I have always loved electronic toys. When I was ten I built a computer out of screws and wire. It played a paper clip game with a human opponent and nearly always won.
In high school we had access to one of the first real computers in the community. It was housed at the local library and programmed with punch cards. I spent hours writing programs and keying punch cards so that I could make the paper computer printout draw pictures and fake human conversation.
I wrote my first Master's thesis on a Commodore 64. I also spent hours flying airplane and helicopter simulators on it.
Two years ago I bought a Mac and like a lot of Mac nerds I have found my one true electronic love. I probably spend more time with my Mac than my wife.
As I prepare teaching for the fall I am becoming as paperless as possible. I have electronically scanned much of the reading for the course that I am teaching, and put it all on my Mac. Now I can sit with my Mac and read. It's wonderful.
But my Mac has a lot of stuff on it, and of course internet access as well, so that this little screen that faces me can display days, weeks and even years of information from almost anywhere and any time. I can read for the course I am teaching or I can go to YouTube and watch Seinfeld. I can read the Globe and Mail online or watch satire at the Onion. I can see almost anything on my screen. It's simply a matter of focus.
Paralleling my electronic development over the years, I have reflected on the use and development of my own brain. I'm 50 now and I have a lot of information stored up there in my noggin. I can call up all kinds of stuff in my mind. I can remember the time I was three and fell off the dock at my grandparents' cottage, lying on the bottom of the lake, patiently waiting for my father to rescue me. I can remember when I was ten and fell off a slide, and chipped my tooth. I can remember the night my parents had too much to drink and things got a little scary.
As with the internet, so with our brains. There's a lot of information up there. But we only have one screen. So at any given time, the information that is in front of you, or in your conscious self, is what you have selected and chosen to focus on.
Often people have problems in their lives because of what they have chosen to put up on the screen. It's not so much what has "really" happened to you as what you have chosen to focus on. For example, the night my parents got drunk was a very scary night. I thought about it for a long time. I can remember it still, somewhat vividly. It might have happened last week, although it happened over three decades ago.
I could choose to play that video on my screen, day in and day out, and after awhile I would begin to believe that that was all that ever happened in my life. So that would make me damaged goods. It would affect my mood, my thinking, and my behaviour in the present. I might begin to think that I was simply a victim of circumstance, a Child of Alcoholic Parents, and powerless to be otherwise.
In the course of my training I have had to write and rewrite my autobiography. I noticed something peculiar. In the early years of my training I was thinking about the drunk-night a lot. It affected my autobiography. I wrote about myself as if I were damaged.
As the years went on I began to change my focus. I collected family history and learned about my ancestors. I had a grandfather who became a millionaire before he died. I had other grandparents who were dirt-poor immigrants, yet who put plates of steaming hot food on their porch to feed their less-fortunate neighbours. I found out that my own parents were heroes in their own ways. I began to put the drunk-night in context, and to see that there was a lot of other stuff in my family. A lot of other stuff I could now think about and put on my screen instead of the drunk-night. And that meant that I was not damaged after all, but that I had the potential to make money and to help people.
Anyone can do this. You might think otherwise, but everyone has an alternate story. Everyone has something that isn't on their screen, that if it were, would change the way they think, feel, and behave - for the better.
I read a story told by Paul Watzlawick - a true story. There was a gas shortage in California in the 1970's, and this is how it came about: the newspapers predicted a gas shortage. People read the paper, and panicked, and drove to gas stations to fill up their cars, before the gas shortage hit. Because everyone went out to fill up their cars at once, there was a gas shortage.
If you focus on a particular piece of news, you can create a crisis. And what you focus on creates your future.
Or, looking at it backwards, from the perspective of the now looking back toward the past, it is never too late to have a happy childhood. Time travel is possible. Change the focus of your past and you will change the person you are in the present.
I know this. My childhood now is a lot happier than it used to be, and I have been changed because of it.
In high school we had access to one of the first real computers in the community. It was housed at the local library and programmed with punch cards. I spent hours writing programs and keying punch cards so that I could make the paper computer printout draw pictures and fake human conversation.
I wrote my first Master's thesis on a Commodore 64. I also spent hours flying airplane and helicopter simulators on it.
Two years ago I bought a Mac and like a lot of Mac nerds I have found my one true electronic love. I probably spend more time with my Mac than my wife.
As I prepare teaching for the fall I am becoming as paperless as possible. I have electronically scanned much of the reading for the course that I am teaching, and put it all on my Mac. Now I can sit with my Mac and read. It's wonderful.
But my Mac has a lot of stuff on it, and of course internet access as well, so that this little screen that faces me can display days, weeks and even years of information from almost anywhere and any time. I can read for the course I am teaching or I can go to YouTube and watch Seinfeld. I can read the Globe and Mail online or watch satire at the Onion. I can see almost anything on my screen. It's simply a matter of focus.
Paralleling my electronic development over the years, I have reflected on the use and development of my own brain. I'm 50 now and I have a lot of information stored up there in my noggin. I can call up all kinds of stuff in my mind. I can remember the time I was three and fell off the dock at my grandparents' cottage, lying on the bottom of the lake, patiently waiting for my father to rescue me. I can remember when I was ten and fell off a slide, and chipped my tooth. I can remember the night my parents had too much to drink and things got a little scary.
As with the internet, so with our brains. There's a lot of information up there. But we only have one screen. So at any given time, the information that is in front of you, or in your conscious self, is what you have selected and chosen to focus on.
Often people have problems in their lives because of what they have chosen to put up on the screen. It's not so much what has "really" happened to you as what you have chosen to focus on. For example, the night my parents got drunk was a very scary night. I thought about it for a long time. I can remember it still, somewhat vividly. It might have happened last week, although it happened over three decades ago.
I could choose to play that video on my screen, day in and day out, and after awhile I would begin to believe that that was all that ever happened in my life. So that would make me damaged goods. It would affect my mood, my thinking, and my behaviour in the present. I might begin to think that I was simply a victim of circumstance, a Child of Alcoholic Parents, and powerless to be otherwise.
In the course of my training I have had to write and rewrite my autobiography. I noticed something peculiar. In the early years of my training I was thinking about the drunk-night a lot. It affected my autobiography. I wrote about myself as if I were damaged.
