Tag: self-destruction

To Parent or Not to Parent

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When it comes to the prospect of parenting, an overwhelming majority of us hang between “I’m not sure if I’m ready” and a friend sitting us down with a “listen my friend, you’re definitely not ready”, but did you ever meet someone who was ready, at a very young age? Did you ever meet someone who was parent-material? I have, a couple times. I didn’t know it at the time, of course, as it’s not something that you can spot, but when you’re parenting, and you’re thinking “What the hell did I just do?” with that screaming kid on your shoulder, you think back on the Bills and Courtneys of the world, and you kind of wish you were more like them, sort of, and in a roundabout way.

They never complained about anything, and they never said a bad word about anyone. I’m not eulogizing them, because I’m sure they’re still alive out there, somewhere. They were just responsible, well-centered, strait-laced people who were so happy. As a student of cultural tropes, I expected to eventually find something scandalous about them, but there wasn’t. They were just happy, well-adjusted people who really enjoyed life, but I found them so boring I couldn’t be around them. They probably made some excellent parents though.    

The rest of us hang somewhere between between dysfunctional and self-destructive on a graph, and we need to seriously consider our level of sanity before having children. If I had a kid in my twenties, like the rest of you, that kid would probably be in a straight-jacket screaming something awful about my parenting skills in repetitive cycles. He would know how to read, and his math skills would probably be somewhere around adequate by the 5th grade, but all those interaction cues that we pick up from our parents would’ve been so out of whack that his pediatrician would’ve rushed him to a place where he could be monitored 24-7, or on some radical, experimental drugs that I would’ve had to sign off on.   

One of the 10 commandments of quality parenting that I would’ve failed most miserably is the “don’t be selfish” one. Don’t be selfish with your stuff, and don’t be selfish with your time. I’m sure I would’ve seen to it that he was fed, and I probably would’ve made sure he had clothing and all that, but the minute he started touching my stuff or saw to it that I couldn’t go out boozing with my friends, because he decided to show some signs of diptheria, I would’ve resented him for taking my fun time away.   

I know I was selfish, but are you? “No!” No one says yes, and very few say, “Well, maybe a little. Maybe in some circumstances, I might be a little self-involved, but who isn’t?” No, we all but shout a gameshow-quick “No!” answers that suggest we think there there might be prizes for a quick answer. There’s no gameshow button here, and there are no prizes, unless you count feeling better about yourself a prize. 

If you watch the same sitcoms I do, those that loosely revolve around parenting, you see parents with all this free time. Kid walks in the room, says something cute, and exits stage left. I understand that the show is not about the kids, but when I see these parents standing side by side with a sweet smile, looking down at a sleeping child, cherishing him, I wonder what we did wrong. When we put our kid down and he eventually slipped off to the dream world, we exited the room on tiptoes whisper screaming, “He’s down! He’s fricking asleep, finally! Thank you God!!!”

These sitcoms are all about the joys and love of parenting, but those of us who know some elements of parenting now, know that no kid exits stage left in real life. They’re center stage, about twelve hours a day, more if they don’t nap, seven days a week. And if these dependent, little sacks of flesh are not center stage, they’ll find unique and creative ways to get it, until they soak up almost all of your precious and ever-dwindling free time. 

That’s the one thing prospective parents should be ready to give up/sacrifice, more than anything else, before before you agree to bring something so needy and dependent into the world: time. 

Most of us have a very narrow definition of selfish. “I had a big bag of pistachios the other day, and I gave some of them to Henrietta. You saw that. You know I’m not selfish. I share.” Okay, let me rephrase the question, how much of your life revolves around you? If we’re as self-centered as we think we are, we might not be able to answer that question objectively. A better question might be, how frustrated do we get when our friends have to back out, last minute, on a planned, fun-filled night, because of something their kid did? 

Do you have that want, that need, for a-night-o’-fun out of your system yet? Check that question hard, because that could be the proverbial switch in the track that decides it. I know it did for me. I had to get it all out of my system before I was ready. Most people answer one way on Sunday, the morning after, but that answer changes somewhere around 6:00pm, on Friday, when everyone is off work, they’ve finished dinner, and they’re headed to the bar. I knew I wasn’t ready for the end of it for a long time, and I would’ve resented the wife and child for taking up so much of my free time if I rushed that decision. If I had a kid back then, I may have enjoyed spending time with them on my terms, but I can now tell you now, ten years in, that it’s rarely on my terms. 

