Category: psychology

Impulsive vs. Reflective

RilalyLeave a comment

I have learned, the hard way, to avoid the impulses that drive one to make impulsive purchases. I have learned to define my desire for said product through separation. Take a step away and try to take the newness element out of the product and imagine it on you, in you, or under you one month from now. The problem with these impulses I have is that they drive me to purchase shocking, ridiculous, and useless products that satisfy a short-term desire to be different.

Craftsmanship means as much to me as anyone else, but when it comes time to purchase products, the subtlety of a craftsman’s curve in a rocking chair has never spoken to me on a personal level. I much prefer a new-age piece of furniture that has some innovative sex appeal with a couple exclamation points behind it. I want a piece that causes people to ask questions that have no suitable answers.

Had I followed the impulses that have controlled me at various points in my life, I would now be driving a bright orange Jeep with black trim. I might even have a bright yellow colored living room with equally bright orange furniture, and some kind of multicolored carpet that accentuates the overall theme. I might also have a visually striking painting of a screeching gargantuan, gold eagle, with beaming blood red eyes, flying above shadowed villagers scampering to safety on a red felt background. Those products would fulfill a definition I have for the immediate, shocking, discomfiting, and shocking elements of beauty. It’s a definition of who I was, and who I am, that I know would shock my visitors into thinking there might be something we need to sit down and discuss before it gets out of hand.

Two things prohibit me from following these impulses: A wife and a child. A wife, or any person on the inside looking in, tempers such impulses with rational refutation. When a single man, with no children, follows his impulses, people sort through the psychological damages he must have accrued throughout his life, and they laugh it off as a bachelor pad. When that same man has a child, however, that child has extended family members that care about that child and worry about their well-being when they see that one of his primary role models has created a living room that requires sunglasses. When one of that child’s primary role models also has a painting of a bloodthirsty eagle flying above doomed villagers, above the hearth, they might question his ability to raise a proper child.

The other thing that prevents me from following these impulses now is that I’ve been there, done that. I’ve been the person others tried to understand, and I’ve been a person that others gave up trying to understand, until they conceded that the person they thought they knew is a lot weirder than they ever thought. I’ve purchased a shockingly bright, baby blue pair of shoes that I considered an expression of my personal definition of beauty. I tore these shocking baby blue pair of shoes off the shelves on sight and without thought. I figured I was in for a psychological pummeling from those who consider anything different a source of ridicule, but I was willing to ride it out for the effect I thought the pair of shoes would have on my essence.

Others echoed these fears by informing me that I should expect the worst from my classmates, if I had the temerity to wear these shoes to school. “People do wear such shoes,” they warned, “when they workout. They don’t wear them at work, in school, or on the path to and fro.”

Hindsight may be 20/20, in this case, but I remember tingling with anticipation over the effect I thought this would have on my classmates. I couldn’t wait to introduce them to the new me. I then made a statement about the old me, by throwing away my old, sensible shoes.

Those who tried to prepare me for the psychological pummeling that would follow, would have been shocked at how successful my attempt to shock people was. I lost loyal friends over it, as they attempted to distance themselves from me to avoid having shrapnel rain down upon them. The experience was such that I thought of a short story called The Boy with the Bright, Baby Blue Shoes. I remembered a nature documentary in which a pack of hyenas brought a zebra down bite-by-bite, and my sympathy for that beast churned to empathy after this moment in my life. For those who abhor judgments of any kind and seek the karmic justice for those who do, this was one of the many for me. It did not feel good, and the pain I experienced changed me. If you’re going to judge others, you should prepare for them to judge you.

I did not have the confidence, or temerity necessary to stare these people down back then, and they broke me. I did learn that when one dares to be different, there are whole bunch of guidelines and borders, and most of them are superficial. I also learned one golden rule of life that I would pursue for much of my life to arrive at a final answer, and that was that most people consider it a worthy goal to dismiss as many people as possible in life. A wearer of bright, baby blue shoes becomes a wearer of such shoes, for example, until that person becomes a barometer of agreed upon truths that need to be agreed upon in the most brutal fashion possible.

