Faith of Our Fathers...and Mothers...and Others

I want to offer this as a very brief follow-up to my previous blog.

It's kind of personal, but something tells me it may "strike home" with some of you, maybe even many of you.

I've been a bit of a gypsy in my life. Prone to shifting my circumstances pretty readily. I joined the carnival when I was 23, ended up in Montana for seven years, lived in Kauai for a while, England, Colorado, then joined the Navy for eight years finishing my tour of duty on the east coast with a follow-up of about four years working for the Federal Government in some capacity or another.

And then I decided to ride my bicycle across the country! Now I'm enjoying Santa Barbara, CA and getting ready to re-start my trip this spring.

During all of these years, my father has told he "loves me" but he "worries about me". At the same time, he's never been one to initiate much contact with me. I'm sorry to say he has not been inclined to "make the effort" to do that. It's always been me calling him.

My mother, well, ever since I started disagreeing with her point of view of my father and "everything else" she's thought (at various times) there was something "wrong with my mind", and she has been concerned that I stopped "following Jesus". In other words, she "worries" about me, too.

I mean no disrespect to either of my parents. They are who they are and I know they've been doing the best they can knowing what they know. And it is not like I came into this world knowing what I know now, or even what I have come to better understand in the last few weeks even.

Nevertheless, neither of my parents have ever taken much time to really get to know me as I am. When I've been at my father's house, along with my step-mother and step-relatives, and my two sisters I've usually spent most of my time listening to the stories of their lives. Nobody has ever really asked me much about mine. I kind of wonder if any of them are reading these blogs.

In contrast, there is a couple in Tennessee, my German professor from Tennessee Tech and his wife, who became like "adoptive" parents to me in my early 20's. Whenever I visit them, it is an almost endless barrage of questions! I have frequently visited them on my way to or from Kentucky where my father and step-mother live, and several years ago I really noticed the striking difference.

Now, it may be that due to the other dynamics of my family and our history together, that there are other reasons why my relatives don't really want to know what's going on in my life. They may feel any "problems" might have something to do with them, i.e. how they have or have not related to me over the years, but I've never really felt that way. It would have been nice to be able to share all of my "successes" in spite of the challenging history, but that has really not been much of an option, either. And, maybe their perception of what is "success" is different from mine.

What I have realized most recently though is what I have really wanted from my family was a little "rational faith" in me, a little "faith" in my ability to take care of myself, based on the evidence of my life. Again, though, maybe their view of "success" is too different from mine, so they don't see the evidence of my adaptability and my courage to take on new challenges, to freely uproot myself and try something new. They don't see those things as positive qualities in me.

As I have thought about this more, I have begun to think that when it comes to parents relating with their children, faith plays a pivotal role. As a parent, can you trust that your child is being guided by their own inner core and Life Purpose, or do you feel you have to make a lot of decisions about all of that for them?

By all means, young children need "care" - they need the effort of love that provides for their basic biological and psychological needs - food, clothing, shelter, protection. Parents need to know what to expect from their children at various stages of development, so they will also know their child's potentials and limits, and challenge the child accordingly in terms of reaching their highest potential at any given stage. This is where close and objective observation (free of parental "projections") is so important. The best parents will make the effort to pay attention to their child, to ask them questions, to help them come to a better understanding of themselves, their likes and dislikes, what is important to them. The parent must provide appropriate "boundaries" and recognize when the child can handle a greater level of responsibility for themselves at each stage of their development.

It is in this way, the parent develops a Rational Basis of Faith in their child, and their child's increasing ability to take care of themselves, to make more and more decisions for themselves, to take on more and more of the responsibilities of daily life.

If that faith is lacking, then it is much more likely that the child will struggle, even long into their adulthood, with having Faith in Themselves, and, therefore, the will to accept the ever increasing challenges, that require effort as part of being a human being in this world.

I have come to the conclusion that, where I have in the past considered the need of each of us as children for "unconditional love", I now think Rational Faith might be even more important, and that is what we also have to offer to one another, based on our actual knowledge of each other as that develops in the course of our relating.

Yes, it is also possible to come to a place of having Rational Faith in oneself without ever receiving it from others. But then again, sometimes, it can make all the difference. Imagine a young man in a classroom whose teacher told him, "You're a good writer" when he wasn't so sure about that himself. That man may go on to write books that could very well help change the world.

I am grateful to all of the people in my life who have expressed their confidence, their "faith" in me as well. It has helped me to be willing to persevere, even during the rough times, and now with this Clearer Understanding at least from my current point of view, I'm looking forward to "Spreading the Faith" to others!