To be fair to everyone out there, and ourselves, the definition of quality parenting is so relative that it’s almost impossible to define in an absolute. Some of us might surprise ourselves in the beginning, by being a responsible, selfless parent, but we always revert to who we were before we met this kid. The shock and awe of seeing them for the first time changes us. It is, as the old cliche suggests, a moment when you realize your life will never be the same from that point forward. Once a parent, always a parent, and all that runs through our head when we make those vows and promises to this tiny, little thing that we can spin on a finger, like a Harlem Globetrotter, and we live up to those vows and promises…in the beginning. In the beginning, we put our best foot forward when we meet them, like we did its mother. Our brothers and sisters might be in awe of our parenting skills. “Never knew you had it in you,” they might say, and we bask in the glow of that compliment, but everyone who knows us knows that we will eventually revert to who we were/are before we ever met the kid. That’s the person we need to interrogate beforehand, to find out if we’re too selfish, self-involved, or narcissistic to have a kid.   

“Are you responsible now?” I hated the ‘R’ word growing up. Everyone threw it at me. “You really need to act more responsible,” they’d say. Okay, but I’m seven. You know that right? “You are only seven, but you still act like a six-year-old.” Okay, I realize I don’t know much about this real-world you’re always going on about, but this childhood thing doesn’t last forever. You might not remember that, because, for you, that was fifty-three years ago, but there’s something about this childhood thing that leads me to believe I should be focusing on enjoying this as much as possible before it’s over. I don’t think responsibility should even enter my purview here, at least not until I’m eight, and I continued to think that way until I was about thirty-eight. “You can’t do that, you have responsibilities,” or “You’re in a position in life now where you have to be act more responsible.” The ‘R’ word was that annoying itch they put in my hair that I ran away from, screaming, for much of my life, because I wasn’t ready. 

I eventually had so much fun for so much of my life that it wasn’t as fun anymore. We all know the burning the candle at both ends phrase, and I was doing that. Except it wasn’t work, as most attribute that phrase. I was burning the candle at both ends with fun, great conversations, and moments that last forever, until they’re about releasing all the tension and stress from the work week. Are you ready to call an end to all that? How ready are you to spend your Friday nights at home binging on Spongebob, playing Chutes and Ladders, and reading the same Dr. Seuss book for the thirty-ninth time? When your friend calls you up and says they’re headed to the 18th Amendment, how frustrating will it be to say, “Sorry, kid’s got the runs, and no one wants to babysit a kid with the runs.” How much of your precious fun time are you willing to sacrifice to the relatively unrewarding task of raising a child? 

They say it’s rewarding. They say it’s the most rewarding job on Earth, and it is, when it’s all over and we think back. The good times are rewarding, as is the element of how much they’ve added to our lives, but how long does it take to get there? The kid doesn’t even appreciate it. “It’s your job!” they might say on the rare occasion when we humiliate ourselves by asking for a little appreciation. We might conveniently forget all the crap involved, and dung and vomit in between, if we’re lucky enough to live long enough to see them parent someone themselves. At that point, they might appreciate how hard it was for us to raise them, and they might turn to us and offer that one glorious compliment we’ve waited our adult life to hear, but they’ll probably qualify that by saying, “You did a lot wrong too. Here’s what I am not going to do.” 

“Where should your focus be, working on the marriage, or rearing the child?” a priest once asked us. “The child,” we answered in unison. The priest obviously engineered the question to get a wrong answer, so he could explain, “Quality parenting flows from a quality marriage. Not only does a quality marriage give a child the definition of a quality marriage, the foundation of a quality marriage provides a general sense of stability in a child’s life, and it provides them a definition of love and life from both the female and male perspectives.” Anyone who has lived through the death of a parent, or a divorce, knows how seminal these points are in childhood and the subsequent adult life. 

As I wrote earlier, it’s impossible to define the difference between quality parenting and poor, because that definition is so relative, but there are extremes. We all have flaws, good days and bad, but some of us are not systemically sound, and some of us loved dating those types. Some of us are almost instinctually attracted to the dysfunctional, self-destructive types. We don’t exactly know why, but we thought they were so funny, so mean, and so mean-funny. We don’t know who they remind us of, or if they were so unique to our experience that their captivating qualities reside in the idea that we’ve never met anyone quite like them before, but we climb all over one another to date them. They make us laugh, cry, and we feel so alive in their company that we might unwittingly become attracted to their chaotic merry-go-round. They’re exciting, dramatic, and different from day to day, but those qualities often don’t lead to quality parenting. Dating them might be another thing to get out of your system if your plans involve having a family, you might want to find the closest thing to normal you can find. 