At some point, I did find the subtle beauty of a craftsman’s curve in the gap of others’ writings, in certain lyrical phrases, and in the margins of dialogue and characterization. I discovered something in the intended, and unintended, philosophical truths of various artistic expressions of organic craftsmen. In those phrases, lines, paragraphs, and comprehensive thoughts, I discovered a shockingly different beauty that replaced my need for superficially shocking modifications.

My need for character-defining purchases also led me to be a sucker for innovation. My impulses drive me to purchase the latest and greatest technology my fellow man created for my convenience, and it led me to spend a great deal of money in the “As Seen on TV” aisles of prominent stores, and the “As Seen on TV” stores in malls. I purchase these products in the hope that they will simplify otherwise arduous and mundane tasks, but I’ve purchased these types of products so often that I now know that whatever short-term convenience these products provide pale in comparison to their suspect long-term durability. These innovations do sell, of course, because people, like me, get amped up on the idea that a collapsible garden hose will free up so much space on my back patio. The question I ask myself, now, when wrestling with the impulses that drive me to purchase anything that will make my life easier is, if this “new and improved way of doing things” product were in fact better than the more traditional products in the main aisle, wouldn’t the new products replace those traditional products that my dad and my grandfather used in the main aisle. If the new and improved products are as great as the manufacturer’s claim, it shouldn’t take long for them to replace the old, traditional products, but for reasons endemic to this article they never do. 

For those who still can’t rationalize their impulses away, I have one piece of advice when attempting to define your desire by separation. Those bright, baby blue pair of shoes that look so deliciously freakish sitting in that aisle will eventually become nothing more than a pair of shoes over time. A Jeep will become nothing more than a mode for transportation, and a chair will eventually become nothing more than something to sit in, once the effect of being shocking wears off. The person who makes these impulsive purchases also realizes that these products provide onlookers data about the person that purchases them in a manner that the purchaser will likely regret long term. I hoped that by purchasing a pair of bright, baby blue tennis shoes that I would make a statement that no one in my vicinity would soon forget, and they didn’t, and I realized that I allowed them to dismiss me as a person that wore bright, baby blue shoes. I learned that every day beauty requires a study of the subtle forms of beauty that will grow on a person, and when the otherwise impulsive learn this they will decide to purchase the white Jeep with black rims.

Honor Thy Mother and Father

Rilaly2 Comments

“The commandment (Honor Thy Mother and Father) is about obedience and respect for authority; in other words it’s simply a device for controlling people. The truth is, obedience and respect should not be granted automatically. They should be earned. They should be based on the parents’ (or the authority figure’s) performance. Some parents deserve respect. Most of them don’t. Period.”  –George Carlin

Had famous comedian, and social critic, George Carlin left this argument in the realm of adults conducting themselves in a manner worthy of respect and obedience, a counterargument would be impossible to make, but Carlin had to go ahead and add a pesky punctuation mark. Period. End of statement. I loathe most qualifiers almost as much as I loathe “but it’s for the children!” arguments. I prefer bold, provocative statements that shock the collective into rethinking their ideas on a given matter. My limited experience with children has informed me, however, that Carlin should’ve added an asterisk for children.

Children have an almost unconditional need to respect laws and rules, and that they want to respect those in roles of authority and guidance, for the structure it provides them amidst the chaos and confusion they experience while attempting to learn how they are to conduct themselves in life.

o-GEORGE-CARLIN-facebookNo one would use the words imposing or authoritative figure to describe me, yet when I am around a child who is lacking in the stability that decent parenting can provide, they gravitate to me. This is made most apparent when I mention to them that I am considering leaving the room. To the other kids in the room, my declaration is the equivalent to a starting gun. They look forward to any adult-free moments life has to offer, and they plan to cut loose. The kids who are more accustomed to playing without much adult supervision or the degree of authority a somewhat competent adult can provide, worry that I may not be coming back. ‘What are you talking about,’ the more adjusted kids in the room all but scream. ‘Let him go!’

Anytime I recall this scene, some find it cute and funny, and in some respects it is, but it’s also a revealing moment of the sense of vulnerability some kids who lack a consistent image of authority have. They want and need some sort of definition for how to act. The adult in the room is left confused by this display of a child not only needing an authority figure in the room, but actually wanting it. It makes no sense to those of us who spent our childhood attempting to escape any semblance of authority. It’s sad, and it enhances the need for a qualifier in Carlin’s argument.