On "Loving Yourself"...

This subject came up on Facebook today and I really wanted to give a thorough response as follows. I have decided to quote it here rather than making a Really Long (un-formatted) "comment" on FB.

From: "The New Guide to Rational Living" by Albert Ellis, Ph. D., and Robert A. Harper, Ph. D., Chapter 10 - Tackling Dire Needs for Approval. (There are newer versions but this happens to be from the 1979 Edition, Pp. 94-101 - I wish I could quote the whole chapter, but I'm going to start about half way in.)

...Your accepting yourself and devoting yourself to outside activities may constitute reciprocal goals. For if you really follow your own basic bents and do not overly concern yourself about what others think of you, you will have so little time to spend in self-centered worrying that you will feel virtually forced to find absorbing interests on the outside. By the same token, if you throw your energies into outside activities and actively devote yourself to other people and things, you normally will tend to feel less concerned about what others think of you and, hence, to respect your own values.

Put somewhat differently, if you devote yourself enthusiastically to long-range hedonism--to activities that you consider desirable and enjoyable from a long-term perspective--you will clearly accept yourself because you do what you really want to do and do not falsely follow what someone else thinks you should do. Our clients and associates frequently ask: "I can see that accepting myself rather than desperately needing the love of others constitutes a more realistic orientation. But how will this help me love other people? As I less and less concern myself about whether others approve of me, won't I find it more and more troublesome and unnecessary to give a damn about them--to relate lovingly to them?"

No, for several reasons. First of all, if you direly need love, you will feel so preoccupied with obtaining it that you have as much chance to honor your own choices or to love others as a dope addict has to relate freely and self-confidently to the person who supplies him with drugs.

Secondly, if you surrender your dire need for love, you will still retain, in most instances, a strong desire for acceptance by others. People often wrongly assume that your not direly needing love means the same thing as your feeling love has no value. Not at all. You can easily enjoy well-written stories and plays even though you have no need to do so. Why can you not, then, enjoy and seek intimate relationships without believing that your life depends on them?

Thirdly, when you free yourself from your demands that you receive love, you can better love. You can see more clearly the lovable traits of others; stop hating them when they do not immediately respond to you; learn what you really enjoy in relationship; risk committing yourself to loving, even when you know that a given affair may not work out well; and feel unanxiously free to experience and experiment with loving because you realize that although you may lose your beloved you can never lose yourself.

Another frequently asked question: "Granted that loving has more rewards than desperately needing love, should I therefore give up all my desires for approval and recognition?"

Answer: Certainly not. Complete self-sacrifice or the total surrender of your own desires for approval can prove just as foolish as your obsession with winning esteem of others. Again for several reasons:

1. You act quite normally when you want to express your own unique conceptions of the world to others and want them to take pleasure in some of your expressions. You would hardly seem human if you did not derive some satisfaction from relating to others.

2. Wanting acceptance from others constitutes one of the main essences of desire; and men and women entirely free from desire again do not appear entirely human. According to the Hindu classic the Bhagavad-Gita, the strongest individual "has indifference to honor and insult, heat and cold, pleasure and pain. He feels free from attachment." A few select individuals find this a worthy ideal. But we doubt whether many humans could ever attain it.To lean so far over backwards to get rid of psychological pain that you also eradicate all pleasure does not seem too rational to us. By all means try, if you will, to eliminate your extreme, unrealistic, self-defeating desire; but not desire itself!

3. From a practical view, if you ardently want various things--such as material goods or more leisure--you had better win the approval or respect of certain people such as your parents, teachers, or bosses. Though you may wisely eliminate your inordinate demands that others love you, you'd better sanely retain, in any social group, some wishes for acceptance by other group members.

Granted that having an inordinate need for others' love will serve to defeat your own ends, and that having some wish for acceptance seems eminently sane, the question arises: How can you somehow manage to attain a middle-of-the-road policy in this respect?

First and foremost, by admitting that you do have a dire need for love in many instances; by making a continual effort to observe this need in operation; and by then continually challenging, questioning, and disputing it....

....If you do have a dire need for love; if you accept the fact that you have it; and if you keep challenging, questioning, and disputing it, it will ultimately, and often quite quickly, start decreasing. For remember: It remains your need; and you keep sustaining it.

Other methods you can use to combat and minimize your inordinate love needs include the following:

1. Ask yourself what you really want to do, rather than what others would like you to do. And keep asking yourself, from time to time: "Do I keep doing this or refusing to do that because I really want it that way? Or do I, once again, unthinkingly keep trying to please others?"