As the years went on I began to change my focus. I collected family history and learned about my ancestors. I had a grandfather who became a millionaire before he died. I had other grandparents who were dirt-poor immigrants, yet who put plates of steaming hot food on their porch to feed their less-fortunate neighbours. I found out that my own parents were heroes in their own ways. I began to put the drunk-night in context, and to see that there was a lot of other stuff in my family. A lot of other stuff I could now think about and put on my screen instead of the drunk-night. And that meant that I was not damaged after all, but that I had the potential to make money and to help people.
Anyone can do this. You might think otherwise, but everyone has an alternate story. Everyone has something that isn't on their screen, that if it were, would change the way they think, feel, and behave - for the better.
I read a story told by Paul Watzlawick - a true story. There was a gas shortage in California in the 1970's, and this is how it came about: the newspapers predicted a gas shortage. People read the paper, and panicked, and drove to gas stations to fill up their cars, before the gas shortage hit. Because everyone went out to fill up their cars at once, there was a gas shortage.
If you focus on a particular piece of news, you can create a crisis. And what you focus on creates your future.
Or, looking at it backwards, from the perspective of the now looking back toward the past, it is never too late to have a happy childhood. Time travel is possible. Change the focus of your past and you will change the person you are in the present.
I know this. My childhood now is a lot happier than it used to be, and I have been changed because of it.
04/08: Anger, the Best Medicine?
Several years ago I worked for a brief time as a hospital manager, and my father was thrilled. He had made a career of being a manager and was happy to see that one of his sons was taking an interest in what he loved doing.
He began to tell me unbelievable stories about what a manager could accomplish. He told me about firing one of his employees, and being invited to her wedding afterward. "Leaves a good taste in your mouth," he said.
I was skeptical, although I knew he was telling the truth: to the best of my knowledge my father had never lied. How could this be possible, that you could fire someone and be invited to their wedding afterward?
"You remember Banker Bates?" he asked.
Banker Bates was my father's father's best friend. He lived down the street from my grandfather. He welcomed my grandfather's family into his home, like they were his own. I spent hours in Banker's house. He did magic tricks for us, and he had a battery operated coin bank with a hand that came out and grabbed the money - he gave us coins to play with it.
"Bampa's best friend," I said.
"Yes," said my Dad. "You remember Bampa worked for Beech Nut?"
My grandfather was sent to Canada by Beech Nut Cough Drops to help expand their business here.
"Well," continued my father, "Banker worked for Beech Nut too. He was Bampa's manager. And shortly after Bampa settled in Canada, Banker had to fire him from the company."
I was stunned. My grandfather's best friend had once been the boss who had fired him. Yet afterward, they became lifelong friends.
Shortly after this conversation, my father died. At his funeral I met the woman he had fired - and a number of other women who had worked with and admired my father. "We're Ken's groupies," they said. I also met my father's boss, a woman who fondly referred to my father as "curmudgeonly". I had to look that up. It means "a bad-tempered person".
I should be so lucky, to be called a curmudgeon, and with fondness.
I did not remain a manager, not employed as one, anyway. But I am a manager, as you are. Everyone has to manage his or her own life.
To manage means to exercise power - to assert what you want over and against what others want. It involves conflict. It's unavoidable, unless you let go of everything you believe in (and then you die). So to live is to exercise power. Like a manager.
Now your body helps you with this need to exercise power, through anger. Some people claim never to get angry. Perhaps you just get irritated, or frustrated, or hostile, or ill-tempered, or put out, or annoyed. Call it what you will, the emotion that gives you the energy to exercise power, is anger.
Hormones in the body help with this. With men, of course, testosterone helps. Testosterone levels in men can change depending on the social circumstances: in the presence of situations where men feel the need to compete, testosterone levels rise to help them assert themselves.
With women, prolactin helps. Prolactin is a hormone that is higher in women who breastfeed, and it increases hostility, protecting both the mother and the newborn child. At other times, stress can raise prolactin levels, achieving the same sort of protection.
Then there is the limbic system. At the very base of the brain, it includes this tiny collection of neurons called the amygdala:
Tiny but deadly, the amygdala is your brain's alarm system. It responds to threats, and can "hijack" the rest of the brain so that your body is organized to run away, if possible, and if not, then to stay and fight.
And when you become angry in response to threat or loss or need to compete, other hormones are released - adrenaline, for instance, to help increase heart rate and blood flow, so that you have the energy to flee or fight.
Notice, so far, that I haven't said that there is anything wrong with anger. Far from it. It protects you. It helps you manage situations where you have to assert yourself. Being ill-tempered can be good for you. It can even lead to groupies at your funeral, if my father is any indication.
One of the reasons I am writing this is to reframe anger as a positive thing. Too often, anger is framed as a bad thing. Women avoid it and men feel bad after having it. A lot of shame surrounds anger. And the problem with this is that shame, itself, is a threatening emotion, so that in response to shame, we can get angrier, and then more ashamed, and angrier still, a vicious cycle.
So when you feel angry, just pause for a moment and think, "Hey, I'm angry. And that's okay." Avoiding the shame that can be attached to anger can help you to keep from getting angrier than you need, for the situation.
Now, what to do with it. And how to control it. Just because hormones and neurons are involved in anger, doesn't mean you can't control it. They've done experiments, for instance, with adrenaline, that "flight or fight" hormone I mentioned earlier. Two people with the same amount of adrenaline can behave differently, depending on how they interpret their surroundings. One can be angry, and the other not. Same situation, different thinking.
My wife is late for dinner. Her shift ended at five, and at five a patient was rolled in who needed a c-section. (My wife is an obstetrician.) She stays to do the c-section. I have just made dinner, and it's getting cold.
I'm irritated that she's late. Okay, angry, a little.
Response number one: thinking she did this on purpose. She's always coming home late and doing it just to irritate me. I get angrier. Work myself up. She comes home, I yell. She yells back. We fight. We have a lousy evening. No cuddling for me.
Anger is like salt. You can't live without it, but too much is bad for you. In response number one, my thoughts have made me angrier than the circumstances warrant, and I ruin the possibility of having an otherwise pleasant evening with my wife when she gets home.
I'm irritated that she's late. Angry, a little. And hungry.
Response number two: thinking she did this because she cared for the patient, not because she was trying to bug me. This isn't about me. It's about her, wanting to do her job to the best of her ability. What a woman I married. Makes me feel proud. I must be a pretty good guy myself, that she would have agreed to marry me. I feel good about myself, and attracted to her. But I am irritated because the food is getting cold, and someone will think I'm a bad cook for not foreseeing this delay (shame), and I should wait for her to come home (guilt), but I'm hungry (physical threat to existence).