As much space as has been given to the respect we should give to a child’s curious mind, their limitless capacity for fantasy, and their ability to view and respond to adults without filters, they’re still doughy balls of clay waiting to be formed. We tend to view most children through the best case scenarios. Their lack of filters, their fantastical minds, and their freedom is something to be cherished and envied. We need to help them develop this without authority. Yet, even healthy, well-adjusted kids need order. Even if they are going to create healthy disorder, random chaos, and artistic destruction of everything we hold dear, they need a healthy dose of structure and order to line their foundation. Even though psychologists say that our minds aren’t full formed until twenty-five, they need something closer to it to scrutinize authority figures, rebel against them, and out and out reject them based on their performance. A child needs a definition of respect regardless if their parents have earned it or not.

I would’ve jumped for joy, decades ago, to read that a learned mind, such as George Carlin, echoed this sentiment of mine, in the manner he did. The more I age, and the more I see the other side of the argument, the more I understand that respect for parents is of mutual benefit. As a child ages, experience leads them to need authority less, and the onus falls on the parent to live a life that commands respect from their progressed mind. Parents are people too, of course, and they’re subject to the same failings, missteps, and lifestyle choices as any other adult. When that adult becomes a parent, and they continue to display such failings, they present a challenge to a child who wants to respect them. It’s important for parents to do whatever they can to fulfill what was once unconditional respect and make better choices. In the respect arena, children are forgiving, blessed with a short-term memory, and imbued with a desire to respect their parents for the purpose of having something to respect, and to have parents that their friends can respect. Parents can serve as a lighthouse in a dark sea of confusion and chaos, and this is made most apparent by children who have been guided through their youth by suspect parenting, but I don’t think it’s debatable that a parent, coupled with a child’s obedience and respect of that parent, will play a role in that child’s life that will last well into adulthood.

No matter what my dad did or said, during my younger years, he required me to respect him. I considered that self-serving. I, like George Carlin, thought he needed to do more to earn my respect, but like a politician who lies and later informs the public that they’ve “always been consistent on the matter”, my dad’s constant demands for near unconditional respect worked. Even though there were moments when he lost my respect, he continued to require me to respect him. He required me to overlook the fact that he didn’t earn my respect in many ways. I did use Carlin’s line that respect and obedience should be earned on my dad, in many ways, even though I didn’t know Carlin echoed my sentiments at the time. To my teenage mind, my dad’s requirements were illogical, and my dad’s answer to my arguments was, “I am your father, and you will respect me,” and he wouldn’t yield on this point. I pointed to his moments of weakness and hypocrisy, but he didn’t budge. “You have to respect your father.” It was almost obnoxious how often he just kept repeating such lines, in various ways, no matter what I said. To my surprise, it worked. His obnoxious and repetitious insistence worked. I respected him, and his authority in my life, and it ended up benefiting me by giving me a base of respect, and a foundation from which I would venture forth in the rest of my life.

Of course there are qualifiers to this qualifier, as we’ve all witnessed otherwise stable parents produce one black sheep in a family of otherwise well-adjusted children, and we’ve all witnessed well-adjusted, under-parented children display a sense of independence that they carried into adulthood. The arguments that there are exceptions to every rule shouldn’t lead us to believe that the rules need to be changed. Parents should strive to earn respect and obedience from their children, even if some don’t succeed in this regard. I consider it irresponsible to make a blanket statement that in some ways encourages children to disrespect their parents until they earn respect and obedience. Again, if it were Carlin’s goal to encourage parents to act in a responsible manner that earns respect, I would have no problem with his statement, but he had to add that period. 

The aspect of the oft repeated refutation of the commandment Honor thy Mother and Father that confuses me, in regards to George Carlin, is that by the time he wrote this piece, in his third book, he was older and wiser, and I would assume that he reached an age where more objective wisdom takes place. It sounds great to repeat the line that the age-old “honor thy mother and father” line is B.S., because that speaks to the rebellious side of those of us who have lived a full life in direct opposition to our parents’ wishes, and perhaps we even hated our parents, but Carlin had children at the time of this writing, grown children, and his perspective on this matter either didn’t change, or it flipped back. The only light in the tunnel of my confusion is that his children have stated that they often thought they were the parents in the Carlin home, a statement that leads this reader to suspect that George Carlin was probably a poor parent and a relatively chaotic adult in private. He had to have witnessed the deleterious effects this had on his children, and it probably formed his belief that obedience and respect of a parent should be conditional and earned period. Perhaps, he wrote it with the knowledge that he failed his children in this regard.