2. In going after what you really want, take risks, commit yourself, don't desperately avoid making mistakes. Don't act needlessly foolhardy; but convince yourself that if you fail to get something you want and people laugh at or criticize you for your failure, they may have a problem. As long as you learn by your errors, does it make that much difference what they think?

3. Focus on loving rather than on getting love. Try to realize that vital living hardly consists of passive receiving but of doing, acting, reaching out. And just as you can force yourself to play the piano, do yoga exercises, or go to work every day, you can also often forcibly commit yourself to loving other humans. In so doing, your dire needs for love will probably decrease.

[What follows is probably the most significant part to me...LB]

4. Above all, don't confuse getting love with having personal worth. If you must see yourself as having any intrinsic worth or value as a human (which we would not advise, since we think that any kind of self-rating, positive or negative, tends to bring pernicious results), you'd better claim to have it by virtue of your mere existence, your aliveness, your essence -- and not because of anything you do to "earn" it. No matter how much others approve you, or how much they may value you for their own benefit, they thereby can only give you, as Robert S. Hartman explains, extrinsic value, or worth to them. They cannot, by loving you, give you intrinsic value--or the worth you have to yourself. If intrinsic value exists at all (which we seriously doubt, since it seems a well-nigh undefinable Kantian thing-in-itself), you get it because you choose, you decide to have it. It exists purely because of your own definition. You emerge as "good" or "deserving" because you think you do and not because anyone in any way gives you this kind of intrinsic value.

If you can really believe this highly important truth--that you need not rate yourself, your essence at all (and that you can choose to call yourself intrinsically worthwhile just because you decide to do so)--you will tend to lose your desperate need for others' approval. For you need--or think you need--their acceptance not because of the practical advantages it may bring, but because you foolishly define your worth as a human in terms of receiving or not receiving it. Once you stop this kind of silly defining, the dire need for their approval generally evaporates (though the strong desire to have them like you may well remain). Similarly, if you rid yourself of your dire need for approval, you will find it relatively easy to stop rating yourself as a person, even though you continue to rate many of your traits, and to accept yourself merely because you remain alive and kicking--and for that reason alone "deserve" to continue to exist and to have a maximally enjoyable life.

To underscore this last point about human worth, consider the case of Herbert Flisch, a forty-year-old successful businessman who recognized, after eight sessions of rational-emotive therapy, that almost every single one of his actions for the past four decades had stemmed from his dire need to win the approval of his parents, wife, children, friends, and even employees. At his ninth session he asked:

"Do I understand you correctly to mean that if I stop trying to win everyone's approval and do what I think I would like to do (and what would not at the same time defeat my own ultimate ends) that I'll then love myself because I'll consider myself more worthwhile?"

"No," the therapist replied. "Those of us who have worked to develop this system of rational-emotive psychotherapy have come to realize that worthwhileness proves just as illegitimate a concept as its counterpart, worthlessness; and that, in fact, just as soon as you tend to think in terms of personal 'worth' you must almost automatically tend to think, at the same time, in terms of personal 'worthlessness.'

"Thus, if you consider yourself 'worthwhile' today because you function effectively, make wise decisions, or think bright thoughts, you'll tend to consider yourself 'worthless' tomorrow because you then function less effectively, make some unwise decisions, or think dull thoughts."

"But wouldn't I have no worth if I never functioned effectively?" asked the client.

"No, definitely not. Even if you had mental deficiency and never functioned well, you would then have no extrinsic 'worth'--meaning that others might not find you a suitable companion or employee--but you could have, intrinsically, as much 'worth' to yourself as any other more efficient individual. You would have 'worth', in other words, if you believed you had. But if you believed, as you obviously do, that inefficiency makes you 'worthless,' you would then feel exactly that."

"So I remain worthwhile if I think I do--no matter how inefficiently I may actually perform in life?"

"Yes--except that, as I said before, the very concept of 'worth' has dangers, since it implies the concept of 'worthlessness.' Just like the concept of heaven implies the concept of hell. In fact, the way we usually employ the terms, to have 'worth' really means pretty much the same thing as to behave angelically or heaven-directed; and to have 'worthlessness' means to behave demonically or hell-directed. Doesn't it?"

"In a way, I guess it does. I can see what you mean," said the client.