There are a number of sites that list top 10 qualities of a good parent, or top 10 signs you are (Or will be) a good parent. We could list those, and even add some things you could do to find out more about yourself, beforehand, but parenting is one of those roles in life that is so relative and so day-to-day that we won’t know the final answer until we’re doing it, every day for months and years. We can know who we are in the now, however. We can ask ourselves a bunch of questions regarding our level of maturity, and our ability to handle responsibility, multitasking, and stress. We can also look around at our friends and focus on those couples who never should’ve become parents in the first place, and we all know those who should’ve known. Every parent thinks this at one point or another, temporarily, but as with everything else, there are extremes. There are those who never should’ve had kids in the first place. Some are so dysfunctional and so self-destructive that they aren’t parent material. Some had such a toxic and dysfunctional upbringing that they should seriously consider ending that horrible legacy. Those of us who have relatively normal dysfunctions and a relatively low level of self-destructive habits, who are still questioning whether we have what it takes to be a quality parent, should consider that nothing answers those questions better than time, and in my case it was a whole lot of time.  

Destructive Personalities & Prodigies

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Bulls & Wives– Tom did not appear to be a destroyed man who has no hold on the outside world, but a man with intimate knowledge of someone who was. When he informed me that his dad lived a relatively long life that surprised me, because I thought Tom’s personal knowledge of self-destruction had to be so intimate that it came from a dad. I figured that his dad had no idea how the system worked, and that frustration led him to destroy anyone and everyone within reach, before he eventually destroyed himself. I was wrong, his dad lived a relatively long life. I didn’t reassess, however, because I knew how to read my tea leaves. I just had to wait to found out how I was right. When Tom later informed me that his mother died a long slow death, I almost yelled, “I knew it.”

“Cirrhosis of the liver,” he said. I didn’t say anything, but I felt vindicated. I figured that Tom’s frustrated dad destroyed the only woman he ever loved, because she was within reach, and she was his alternative resource.   

My first guess was that Tom’s dad physically abused the woman, but that often results in a divorce, a separation of some sort, or even a suicide of one of the two parties. I knew that wasn’t the case with Tom’s parents. I knew he witnessed a slow, methodical destruction of someone he loved, and he felt powerless in the face of it.

A man who physically abuses his wife is also a bad guy, and my guess was that Tom’s dad did everything he could to avoid that label. My guess was that Tom’s dad rejected her in the small, insignificant ways those in his profession and in his personal life rejected him, until it manifested in ways he couldn’t manage or control properly. A little nip here and there made Tom’s mom feel a little better for a couple minutes. When the dad’s insignificant rejections began to snowball, her little nips followed suit, until it was too late.   

My guess was Tom saw her destruction very close up, during those young, formative years that leave an imprint nothing can erase. My guess was that he spent his life trying to avenge her, but he never figured out how to do it, and he spent the rest of his life cheering on the bulls in a bullfight.

The Phenomenal Phenom- “The worst thing about being the President of the United States at such a young age (Theodore Roosevelt assumed office at 42 and left office at 50), is what do you do with the rest of your life? How does one top being President of the United States?” That is not a direct quote from former president Theodore Roosevelt, but it is the general sentiment. We could argue that Roosevelt spent his whole life chasing windmills. He spent the first forty years of his life chasing his dad’s legacy, or the legacy he imagined for his dad. He spent the latter ten years of his life chasing his own legacy or trying to improve upon it. What does a man who assumed the most powerful position in the world in what he assumed was the middle of his life (he died at 60) do to top that act?

We move to a much less significant, but interesting corollary. In 1994, an actor named Jim Carrey was on top of the world. He had a year so successful that no other actor in his profession would dare even dream, and it happened when he was all but 32-years of age. In 1994, three of the films he starred in (Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask, and Dumb and Dumber) went to number one in box office sales, in the same year. Some fans of comedic movies mark two of those films some of the best comedic films of the generation. Although we don’t consider The Mask in that elite pantheon, we recognize how original that film was. We also recognize that without the unique talents Carrey displayed in that movie, the film wouldn’t have worked at all. It’s been 26 years since Carrey’s breakout year, and we can assume he will live another 26 years, but what can he do to top 1994? We have to imagine that Carrey looks back on 1994 as a bittersweet memory, because it happened so early in his career, and he probably thinks he didn’t appreciate it as much as he should’ve.