Tennis Shoe Thomas

RilalyLeave a comment

“Why do you insist on wearing tennis shoes?” Thomas asked me.

That was how Thomas greeted me at the door of his home. Prior to his greeting, his mother told him what my name was, but that was of secondary concern to this kid who couldn’t believe an eleven-year-old would wear tennis shoes. His mother chastised him quietly for being rude, but she did so in a way that appeared to quietly accepted him for who he was. He asked me that question as if he knew me for years, and he was bothered by my insistence on my foot apparel, but this was the first and only time we met. Thomas said tennis shoes with a level of disgust one might have for another who chooses to have leprosy. His question also laid a depth charge that would detonate throughout the course of this evening in the form of a theme: There was something I missed, some crucial element of being a pre-teen years that could hinder my preparation for the life beyond.

Thomas’ confidence was difficult to mirror, as we were on his home turf, and I was the visitor with all the insecurities of entering another’s home. I don’t think I was four steps in his home when he blindsided me with that scrutiny. I was vulnerable to what other kids thought as any other kid, and Thomas was an older kid to boot, which only increased my feelings of vulnerability thought, and he took full advantage. If I were better prepared for the question, I would’ve mentioned the fact that I didn’t pick my shoes out, but even if I did, I’d never given much consideration to the process of buying shoes. I was a kid, my dad bought my shirts, my shorts, and my shoes. I just wore them. My memory might be faulty, but I don’t remember focusing much of my attention on what I wore, and I don’t think anyone my age did either. There’s always the “cool factor” of course, and I knew my shoes weren’t cool, but the idea that tennis shoes were now considered a “tired” part of the kid ensemble never occurred to me.

It wasn’t the first time that my identity would be challenged, nor would it be the last, but this kid did a masterful job of placing me in a state of vulnerability. As soon as I formulated some kind of half-hearted answer to a question I had never been asked before, Thomas was onto something else. The theme of our conversation was that he had little time for me, because I was a kid, and even though he was only one year older, he obviously preferred to only speak to those he respected.

He was an older kid, and in the kid world older equals cooler, until we find out otherwise. Thus, when Thomas offered not so subtle hints that he had no respect for me I was not shocked. What did shock me was that his preferred audience, and the individual he turned to as a respected peer was my dad. What kid prefers to speak to adults? If my dad gave off vibes that he was cool, hip, or in any way attractive to young people seeking a mentor or a guide, I never saw evidence of it. Even as a kid, I knew my views of him were subjective, but no kid I met said anything along the lines of, “Your dad is actually kind of cool.”

I briefly considered that this might be Thomas’s idea of a devastating insult, “You’re so uncool, I’d rather talk to your father.” As their conversation played out, however, it became clear that Thomas’s goal was to impress the man. What were your dads’ questions, you might ask to get some insight into what prompted Thomas to direct his attention on someone other than me. He asked Thomas typical questions like, “How do you like school?” and “Do you have a girlfriend?” Thomas loved it. That told me more about Thomas than anything else that happened throughout the evening. My dad was just more his speed, and he asked Thomas questions that Thomas enjoyed answering. The typical response from a pre-teen to such questions, responses we learn from our cool contemporaries, is to be polite but dismissive, with a heavy dose of the latter.

Not only was this kid respectful, he appeared to prefer the company of my dad before knowing anything about him. He also appeared to vie for his approval. It was so out of the realm of my experience that I was fascinated, after I determined that this kid was in full control of his facilities. His answer to my dad’s typical question consisted of a verbal flowchart of the path he had planned for his adult life, built on various contingencies and variables that he could not foresee at that point. Thomas built himself to impress adults. The impression I had of Thomas was that his fashioned his life, his personal curriculum vitae, or resume, on getting cheeks pinched by aunts and hair mussed up by proud fathers. His views on eleven-year-olds “insisting,” on tennis shoes became clearer in that light. I realized that by asking that question, he hoped to impress upon the adults in the room that he was one of them in all ways but age, and I continued to think that, until he called me out on my hairdo.