"Moreover, if you have concepts of 'worth' and 'worthlessness,' even if you avoid extreme self-designations in using these concepts, you will tend to remain preoccupied with varying degrees of 'worth.' Thus, you will tend to say to yourself: 'Today I have great worth; yesterday I had less; I hope and pray tomorrow I can have more'

"This kind of concept of 'worth' (and, hence, of the lack of worth or less worth) carries with it irrational and undesirable aspects of guilt, self-disrespect, self-blame, shame, anger, hostility, and other self-sabotaging emotions. The counter-concept, that you have neither 'worth' because of your effectiveness nor 'worthlessness' because of your ineffectiveness, but that you merely exist, this concept, difficult as it seems for almost all people to see and accept, safely eliminates the notion of intrinsic 'worthlessness' and self-damnation."

"I'll have to give this some more thought," said the client. "But, it does seem to have something to it. However, how does it tie in with self-acceptance?"

"It has a most important tie-in with self-acceptance. For self-acceptance means fully accepting yourself, your existence, and your right to live and to devise as happy a life as you can for yourself--no matter what traits you have or performances you do. It does not mean self-esteem, self-confidence, self-respect, or self-regard. For all these terms imply that you can accept yourself because you do something well or because other people like you. Self-acceptance, however, merely means that you accept yourself because you remain alive and have decided to accept yourself. Only a relatively limited number of talented, intelligent, competent, or well-loved people can gain self-esteem or self-confidence. But anyone, merely because he chooses to have it, can gain self-acceptance."

"Does self-acceptance mean that I consider myself worthy or deserving of living and enjoying no matter what I do?"

"Yes, though we don't like the words worthy or deserving, since they imply a rating--that you have to do (or refrain from doing) something in order to feel 'worthy' or 'deserving.' When you have what we call self-acceptance, you make minimal assumptions about your (and other people's) intrinsic worth or value."

"What minimal assumptions?"

"Several: One, you exist. Two, you can probably, by continuing to exist, achieve more pleasure than pain, thus making it desirable for you to keep living. Three, to a considerable degree, you can help minimize your pain and maximize your pleasure. Four, you decide--and this constitutes the essence of self-acceptance--that you will try to live and make your existence as pleasurable and as unpainful as you can make it. Or, putting it another way, you choose as the main purpose of your existence short-range (here and now) and long-range (future) enjoyment. Not achieving for the sake of achieving. Not receiving adoration from others. Not proving your greatness as a person. Not getting into heaven. Just plain damned enjoyment!"

"So instead of my continuing to ask myself, 'What worth have I?' 'How do I keep proving myself?' 'How can I outstandingly impress others?' or 'What do I have to do to ennoble myself?' I'd better, instead, ask, 'How the devil can I avoid needless pain and find out what I truly enjoy in life and do it?' Right?''

"Exactly right! You make the purpose of your existence having a present and future ball--in whatever idiosyncratic and harmless ways you experimentally discover."

"You mean that I may then enjoy myself and accept myself and my existence as more enjoyable. But that I still will not really exist as more 'worthwhile'--only more alive, happier?"

"Right. And you will not, we hope, blame yourself or punish yourself whenever--as an imperfect human--you do something wrong or unwise. You will accept yourself with your foolish thoughts, feelings, perceptions, or actions, and use the experience that you get as a result of these unwise acts to help you enjoy yourself and behave more rationally in the future. What greater acceptance of self (and through that, potential acceptance of and tolerance for other humans) could you then have?"

The Cornerstone - Part II

In the spring of 1988, roughly three years after my mother went into the mental hospital, the carnival came to town and set-up in one of the large parking lots on the college campus. I became friends with the young man running the "Himalaya" ride, and not long after that, I decided to "join the carnival" myself, thinking it would be fun for a summer job (the fact that this guy looked a bit like Tom Cruise had nothing to do with my decision, of course! : )). Normally, the carnival did not allow women to travel alone, but since I would be working for this young man's mother, and his father was the manager of the show, they were willing to bend that rule in my case.

In general though, deciding to join the carnival was one of the first real choices in my life that I feel I made for myself, simply because it was What I Wanted to Do.  In other words, it was not about living up to any of my mother's expectations, or a boyfriend's, or a teacher's, etc.  It was just me doing something for me, trusting my own "gut", if you will.

So in June of that year, I boarded a Greyhound bus for the long trip from Tennessee, across the Ohio River into Indiana where I met-up with and became an employee of Cumberland Valley Shows. I went to work for my friend's mother helping her run her "Shoot Out the Star" joint. I adapted very quickly to all the routines of setting-up and tearing down, collecting spent lead shot for recycling, and loading the good shot into the straw-like metal tubes, that were later used to load the air-powered b-b guns. I became familiar with other members of the carnival, as well as some of the people who worked in between the various carnivals around the region, delivering stuffed animal prizes and other supplies.