No one will feel sorry for either of these two, but imagine achieving such relative peaks at such a relatively young age. Relatively few recognize such achievements for what they are in the moment. We can only assume that Roosevelt and Carrey assumed that this was a new way of life for them. They probably assured others that they knew it wouldn’t last, but beneath that rational veneer, they probably assumed that they were such unique talents that it might. They probably grew accustomed to living how the other half lives. They were probably welcomed into rooms with proverbial and actual trumpets. Some part of them probably got so used to it that they considered it silly, until it went away, and they missed it. How does one top being the biggest star in the world? How does one top being president of the United States? Teddy only lived for another ten years, and while he packed a lot into those ten years, including another presidential run, it sounds like it might’ve been tough for such an ambitious man to live to a thirty to forty more years thinking he plateaued too early. He probably also knew that he could never top what happened in what he thought would be the middle of his life.     

Pining for a Prodigy– “I think you might have another da Vinci on your hands,” someone says when they see our kid draw something that sort, somewhat resembles a squirrel. Our normal, rational side thanks them for the polite sentiment, and we attempt to dismiss it as nothing more than that, but we can’t control the twinkle in our eye. Kids mature at different rates, we think, who’s to say that our kid isn’t some sort of prodigy? We consider the possibility for about twelve seconds, because we want the world to know what we know, our kid is special. Our flirtation with this notion is brief, because we’ve tried to do something creative, and we know how hard it is. Even though we won’t rule out the notion that our kid could do something special, it’s so far off that it’s not worth considering at this time. There’s far too much for a prospective artist to learn to inform his immature brain before he ever reaches for the creative ignition switch. No matter how many ways we turn his drawing, it’s gibberish, and we can’t will it into something great. He’s just a normal, happy kid. 

I’ve been obsessed with the creative process most of my life. I love reading about what drove the da Vincis, the Joyces, and the Mozarts of history to create their artistic masterpieces. With Mozart as the lone exception, most artists don’t do anything of note in their early years of life. One could also say that all of the other stuff they learn in their early, formative years, informs an artist’s art better than any school devoted specifically to the arts could do.

A teacher here and there might have encouraged them to draw, write, or sing more in their free time, but most artistic output of kids in grades 1-6 can be accomplished on their own time. I encourage artistic creativity in my home, but I don’t want my kid spending an inordinate amount of time in school drawing sharks and Spongebob. He needs to learn the foundational tools to help him in life. Reading, writing, arithmetic, a level of science he can handle, and some history is all my kid needs right now.  

The obsession I’ve had with the start-to-finish creative process is now decades old, and I’ve yet to stumble upon an artist other than Mozart who cited anything that happened in their elementary years as a direct source for their great works. The bios of most artistic geniuses suggest that they succeeded in the arts in spite of what happened to them in school. Most of my favorite artists created their best pieces in a rebellious reaction to those who never believed in them. They had some something to prove to the people who didn’t believe in them. It drove them more than any amount of encouragement could. It’s almost grist for the artistic mill for most artists to embarrass those who considered what they do as silly. If their parents believe in them, and they entered them into a school devoted to the arts that might have deprived them of the righteous anger that drove them to be better than they were in the first place.

How many movies about prodigies depict parents who thought their young prodigy was wasting his time with paintbrushes, a piano, or a pen? How many of parents wanted their kids to do something more substantial with their lives? When the prodigy turned out to be something substantial in the arts, the parents looked like the bad guys, and no parent wants to be a bad guy. The parents also looked like fools in the end for not recognizing their prodigy’s prodigious talent, and no parent wants to look foolish. So, we recognize our child’s doodle as something more than it is, and we do everything we can to encourage them to pursue that talent.

“He could be the next Mozart,” they say when our kid fiddles around on a piano. “Did you know Mozart created his first symphony at five years old?” That would be great, we say with that twelve second twinkle in our eye, but I’m still going to focus my kid’s mind on becoming a math whiz, relative to his age. I would rather see him display an unusual aptitude for spelling and reading than I would re-engineer his life according to some exception to the rule that occurred almost three hundred years ago. 

“I just wanted my kid to have a well-rounded education,” parents say when I ask how they selected their kid’s school. “I liked the way [this school] sandwiched art and music between the reading and writing and arithmetic.” If they added that they just want their children to find some way to express themselves creatively, I would have no argument. I think if I learned how to express myself creatively when I was young, I might’ve been a healthier and happier kid, teenager, and young man. Maybe. When I found a creative outlet, I thought I needed it all along, but I was taught art and music appreciation at a very young age, and I didn’t appreciate it back then.  

“It’s important to encourage creativity,” they say, and I have no argument. If my kid develops a creative outlet, such that he believes in himself a little more than I did, I will applaud him. I’m an artist who devours and regurgitates artistic pieces, but I would never choose an elementary school that devotes itself to expanding my child’s mind artistically. That just seems so far-fetched that it’s not even worth considering.