“That bangs thang isn’t working for you anymore,” he said after his mother all but shoved him out of the room. There were no adults around when he said that. He was the first boy I recalled meeting who had a hairdo. As I said, he was one year older than me, and I wondered if this kid was emblematic of what I’d be facing in a year. He also had a girlfriend.

The girlfriend thang damaged the whole profile I had been building on him. I had been planning to tell all my friends about this kid, so we could laugh him, and they could join me in considering this kid a laughable aberration of the pre-teen world. The girlfriend thang would damage that presentation, I knew, for in the pre-teen world, having a girlfriend nullifies all other deficits of character, unless  that person cherishes her.

If a kid our age was lucky enough to have a girlfriend, he was to be dismissive of her. Among the fellas, she was to be a fait accompli. She was the “of course” that follows when we announce that we have a girlfriend. “Of course you do,” we want our friends to say, because you’re so cool that all of the ladies want to spend time talking to you. The average and typical pre-teen didn’t talk about the process, because the process usually involves asking her to be your girlfriend, sometimes pleading with her. The process involves talking about things she wants to talk about and doing whatever you have to do to get her to laugh and want to be around you more often. There’s little-to-nothing to be gained from describing the process, because saying you have a girlfriend was often more important, back then, than actually having one. A guy with a girlfriend also doesn’t talk about how he feels about her. He just carries his badge of honor among boys, knowing that no other fella is going to ask him for details. This Thomas kid not only told me that he had a girlfriend, but he said he was in love with her, and he wasn’t afraid to talk about how much he cherished her. He never actually said the word cherish, but he introduced me to the love letters he kept enshrined in a central location on a dressed, in his impeccably clean bedroom.

“Man, she must really have it bad for you,” I said, looking at the size of that stack of letters.

A dismissive “yeah” may have been called for at this point to keep it cool between the fellas, but this Thomas kid didn’t say anything of the sort. “They’re mostly letters from me expressing my love for her,” he said. “I keep copies. In those letters, I talk about my plans to marry her.” He added the latter with a big, broad smile that my aunt would’ve considered so cute and sweet that she might have pinched his cheek. “We’re in love,” he said. Had Thomas not set a proper foundation for that line, I might have searched for the hidden camera documenting my reactions. He said he thought about her all the time, and he maintained that gooney smile throughout. He talked about the fact that he badly wanted her to be his wife one day. He said that most of his letters detailed those long-term goals, and that some of the letters in that stack were from her, and they contained  positive responses to his plans. “And if that never happens,” he concluded, answering a question I never asked, “I’ll be just as happy with a kiss from her.” This was all said, I must reiterate, without any parents, or aunts, in the room. This was just two fellas sitting in a room talking. Thomas didn’t want to play with his Atari 2600, his Star Wars action figures, or “anything that involved the outdoors.” He didn’t enjoy playing. Thomas just wanted to talk about his girlfriend, and the plans he had of becoming a respectable and responsible adult. 

***

Thomas had a deeper voice that he reserved for conversations with adults, a voice I presumed that was an affectation he had developed to garner more respect from them.

“I prefer Thomas,” he said when I asked him if he went by Tom or Tommy. “My birth certificate says Thomas,” he said when I asked him what the fellas at school called him. “So, I prefer Thomas.”

Thomas was such a violation of everything I held dear that I toyed with the idea that I was missing out on something. I knew responsible kids who talked about getting good grades, eating right, and being respectful and nice, but Thomas’ violations of everything I held dear went deeper than the nerdiest nerd in my class. The theme of my evening with Thomas was that youth is nothing more than a way station to bigger and brighter things, and he was impatient for it to end, because he thought it sucked. 

I met tons of kids who thought being a kid sucked, but they hated it because being a kid meant that they were subjected to authority, going to school, eating vegetables, and the general idea that they didn’t have the freedom that adults enjoy. This kid hated the good stuff about being a kid. Without saying anything of the sort explicitly, he basically stated that he envied those with responsibilities. To illustrate his goal in life, he asked one of those open-ended questions we ask to compliment ourselves, “Why is everyone so surprised that I’m so mature?” In real life, most pre-teens ask why everyone considers them so cool, so attractive, and so athletic. We ask that to drop a depth charge in everyone’s brain to get them to think it’s such a burden in life to be the envy of the world. No one I knew placed the relative nature of their maturity on that mantle. 