So I use my anger to assert my power to protect myself, and I eat before she gets home. She'll understand.
Just enough salt. I'm a little salty, not too much. On my way to becoming a well-seasoned curmudgeon. Perhaps with my own groupies, someday.
My father would be proud, after all.
_______________________________
Want to learn more?
Alan Jenkins (1990), Invitations to Responsibility: The therapeutic engagement of men who are violent and abusive. Adelaide, South Australia: Dulwich Centre Publications.
Matthew McKay, Peter D. Rogers and Judith McKay (1989), When Anger Hurts: Quieting the Storm Within. Oakland, California: New Harbinger Publications.
John M. Gottman et al. (1998), Predicting Marital Happiness and Stability from Newlywed Interactions. Journal of Marriage and the Family vol. 60 pp. 5-22 (anger does not predict divorce)
He began to tell me unbelievable stories about what a manager could accomplish. He told me about firing one of his employees, and being invited to her wedding afterward. "Leaves a good taste in your mouth," he said.
I was skeptical, although I knew he was telling the truth: to the best of my knowledge my father had never lied. How could this be possible, that you could fire someone and be invited to their wedding afterward?
"You remember Banker Bates?" he asked.
Banker Bates was my father's father's best friend. He lived down the street from my grandfather. He welcomed my grandfather's family into his home, like they were his own. I spent hours in Banker's house. He did magic tricks for us, and he had a battery operated coin bank with a hand that came out and grabbed the money - he gave us coins to play with it.
"Bampa's best friend," I said.
"Yes," said my Dad. "You remember Bampa worked for Beech Nut?"
My grandfather was sent to Canada by Beech Nut Cough Drops to help expand their business here.
"Well," continued my father, "Banker worked for Beech Nut too. He was Bampa's manager. And shortly after Bampa settled in Canada, Banker had to fire him from the company."
I was stunned. My grandfather's best friend had once been the boss who had fired him. Yet afterward, they became lifelong friends.
Shortly after this conversation, my father died. At his funeral I met the woman he had fired - and a number of other women who had worked with and admired my father. "We're Ken's groupies," they said. I also met my father's boss, a woman who fondly referred to my father as "curmudgeonly". I had to look that up. It means "a bad-tempered person".
I should be so lucky, to be called a curmudgeon, and with fondness.
I did not remain a manager, not employed as one, anyway. But I am a manager, as you are. Everyone has to manage his or her own life.
To manage means to exercise power - to assert what you want over and against what others want. It involves conflict. It's unavoidable, unless you let go of everything you believe in (and then you die). So to live is to exercise power. Like a manager.
Now your body helps you with this need to exercise power, through anger. Some people claim never to get angry. Perhaps you just get irritated, or frustrated, or hostile, or ill-tempered, or put out, or annoyed. Call it what you will, the emotion that gives you the energy to exercise power, is anger.
Hormones in the body help with this. With men, of course, testosterone helps. Testosterone levels in men can change depending on the social circumstances: in the presence of situations where men feel the need to compete, testosterone levels rise to help them assert themselves.
With women, prolactin helps. Prolactin is a hormone that is higher in women who breastfeed, and it increases hostility, protecting both the mother and the newborn child. At other times, stress can raise prolactin levels, achieving the same sort of protection.
Then there is the limbic system. At the very base of the brain, it includes this tiny collection of neurons called the amygdala:
Tiny but deadly, the amygdala is your brain's alarm system. It responds to threats, and can "hijack" the rest of the brain so that your body is organized to run away, if possible, and if not, then to stay and fight.
And when you become angry in response to threat or loss or need to compete, other hormones are released - adrenaline, for instance, to help increase heart rate and blood flow, so that you have the energy to flee or fight.
Notice, so far, that I haven't said that there is anything wrong with anger. Far from it. It protects you. It helps you manage situations where you have to assert yourself. Being ill-tempered can be good for you. It can even lead to groupies at your funeral, if my father is any indication.
One of the reasons I am writing this is to reframe anger as a positive thing. Too often, anger is framed as a bad thing. Women avoid it and men feel bad after having it. A lot of shame surrounds anger. And the problem with this is that shame, itself, is a threatening emotion, so that in response to shame, we can get angrier, and then more ashamed, and angrier still, a vicious cycle.
So when you feel angry, just pause for a moment and think, "Hey, I'm angry. And that's okay." Avoiding the shame that can be attached to anger can help you to keep from getting angrier than you need, for the situation.
Now, what to do with it. And how to control it. Just because hormones and neurons are involved in anger, doesn't mean you can't control it. They've done experiments, for instance, with adrenaline, that "flight or fight" hormone I mentioned earlier. Two people with the same amount of adrenaline can behave differently, depending on how they interpret their surroundings. One can be angry, and the other not. Same situation, different thinking.
My wife is late for dinner. Her shift ended at five, and at five a patient was rolled in who needed a c-section. (My wife is an obstetrician.) She stays to do the c-section. I have just made dinner, and it's getting cold.
I'm irritated that she's late. Okay, angry, a little.
Response number one: thinking she did this on purpose. She's always coming home late and doing it just to irritate me. I get angrier. Work myself up. She comes home, I yell. She yells back. We fight. We have a lousy evening. No cuddling for me.
Anger is like salt. You can't live without it, but too much is bad for you. In response number one, my thoughts have made me angrier than the circumstances warrant, and I ruin the possibility of having an otherwise pleasant evening with my wife when she gets home.
I'm irritated that she's late. Angry, a little. And hungry.
Response number two: thinking she did this because she cared for the patient, not because she was trying to bug me. This isn't about me. It's about her, wanting to do her job to the best of her ability. What a woman I married. Makes me feel proud. I must be a pretty good guy myself, that she would have agreed to marry me. I feel good about myself, and attracted to her. But I am irritated because the food is getting cold, and someone will think I'm a bad cook for not foreseeing this delay (shame), and I should wait for her to come home (guilt), but I'm hungry (physical threat to existence).
So I use my anger to assert my power to protect myself, and I eat before she gets home. She'll understand.
Just enough salt. I'm a little salty, not too much. On my way to becoming a well-seasoned curmudgeon. Perhaps with my own groupies, someday.
My father would be proud, after all.
_______________________________
Want to learn more?
Alan Jenkins (1990), Invitations to Responsibility: The therapeutic engagement of men who are violent and abusive. Adelaide, South Australia: Dulwich Centre Publications.
