acts of kindness. Flowers, mailed cards, or any associated gestures can be wonderful ways to show your thanks and appreciation for your mother. If your mom is in a Nursing Home, be sure to visit her often and take her on outings.
Being a mom is not easy and we owe so much of who we are to our mothers. Make sure she knows just how grateful you are.
Be Social After Mass
One of my favorite memories growing up was being social after Mass. This likely had more to do with the copious amounts of doughnuts available in the narthex or Parish hall, but there was something fun and refreshing about not racing home immediately after Mass ended. We got to know the people in the pews, made friends, and I would often get a little excited when I saw people from Church out in the world running errands. That’s what good community is.
On the whole, Catholics lag behind our Christian friends when it comes to the social element of Sunday. We’ve got them beat on the substance of the liturgical aspect, but we’ve lost sight of the fact that from the beginning of our Church, we were a community. The early Christians gathered in one another’s homes for the Eucharist and it’s doubtful that they showed up 10 minutes late and left before the final song was over. The focus of Sunday, without a doubt, is the Eucharist, but that celebration is enhanced when we spend more than an hour a week together.
I’ll be the first to admit that my family isn’t doing too well on this front. Our parish has limited gathering space and getting to the gathering space requires leaving the Church and walking downstairs. It’s a lot of friction that’s seldom worth the effort. As I get more involved in the Knights of Columbus Council and as Benedict and I venture out into the world more, we’re starting to meet more people, and hopefully soon we’ll find a friend or two to chat with after Mass.
Connecting with fellow Catholics is fun. I think we tend to believe that there are few others like us in the Church, practicing Catholics who are “normal” or who work in our field. Yet, the Church is bursting at the seams with young professionals and young families.
If you aren’t currently being social after Mass, consider ways that you can be. The focus is still on the Eucharist, but the community is built up and enhanced when we connect with one another on a personal level.