One of these "inter-carnival" workers was an artist whose name might have been, John, but I remember him more as the "Zen Painter".  His talent was in creating these really bright colorful back-drops for the various games and rides and even the occasional truck trailer door for the "houses on wheels" that were quarters for many of the game owners and show managers.

This "Zen Painter" took an interest in me.  He listened to my life story and eventually loaned me a book to read.  It was The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller.  It was a short book, under 200 pages, and I read it very quickly as I did not know when I would see my friend again and I wanted to be sure and be able to give it back to him when he returned from his travels to other carnivals in the region.

I remember being in my room, one of 10 or so built into an 18-wheel truck trailer, so it was pretty small.  I was sitting on my bunk bed, and I was reading through the sections where Alice Miller explains how one's parents are the only two people in the world who are really obligated to Love them Unconditionally; and how, if children do not receive that from their parents, if they do not get to experience a "happy childhood", there is no way, as an adult, to go back and "redo" that. Instead, in such a case, it was appropriate to Mourn the Loss of one's "happy childhood" and then Let It Go.

It did not take much for me to understand how this applied in my own case.  Right there and then, I started to cry, in the closet of my living quarters, a carny with Cumberland Valley Shows, a young woman, alone...I mourned the loss of my "happy childhood". And right there and then, I also Let Go.  I stopped expecting any other person to make up for what I did not receive from my parents as a child. I stopped seeking "unconditional love" from anyone else.  And at the same time, I realized that the only person left to "Love Me Unconditionally", to love my still present "inner child" unconditionally, was Me.  And, in many ways, the only person left to parent (or "re-parent") me was Me.

Now you may think that this was a very sad and maybe even terrible moment in my life.  But, actually, it was one of The Most Liberating.  Not only was it Truly Liberating for Me, but it was to be Liberating for all of the other people I came into contact with in my life from that point on, because I did not come to them with Any Expectations for them to "Love me Unconditionally" or to try to Make Up for the Loss of My "Happy Childhood".

Furthermore, I did not continue into my life feeling that "I have already suffered so much, I just can't bear to suffer any more and all I want is for someone to love me and take care of me" the way I was not loved and taken care of (in any functional way) as a child. In other words, I did not walk around with a sense of entitlement based on my previous suffering, nor was I bound to the inevitable disappointment over and over and over again, where those expectations were not fulfilled, because they Could Not Ever Be Fulfilled. I understood that my Childhood was over, it was dead, in the past, and could never be revived.  Yes, I recognized that loss, and I mourned that loss, but then, as a quickly awakening adult, I moved on with my life.

Now, more than anything else, I feel that understanding became the Cornerstone of my new life apart from my mother. I will not deny for a moment that Every Child Deserves the Unconditional Love and Functional Support of their biological or adoptive Parents. However, the sad fact is, most of us living today have not had that, and, unfortunately, most of the children living today are not getting that, although there are more today then there have been, thanks in part to wise and compassionate people like Alice Miller. My life, though not particularly extraordinary, is still a demonstration for others, that it is possible for all of us who have not grown up with truly "happy childhoods", to mourn that loss, and then Let Go, so that we can, in the here and now, accept responsibility for loving ourselves unconditionally, and for continuing on in our lives as the Adults that we are now, rather than as the children we might otherwise long to be again.

This world needs Adults - truly mature, empathetic, and rational human beings. It needs people who understand what it means to be Responsible for Oneself and ones actions, rather than people constantly clinging to the fantasy of some day being "taken care of" by an employer, by a lover, by "God", or by "The State."  I will not deny that there may very well be Larger Forces at Play here, but there is also a level at which we have to Take Part ourselves, consciously and responsibly, as Adults, and not as "children" still seeking the unconditional love and support of "someone...anyone" where their actual parents have failed to provide that.

So I will say again, Do Not Hesitate to Mourn the Loss of your "Happy Childhood" if this is appropriate in your case, but then, Let It Go and be ready to Move On.

I am very glad I "joined the carnival" - that I courageously "followed my gut" because there was a very, very, important message waiting for me, that I might never have received if I had not made that "crazy" choice in the first place. And as I have suggested here, the understanding I gained from reading The Drama of the Gifted Child became the "Cornerstone" for my life of learning apart from my mother. There have been many, many more ideas that have filled in that "structure" of my life, and in some cases, liberated me from ideas that were too limiting. It is those ideas that I am sharing through this blog, so that others might be strengthened and liberated as well.