Matthew McKay, Peter D. Rogers and Judith McKay (1989), When Anger Hurts: Quieting the Storm Within. Oakland, California: New Harbinger Publications.
John M. Gottman et al. (1998), Predicting Marital Happiness and Stability from Newlywed Interactions. Journal of Marriage and the Family vol. 60 pp. 5-22 (anger does not predict divorce)
21/07: Just Lunch
I was going to say
That I remember
How beautiful you were
As a child
But I look at you
Now, and see, of course
That you are still so beautiful
And grown
They say that growth is painful
They have no idea
How painful your growth was
For you, and for me
All the ways of saying it -
Spirited, oppositional, hyperactive -
I was hyperactive as a child
Maybe I visited this on you
I'm sorry, and not - not now
There was a time, just a few years ago
When I wasn't sure
That you or I would survive
Your coming to adulthood.
But here you are
And I stand amazed
That we are
Not only
Still talking
But enjoying each other's company
Over lunch
That I remember
How beautiful you were
As a child
But I look at you
Now, and see, of course
That you are still so beautiful
And grown
They say that growth is painful
They have no idea
How painful your growth was
For you, and for me
All the ways of saying it -
Spirited, oppositional, hyperactive -
I was hyperactive as a child
Maybe I visited this on you
I'm sorry, and not - not now
There was a time, just a few years ago
When I wasn't sure
That you or I would survive
Your coming to adulthood.
But here you are
And I stand amazed
That we are
Not only
Still talking
But enjoying each other's company
Over lunch
19/07: Legacy
I am eight years old and leaving my parents for the first time. Leaving the country even. My grandparents are taking me on a road trip to meet my Great Uncle Carl.
This is us, Carl the younger and Carl the older, at my grandparents' home in Burlington, Ontario.
My grandfather came from Vermont. He married the daughter of a southern plantation owner. They met at university in New York. She played the violin and had a dramatic flair, the middle of two equally entertaining sisters. He was a middle child, too. His brother Carl was the oldest in a family of all boys. As am I.
My grandfather worked for the Beechnut Cough Drop company. They sent him to Burlington to introduce Beechnut Cough Drops to Canada. Some time after he arrived the company was restructured, and my grandfather lost his job. The man who fired him, Banker Bates, also lived in Burlington, and became his best friend. I met Mr. Bates. Such amazing magic tricks.
So my grandfather, unemployed in a foreign country, with a wife and family, picked himself up and started again. In life insurance. Eventually he founded his own company. He did well. And he remained in Burlington and raised three children: two girls, and late in life, a boy. My father.
My father was named after his father. And he followed him into business: went to the Wharton School in Philadelphia, then returned home to work in his father's company. For his entire adult life, except for two years when he lost his job and worked as a night security guard to feed his family, my father remained in insurance until he died. As his father had.
I was given permission to be somebody different. I wasn't named after my grandfather. I was named after his talented, wacky, older brother.
I remember this trip still, the long drive to Vermont. Motels and candy racks. Nanna asking me if I wanted any candy. "No thank you, Nanna, but I would like some chocolate." Chocolate is in a class all by itself.
Aunt Eva provided an endless supply of pink lemonade. They had an outdoor shower hooked up to a garden hose. I stood under it all day.
At night, I shared a bed with my Nanna - once. She never slept with me again. Apparently I kick in my sleep (although I learned this at 8, I didn't warn my wife before we got married. Some things you don't tell...).
My cousin Margaret took me out to buy chocolate and dinky cars. She taught me you could be safe in a thunderstorm by sitting in a car.
The best part of the whole trip was watching my Uncle Carl play. He played the piano, the harmonica, and the bass drum - at the same time. I remember him sitting on the piano bench, hands on the keyboard, a metal frame holding the harmonica to his mouth, legs twisted sideways so that he could reach the drum pedal.
I was told later that he was being careful not to show off in front of me. Usually, they said, he plays four instruments at the same time, and four different songs.
He also made things. For years I wore a belt that he had made, and had given me on this trip. And I have a chair that he made.
The purpose of the trip was to connect me. Later my father gave me a copy of the family tree, going back to the late 1700's. "We belong to the MacMillan clan," he said. "Mary Queen of Scots kicked us out of Scotland. We came to America. Your great grandfather saved the life of the president of the United States, by jumping in his carriage and stopping his horses from bolting over a cliff."
It was a little scary, belonging to this family of talented people. What would be expected of me?
A few years after that road trip, my grandfather had a stroke. A year after that, he passed away. And then my grandmother moved to Toronto - closer to her children - and I lost that mythical connection with my ancestors that seemed to flow through Burlington.
Small wonder that I felt a strong pull to return to the area as an adult. To be different. To be my own person. And yet to be connected.
This is us, Carl the younger and Carl the older, at my grandparents' home in Burlington, Ontario.
My grandfather came from Vermont. He married the daughter of a southern plantation owner. They met at university in New York. She played the violin and had a dramatic flair, the middle of two equally entertaining sisters. He was a middle child, too. His brother Carl was the oldest in a family of all boys. As am I.
My grandfather worked for the Beechnut Cough Drop company. They sent him to Burlington to introduce Beechnut Cough Drops to Canada. Some time after he arrived the company was restructured, and my grandfather lost his job. The man who fired him, Banker Bates, also lived in Burlington, and became his best friend. I met Mr. Bates. Such amazing magic tricks.
So my grandfather, unemployed in a foreign country, with a wife and family, picked himself up and started again. In life insurance. Eventually he founded his own company. He did well. And he remained in Burlington and raised three children: two girls, and late in life, a boy. My father.
My father was named after his father. And he followed him into business: went to the Wharton School in Philadelphia, then returned home to work in his father's company. For his entire adult life, except for two years when he lost his job and worked as a night security guard to feed his family, my father remained in insurance until he died. As his father had.
I was given permission to be somebody different. I wasn't named after my grandfather. I was named after his talented, wacky, older brother.
I remember this trip still, the long drive to Vermont. Motels and candy racks. Nanna asking me if I wanted any candy. "No thank you, Nanna, but I would like some chocolate." Chocolate is in a class all by itself.
Aunt Eva provided an endless supply of pink lemonade. They had an outdoor shower hooked up to a garden hose. I stood under it all day.
At night, I shared a bed with my Nanna - once. She never slept with me again. Apparently I kick in my sleep (although I learned this at 8, I didn't warn my wife before we got married. Some things you don't tell...).