If Thomas asked that of me now, I might say, “Maturity is overrated kid, enjoy your immaturity for as long as it lasts, because it doesn’t last long.”

This kid adored his parents so much that he envied them, he loved school and bragged about his grades. I didn’t see anything wrong with the latter, until he told me that he worked hard in school, because he wanted to prepare for his future. You say such things to an aunt, and you say it as if you’re reading from a Teleprompter. You repeat what your dad said when speaking to your grandmother, but you don’t say such things to another kid when there are no adults around. Once we were alone, and away from all parents, I half-expected this kid to let me in on the joke, ‘I just say things like that to keep my mom, the old bag, off my case.’ He didn’t say anything like that. He, in fact, upped the ante on such matters when we were alone, and we were supposed to be playing.

When I later learned that that the whole reason Thomas’ parents invited us over was that they wanted Thomas to be around kids his age, it clarified that whole evening for me. Thomas wasn’t technically an only child, but his siblings were so much older than he that he might as well have been. Though this was never discussed, and I wouldn’t have understood it if it was, Thomas was probably a whoops baby that older couples accidentally have. His parents were older, and my dad was older, but the difference between Thomas and I was that I had a ton of friends who taught me how to be a typical kid. Thomas obviously didn’t, and he liked his parents so much that he probably spent too much time around them. His parents rightly feared that their son didn’t know how to be a kid. Thomas obviously knew their intentions more than I did, because he rejected me, the idea that I was a kid, and his parents objective to teach him how to be more well-rounded. Taken in this backdrop, it would be obvious to anyone who wasn’t there that Thomas’s goal was more about his attempts to reject what his parents were trying to do than me. Except for that one little nugget that we’ve repeated so often throughout this article. Thomas rejected me and all of my typical kid notions in private, one-on-one, with no one else around. If we define character as what a person does when no one else is around, then Thomas’s rejection of me, the traditional norms of childhood, and his parents attempt to teach him how to be a kid was so thorough, complete, and personal that he tried to cajole me into rejecting it with him. 

I never saw Thomas after that evening, so I have no idea if one of the paths on his flowchart panned out, but we spent so much of that evening discussing how much Thomas had going on, and how much I’d missed out on by being such a kid that I can only guess that he spent a portion of his adult life trying to recapture what he missed out on. My guess is that the reason the two of us focused on how much I missed out on was a defense mechanism he developed to prevent those of us who enjoyed being a kid from focusing on how much he had missed out on. My guess, not knowing how Thomas’ life panned out, is that if one of the elements of his flowcharts panned out, and he addressed all of the variables that he couldn’t foresee as a kid, he began playing with his Atari 2600, or whatever system was popular at the time. He probably started watching cartoons, another element of childhood he vociferously rejected when it was just he and I, and he probably spent a majority of his adult years wearing nothing but tennis shoes. My guess is that at some point in his adult life he realized that being a mature, respected, and responsible adult isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. If he landed what he deemed a dream job, he realized all the stress and drudgery of being an adult that people could count on. The dirty little secret that Thomas didn’t know at the time is that becoming a mature and responsible adult that people can count on is not a one-stop shopping event. We have to prove ourselves so often every day that I have to imagine it eventually lost the allure Thomas assigned it, and he wished he could go back to those days of youth when he didn’t have to be so accountable for his actions, so he did just that. He probably started out by filling his free time with retro activities, and he indulged in some relatively curious and embarrassing pursuits that ostensibly helped him get in touch with his inner-child. At some point in his life, Thomas pursued the irresponsible and immature activities with as much gusto as he did responsibility and maturity, and he that probably put some divorces on his docket, some noteworthy issues with the substances that permitted him to act inordinately silly and immature without consequences, and he probably had friends and family who couldn’t stand to be around him when he acted like that. For all of the little jabs, cringes and lectures he gave me about wanting to be a kid, my guess is he rejected all of the little jabs, cringes and lectures people gave him about wanting to relive a childhood he felt he missed out on. He likely wouldn’t see it this way of course, but at some point, I think the Thomas I knew learned how let his hair down, live the life he rejected as a kid, just to have a little fun in life, and from what I saw all those decades ago, that would’ve been quite an overhaul.