My cousin Margaret took me out to buy chocolate and dinky cars. She taught me you could be safe in a thunderstorm by sitting in a car.
The best part of the whole trip was watching my Uncle Carl play. He played the piano, the harmonica, and the bass drum - at the same time. I remember him sitting on the piano bench, hands on the keyboard, a metal frame holding the harmonica to his mouth, legs twisted sideways so that he could reach the drum pedal.
I was told later that he was being careful not to show off in front of me. Usually, they said, he plays four instruments at the same time, and four different songs.
He also made things. For years I wore a belt that he had made, and had given me on this trip. And I have a chair that he made.
The purpose of the trip was to connect me. Later my father gave me a copy of the family tree, going back to the late 1700's. "We belong to the MacMillan clan," he said. "Mary Queen of Scots kicked us out of Scotland. We came to America. Your great grandfather saved the life of the president of the United States, by jumping in his carriage and stopping his horses from bolting over a cliff."
It was a little scary, belonging to this family of talented people. What would be expected of me?
A few years after that road trip, my grandfather had a stroke. A year after that, he passed away. And then my grandmother moved to Toronto - closer to her children - and I lost that mythical connection with my ancestors that seemed to flow through Burlington.
Small wonder that I felt a strong pull to return to the area as an adult. To be different. To be my own person. And yet to be connected.
17/03: I Gotta Feelin
The date is September 10, 2009, and it's the kickoff party for Oprah's 24th season. The show is outside, on Chicago's Michigan Avenue, and there are over 20,000 fans in the street. The Black Eyed Peas take to the stage and begin to sing "I gotta feeling". There is a lone woman dancing in the front, at the beginning of the song. Gradually the people next to her join in, then the people next to them. Eventually all 20,000 people are dancing - together, as one. The choreographer, the not-so-alone woman who started the dance, has successfully created a "Flash Mob", an interactional experiment between a band - The Black Eyed Peas - and a crowd of 20,000. This was a surprise for Oprah. Nobody told her what was going to happen.
My daughter introduced me to this event by showing me the video on YouTube last night. Go here to watch it, and then come back. See if it doesn't make you cry.
Now I call it an "interactional experiment" but you see this all the time at rock concerts. I have been going to rock concerts since my (other)daughter was 13. I have written about this elsewhere, and another day we will revisit the trauma of losing your child for 12 hours in a swarm of 12,000 people... Where was I? Oh yes: audiences interact with rock bands all the time. The band plays, the audience moshes (is that a verb?). Interactions between performers and audiences - as between therapists and their clients - happen all the time. We just naturally connect, and give and take.
This event on Oprah is an audience-band interaction writ large, as if the whole audience were an organism. You can read more about it here.
That the whole thing was carefully choreographed isn't the point. Rather, this is a glimpse into our potential. This is the potential for society to act together as an organism for good, as an antidote to the ways in which people sometimes act together for bad. What a wonderful thing to do on the 10th of September, 8 years less a day after 9/11. Bad things cannot be erased, but good can come from them, and anniversaries can take on new meanings.
When a large collection of people come together and do something well - in theatre, in orchestra, in dance, in a flash mob - even in a baseball game (see below) - a deep emotion is evoked in me. Maybe it happens in you too.
A psychiatrist went to a baseball game. Philadelphia Phillies vs. Atlanta Braves, 1993 National League playoffs, first game. Phillies pitcher Curt Schilling strikes out the first Braves batter. "Just twenty-six more, Curt!" yells the psychiatrist, to the embarrassment of his son.
Schilling strikes out the next batter. "Just twenty-five more, Curt!" he yells, only now the other fans are beginning to come together.
When Schilling struck out the third batter, an amazing thing happened. Sixty-three thousand Phillies fans became as one, "[and] I was the very sound of one hand clapping," writes the psychiatrist.
What does it mean? What could it mean? What could this century, this millennium, stand for in human thought and activity?
Perhaps we could all take turns playing in the band, performing what we do best to those who need it most. Perhaps we could all in turn be in the audience, taking the best that others can give and reflecting it back to them. What could happen?
We meet awkwardly.
I invite you to walk.
I find you dancing1.
This could be the millennium for dancing.
_________________________________
1 Maria Harris (1987), Teaching & Religious Imagination: An Essay in the Theology of Teaching (San Francisco: Harper & Row), p. 23
My daughter introduced me to this event by showing me the video on YouTube last night. Go here to watch it, and then come back. See if it doesn't make you cry.
Now I call it an "interactional experiment" but you see this all the time at rock concerts. I have been going to rock concerts since my (other)daughter was 13. I have written about this elsewhere, and another day we will revisit the trauma of losing your child for 12 hours in a swarm of 12,000 people... Where was I? Oh yes: audiences interact with rock bands all the time. The band plays, the audience moshes (is that a verb?). Interactions between performers and audiences - as between therapists and their clients - happen all the time. We just naturally connect, and give and take.
This event on Oprah is an audience-band interaction writ large, as if the whole audience were an organism. You can read more about it here.
That the whole thing was carefully choreographed isn't the point. Rather, this is a glimpse into our potential. This is the potential for society to act together as an organism for good, as an antidote to the ways in which people sometimes act together for bad. What a wonderful thing to do on the 10th of September, 8 years less a day after 9/11. Bad things cannot be erased, but good can come from them, and anniversaries can take on new meanings.
When a large collection of people come together and do something well - in theatre, in orchestra, in dance, in a flash mob - even in a baseball game (see below) - a deep emotion is evoked in me. Maybe it happens in you too.
A psychiatrist went to a baseball game. Philadelphia Phillies vs. Atlanta Braves, 1993 National League playoffs, first game. Phillies pitcher Curt Schilling strikes out the first Braves batter. "Just twenty-six more, Curt!" yells the psychiatrist, to the embarrassment of his son.
Schilling strikes out the next batter. "Just twenty-five more, Curt!" he yells, only now the other fans are beginning to come together.
When Schilling struck out the third batter, an amazing thing happened. Sixty-three thousand Phillies fans became as one, "[and] I was the very sound of one hand clapping," writes the psychiatrist.
What does it mean? What could it mean? What could this century, this millennium, stand for in human thought and activity?
Perhaps we could all take turns playing in the band, performing what we do best to those who need it most. Perhaps we could all in turn be in the audience, taking the best that others can give and reflecting it back to them. What could happen?
We meet awkwardly.
I invite you to walk.
I find you dancing1.
This could be the millennium for dancing.
_________________________________
1 Maria Harris (1987), Teaching & Religious Imagination: An Essay in the Theology of Teaching (San Francisco: Harper & Row), p. 23
08/03: Getting a Life
One day, my daughter asked me to give her a ride to her friend's house. On the way there, she said to me, "You know, Dad, when I grow up, I'm not going to be like you. I'm going to get a life."
This took me by surprise. I thought I had a life.
"What makes you think I don't have a life?" I asked her, anxiously.
"Well, look at you," she said. "You're always driving me places. You don't have a life."
We drove on in silence for a few minutes while I digested this new information. She had asked me for a ride, I had complied with her request, and this meant that I didn't have a life. So in order to have a life, that meant I had to...?
"Get out of the car," I said, as I pulled over.
"What?" she cried. "Why?"
"I've decided to have a life," I said. And as she stepped out onto the curb, I drove away.
Now, only part of this story is true.
My daughter did ask me to drive her to her friend's house, and on the way she told me that she, unlike me, was going to have a life. We drove on in silence as I digested this information, and I realized that I did have a life.
My life is work, play, marriage and children. It's not all about me, and it's not all not about me. I'm an adult. I make choices. I choose from a wide range of options. Consequences follow. When I choose work, I make money. When I choose sex, I have children. When I choose play, I have fun, and spend money, and then it's time to go back to work. Sometimes the choices are more difficult.
Scott Peck said that life is difficult, and once you accept that, it is no longer difficult.
One of my minor difficulties is that my kids don't drive yet. Right now, my life includes driving them places. I realize that this won't last, and that one day - too soon - I will be free of this hassle. And then I will miss it - miss the drives, and the conversation and the company. There are two ways to induce teenagers to talk: in the car, and in the restaurant. So driving them works out usually, because we talk about interesting things in the car. Like the meaning of life.
Freud said that to have a life was to love and to work. I think I've got it covered.
So I drove on, smiling serenely to myself. Maybe one day she'll have a life, too.
This took me by surprise. I thought I had a life.
"What makes you think I don't have a life?" I asked her, anxiously.
"Well, look at you," she said. "You're always driving me places. You don't have a life."
We drove on in silence for a few minutes while I digested this new information. She had asked me for a ride, I had complied with her request, and this meant that I didn't have a life. So in order to have a life, that meant I had to...?
"Get out of the car," I said, as I pulled over.
"What?" she cried. "Why?"
"I've decided to have a life," I said. And as she stepped out onto the curb, I drove away.
Now, only part of this story is true.
My daughter did ask me to drive her to her friend's house, and on the way she told me that she, unlike me, was going to have a life. We drove on in silence as I digested this information, and I realized that I did have a life.
My life is work, play, marriage and children. It's not all about me, and it's not all not about me. I'm an adult. I make choices. I choose from a wide range of options. Consequences follow. When I choose work, I make money. When I choose sex, I have children. When I choose play, I have fun, and spend money, and then it's time to go back to work. Sometimes the choices are more difficult.
Scott Peck said that life is difficult, and once you accept that, it is no longer difficult.
One of my minor difficulties is that my kids don't drive yet. Right now, my life includes driving them places. I realize that this won't last, and that one day - too soon - I will be free of this hassle. And then I will miss it - miss the drives, and the conversation and the company. There are two ways to induce teenagers to talk: in the car, and in the restaurant. So driving them works out usually, because we talk about interesting things in the car. Like the meaning of life.
Freud said that to have a life was to love and to work. I think I've got it covered.
So I drove on, smiling serenely to myself. Maybe one day she'll have a life, too.
26/02: Spiritual Intelligence
Category: Survival Kit
Posted by: carltonb
As the story goes, a successful businessman from New York is vacationing with his family at a coastal resort in Mexico. While he is relaxing on the beach, he notices a local fisherman coming ashore with his meagre catch. He hails the fisherman.
"Did you catch much?"
"Enough for today," the fisherman says.
"And what will you do now?" the businessman asks.
"I will take a nap for the afternoon," the fisherman replies, smiling. "Then I will wake up, have dinner with Maria and my children, and maybe go dancing this evening."
"You're not very ambitious," the businessman says. "You should work harder.
"First of all, you should get up earlier, and fish further into the evening," the businessman continued. "And then you would catch many more fish, much more than 'Enough for today.'"
"Why would I want to do that?" asked the fisherman.
"Well," continued the businessman. "You could sell the extra fish, and with the money, buy a second boat, hire a crew, and then in the same day, catch twice as much! Eventually, you could own a whole fleet of fishing boats, set up your headquarters in New York, where I come from, and manage a global enterprise...
"Finally," said the businessman, triumphantly, "In 30 years, you could retire. You would have saved enough to buy a place in a nice resort town - like this one. Then you could fish just for the day, take a nap in the afternoon, wake up, have dinner with Maria and your children, and maybe go dancing this evening."
"I see," said the fisherman, smiling. And he did.
____________________________________
Adapted from Danah Zohar and Ian Marshall (2000), Spiritual Intelligence: The Ultimate Intelligence, London: Bloomsbury
"Did you catch much?"
"Enough for today," the fisherman says.
"And what will you do now?" the businessman asks.
"I will take a nap for the afternoon," the fisherman replies, smiling. "Then I will wake up, have dinner with Maria and my children, and maybe go dancing this evening."
"You're not very ambitious," the businessman says. "You should work harder.
"First of all, you should get up earlier, and fish further into the evening," the businessman continued. "And then you would catch many more fish, much more than 'Enough for today.'"
"Why would I want to do that?" asked the fisherman.
"Well," continued the businessman. "You could sell the extra fish, and with the money, buy a second boat, hire a crew, and then in the same day, catch twice as much! Eventually, you could own a whole fleet of fishing boats, set up your headquarters in New York, where I come from, and manage a global enterprise...
"Finally," said the businessman, triumphantly, "In 30 years, you could retire. You would have saved enough to buy a place in a nice resort town - like this one. Then you could fish just for the day, take a nap in the afternoon, wake up, have dinner with Maria and your children, and maybe go dancing this evening."
"I see," said the fisherman, smiling. And he did.
____________________________________
Adapted from Danah Zohar and Ian Marshall (2000), Spiritual Intelligence: The Ultimate Intelligence, London: Bloomsbury
18/02: Death and Taxes
A man in Austin, Texas, today flew his small plane into an IRS building, killing himself and possibly one person on the ground, damaging the building, sending people to hospital, and traumatizing hundreds of spectators by conjuring images of a repeat of 9/11. Air force jets were scrambled, and the president was notified. Everyone quickly calmed down when they realized it was "only" a suicide.
The one thing this man made clear before he died was his belief that the world had not treated him fairly. He was mad at the tax department, specifically, as well as "big business" and the government in general. At 53, he must have felt like a failure, having lost two previous businesses and at least one previous marriage. Believing that "insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result", he twisted this usually helpful aphorism into the conclusion that this would be "something different" to try with his life. Feeling that he had explored all the options, he concluded that "violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer". At some level, he must have believed that he was "answering" the unfairness of the tax department by making people who worked for the tax department suffer. He was being unfair to them as he had felt that they had been unfair to him.
A good study on suicide is Kay Redfield Jamison's Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide. A professor of psychiatry, Jamison also suffers from bipolar affective disorder, a mental illness associated with a higher risk of suicide. She knows whereof she speaks.
Suicide has been called "a permanent solution to a temporary problem". When people contemplate suicide, they feel hopeless and helpless. Without resources and without a future, people on the verge of completing suicide reportedly feel a sense of calm, as if they have "solved" their problem with this very narrow and final solution.
People who contemplate suicide are usually depressed. Depression can be part of bipolar disorder as well as an illness unto itself, and is associated with defective thinking. Depressed people make three errors in their thinking: first, they think that they are worthless; second, they think that the world is unfairly punishing them; third, they don't think that things will ever get better.
This man probably had all three of these faulty thoughts, writing most clearly about the second, that he felt that he had been treated unfairly. He certainly didn't seem to believe that things were going to improve. And he counted his own life as worthless in his plan to right the wrongs that had been done to him.
It is not unusual for people to have suicidal thoughts. I have had suicidal thoughts, and I think that most people do from time to time. Depression in and of itself may even be part of a normal life, a time of lying fallow and resting, perhaps to recover from a trauma or a loss. Matthew Fox called it one of the four roads that we follow from time to time in the course of life. But it isn't meant to be the main road that we take: not the main course. After a period of depression it is indeed helpful to "do something different" - but not to fly your plane into the government office of your choice. Distraction has been shown to help people recover from depression. Forcing yourself to do a normal routine also helps: "fake it til you make it" is a good mantra to follow. Because if you do manage to distract yourself from your thoughts, if you do "fake it" and go on about life "as if" it is worth living, it will become so again.
It is not unusual to have such thoughts. The time to worry, however, is when you find yourself (or someone you know) beginning to develop plans. Suicidal thoughts + plans = risk, especially if the plan is within the person's ability to be carried out in the near future. This constitutes an emergency: it's time to call 911 and get the person to hospital, where someone can distract them until they are able to distract themselves.
Before it becomes an emergency, however, if you find your life becoming a knotted problem from which there seems to be no escape, find a good therapist. Therapists are trained to "open space" and generate additional options - solutions to your problems that perhaps you never thought of.
Certainly for this man, there were options besides exacting an eye for an eye from the tax department, in a permanent and fatal solution. It was tragic that he couldn't see these options.
A great online resource for preventing suicide is here.
The one thing this man made clear before he died was his belief that the world had not treated him fairly. He was mad at the tax department, specifically, as well as "big business" and the government in general. At 53, he must have felt like a failure, having lost two previous businesses and at least one previous marriage. Believing that "insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result", he twisted this usually helpful aphorism into the conclusion that this would be "something different" to try with his life. Feeling that he had explored all the options, he concluded that "violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer". At some level, he must have believed that he was "answering" the unfairness of the tax department by making people who worked for the tax department suffer. He was being unfair to them as he had felt that they had been unfair to him.
A good study on suicide is Kay Redfield Jamison's Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide. A professor of psychiatry, Jamison also suffers from bipolar affective disorder, a mental illness associated with a higher risk of suicide. She knows whereof she speaks.
Suicide has been called "a permanent solution to a temporary problem". When people contemplate suicide, they feel hopeless and helpless. Without resources and without a future, people on the verge of completing suicide reportedly feel a sense of calm, as if they have "solved" their problem with this very narrow and final solution.
People who contemplate suicide are usually depressed. Depression can be part of bipolar disorder as well as an illness unto itself, and is associated with defective thinking. Depressed people make three errors in their thinking: first, they think that they are worthless; second, they think that the world is unfairly punishing them; third, they don't think that things will ever get better.
This man probably had all three of these faulty thoughts, writing most clearly about the second, that he felt that he had been treated unfairly. He certainly didn't seem to believe that things were going to improve. And he counted his own life as worthless in his plan to right the wrongs that had been done to him.
It is not unusual for people to have suicidal thoughts. I have had suicidal thoughts, and I think that most people do from time to time. Depression in and of itself may even be part of a normal life, a time of lying fallow and resting, perhaps to recover from a trauma or a loss. Matthew Fox called it one of the four roads that we follow from time to time in the course of life. But it isn't meant to be the main road that we take: not the main course. After a period of depression it is indeed helpful to "do something different" - but not to fly your plane into the government office of your choice. Distraction has been shown to help people recover from depression. Forcing yourself to do a normal routine also helps: "fake it til you make it" is a good mantra to follow. Because if you do manage to distract yourself from your thoughts, if you do "fake it" and go on about life "as if" it is worth living, it will become so again.
It is not unusual to have such thoughts. The time to worry, however, is when you find yourself (or someone you know) beginning to develop plans. Suicidal thoughts + plans = risk, especially if the plan is within the person's ability to be carried out in the near future. This constitutes an emergency: it's time to call 911 and get the person to hospital, where someone can distract them until they are able to distract themselves.
Before it becomes an emergency, however, if you find your life becoming a knotted problem from which there seems to be no escape, find a good therapist. Therapists are trained to "open space" and generate additional options - solutions to your problems that perhaps you never thought of.
Certainly for this man, there were options besides exacting an eye for an eye from the tax department, in a permanent and fatal solution. It was tragic that he couldn't see these options.
A great online resource for preventing suicide is here.
18/02: Trust the Process
I have dropped my daughter off at school, stopped at Shopper's for throat lozenges and bandaids, picked up a bacon and egg mcmuffin for myself, and driven to work. I've just put the coffee on, taken the garbage out, and fired up my computer, when my wife texts and asks me if I want to go for breakfast.
We've been going out for 30 years, married for more than 25, and my heart still melts when she walks in the room. I have skipped classes, failed courses, moved to strange cities, traveled to foreign countries, and quit jobs because of her.
You may think me a fool, or a saint. I am neither - at least definitely not a saint, and hopefully not a fool. We have had our share of fights, I have my own life, my own career, my own foibles. But I am blessed to share my life with someone, to actually grow old with her. Our children are in the process of leaving us. We'll be left with each other soon. And on a scale of 1 to 10, in terms of happiness, I'm running at about a 9 most of the time, these days.
A friend of mine died a few years ago, knew he was going to die the year preceding, and was happy. "Trust the process," he used to say. I have no premonitions of an early demise. But I did learn at an early age to do what's most important today, because you never know what will happen tomorrow.
So, I'm ditching the egg mcmuffin and going out for breakfast.
We've been going out for 30 years, married for more than 25, and my heart still melts when she walks in the room. I have skipped classes, failed courses, moved to strange cities, traveled to foreign countries, and quit jobs because of her.
You may think me a fool, or a saint. I am neither - at least definitely not a saint, and hopefully not a fool. We have had our share of fights, I have my own life, my own career, my own foibles. But I am blessed to share my life with someone, to actually grow old with her. Our children are in the process of leaving us. We'll be left with each other soon. And on a scale of 1 to 10, in terms of happiness, I'm running at about a 9 most of the time, these days.
A friend of mine died a few years ago, knew he was going to die the year preceding, and was happy. "Trust the process," he used to say. I have no premonitions of an early demise. But I did learn at an early age to do what's most important today, because you never know what will happen tomorrow.
So, I'm ditching the egg mcmuffin and going out for breakfast.
18/02: Family Day
Today was a statutory holiday where I live. We have this thing called Family Day, which I thought was just a Canadian thing but according to Wikipedia is a holiday in South Africa, Alberta, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Prince Edward Island, Arizona, Vanuatu, Vietnam, and part of Australia.
Not unlike the postmodern family, no one really seems to know what Family Day is about or agree on whether even to recognize it. The day, just like its namesake, has no "One size fits all."
My one daughter seemed to think that Family Day meant that you were supposed to stay with your family and that if you didn't then at least you should feel guilty about it. "Happy Family Day, Dad," she said as she slunk out of the car and into her friend's house. Robert Beavers in his 1981 Successful Marriage said that guilt was good if it lasted less than five minutes and led to a change of behaviour. No joy here. Rather she reminded me of a couple I saw once. Both had had affairs - but the woman felt justified because she felt more guilty about her affair than her husband did about his.
But I encouraged to her go, actually. She is at that age where she is supposed to be leaving my family, and thinking about starting a family of her own. The more time she spends with her friends, the better - and the more time I have for napping, or reading.
The other daughter of mine felt that Family Day was an offense, falling as it does this year, immediately after Valentine's Day. "Valentine's Day for love, and Family Day for what? To remind you of what can happen to you if you have too much love? Yuck!" She called today another name that I will not bother to repeat. But she too used the time to reconcile and reunite with friends.
Elizabeth Carter and Monica McGoldrick wrote (1989) The Changing Family Life Cycle to remind us that families are not static. At the very least, they evolve, from couples, to couples with young children, to kids in school, to teenagers, to launching and the empty nest, to older couples and to old age and death. There is wondrous variety to this basic scheme: same-sex couples, with and without children, single parents, never-married singles, two-home families. Each goes through its own stages of expansion and contraction, birth and death.
My dictionary defines a family as parents and children living in the same household. They don't have to be related to each other! The kids could be adopted. The Family Law Act of Ontario defines a parent as someone having a "settled intention" to raise a particular child. More variety.
Etymology takes us to the heart of the matter, however: "family" derives from the Latin noun "famula", meaning "servant" or "slave". The next time you're vacuuming or doing a load of never-ending laundry, consider that you belong to the "family" of families.
Nor is this a bad thing. I spent most of Family Day doing just that: laundry, vacuuming, cleaning floors, while the rest of my family was out doing their thing. It gave me pleasure to know that they were launching as they should be, that I perhaps had done and was doing my part to create the next generation of families.
And after that I took a nap, peacefully.
Not unlike the postmodern family, no one really seems to know what Family Day is about or agree on whether even to recognize it. The day, just like its namesake, has no "One size fits all."
My one daughter seemed to think that Family Day meant that you were supposed to stay with your family and that if you didn't then at least you should feel guilty about it. "Happy Family Day, Dad," she said as she slunk out of the car and into her friend's house. Robert Beavers in his 1981 Successful Marriage said that guilt was good if it lasted less than five minutes and led to a change of behaviour. No joy here. Rather she reminded me of a couple I saw once. Both had had affairs - but the woman felt justified because she felt more guilty about her affair than her husband did about his.
But I encouraged to her go, actually. She is at that age where she is supposed to be leaving my family, and thinking about starting a family of her own. The more time she spends with her friends, the better - and the more time I have for napping, or reading.
The other daughter of mine felt that Family Day was an offense, falling as it does this year, immediately after Valentine's Day. "Valentine's Day for love, and Family Day for what? To remind you of what can happen to you if you have too much love? Yuck!" She called today another name that I will not bother to repeat. But she too used the time to reconcile and reunite with friends.
Elizabeth Carter and Monica McGoldrick wrote (1989) The Changing Family Life Cycle to remind us that families are not static. At the very least, they evolve, from couples, to couples with young children, to kids in school, to teenagers, to launching and the empty nest, to older couples and to old age and death. There is wondrous variety to this basic scheme: same-sex couples, with and without children, single parents, never-married singles, two-home families. Each goes through its own stages of expansion and contraction, birth and death.
My dictionary defines a family as parents and children living in the same household. They don't have to be related to each other! The kids could be adopted. The Family Law Act of Ontario defines a parent as someone having a "settled intention" to raise a particular child. More variety.
Etymology takes us to the heart of the matter, however: "family" derives from the Latin noun "famula", meaning "servant" or "slave". The next time you're vacuuming or doing a load of never-ending laundry, consider that you belong to the "family" of families.
Nor is this a bad thing. I spent most of Family Day doing just that: laundry, vacuuming, cleaning floors, while the rest of my family was out doing their thing. It gave me pleasure to know that they were launching as they should be, that I perhaps had done and was doing my part to create the next generation of families.
And after that I took a nap, peacefully.
