My friend Michael and I like to mail letters back and forth and publish what we write each other. I’m behind on the publishing part, but this is the latest the series. I wrote it when my wife and I were still expecting, and my mind was obviously on what was about to happen. More broadly though, I was also reflecting on how I’ve fooled myself into thinking that my life will get better if other people change. Parenting definitely has shades of that, but so do lots of other walks of life.
7/20/23
Dear Michael,
Since reading what you last sent me, the image of your father continually pushing you to reply in a certain way when adults asked how you were doing — “fine.” Always say, “I’m fine” — has been repeating in my head. For me, the bigger questions it brings up are about our asking (or demanding) that others put on a performance for us, and our reasons for doing that.
At the beach last week, we were in a national park guest center when I walked by a family posing for a portrait. There was a mom, a dad, and three kids, the youngest of whom I’d guess was three years old. As they were getting ready for a friend to take their picture, the young one kept putting his hand over his eyes and his parents kept moving it and telling him to stop. He wouldn’t, and finally they had to settle for a photo with four unobscured faces and one with a hand covering it. Then the dad and two older siblings scattered off to explore while the mom berated the kid. (I promise I wasn’t eavesdropping — she spoke loudly enough to fill the room).
“I’m sad!,” she told him in a pouty voice. She sounded a lot more angry than sad, and she looked it too when she grabbed his arm and yanked him to look at her. “You ruined the picture!”
The kid looked pretty unfazed and just kind of tried to pull his hand away, wanting to join the others in looking around the place. She jerked back and said it again. “No. You made me sad!”
The whole thing was, in my view, a clear example of a parent 1. placing unfair expectations on a child and 2. pushing them to hold emotional baggage that isn’t really a child’s responsibility. Who knows? Maybe an unblemished photo really meant the world to this mom. But my read was that, conscious or not, it was more about an authority flex than anything else.
In the example you gave from your own upbringing, the underlying message feels a little closer to this one: “don’t embarrass me.” As in, “I need you to act a certain way around adults so they think certain things about me, which will make me feel emotionally secure.”
Something that’s super common in our culture is parents telling kids to say “thank you,” or respond with an in-kind greeting when someone says hello to them, or to give a high-five or fist bump when a grown-up wants one. That kind of thing. I wonder how much of that comes from parents feeling fear (or at least social anxiety) around what others will think of their kids don’t act like they’re “supposed to.” My hunch is that it’s a lot, and my thought from there is that those of us raising or aspiring to raise kids have some real work to do around letting go.
Being polite or courteous is a great thing to teach kids, but it also seems worth asking: is the behavior we’re hoping for about joy and connection, or is it about asking someone else (kid or otherwise) to bend to our will/make us feel good? If a kid is always ceding to his parents’ demands that he say “thank you,” how will he have any room to actually know whether there’s gratitude present in his heart? Charles Eisenstein has put this so well: “to say ‘thank you’ without feeling grateful is a practice in insincerity.”
Just one more example: I was recently at a dinner where a mother kept apologizing for her talkative daughter. There’s a whole lot of gender stuff tied up in how much space girls get in comparison to boys, but all that aside, I just kept thinking: what, exactly, is this mom apologizing for?
Not that I’m above any of this. I apologize for my dogs’ behavior all the time only to later realize that they were just being dogs. What was I so worried that person would think of me? A little nastier, I’ve been guilty of wanting partners, my wife included, to present themselves a certain way in social situations. On the surface, I judge her. In reality, I’m somehow afraid that I’m not good enough, and others will judge me based on the person I’m associated with.
Like I said above: if we want to avoid placing undue burden on others, kids or otherwise, I think we’ve got to sort through our our need to get our way, our fears of being judged, etc. Otherwise we just project.
Before I sign off, I’ll say that your note about the face you used to put on in photos really resonated with me because I used to do something very similar. How we pose in photos, and then how we analyze that — especially in the selfie and Instagram age — is a whole thing, isn’t it? Can we ever be authentic while posing? Can we ever see a photo of ourselves and not wonder what others think?
Thanks for the jersey. My first trip to the Bay was in early 2020, and it was an absolutely pivotal moment in my life. I’ve been back twice since, and those visits were extremely meaningful, too. Wearing a shirt with the Sutro Tower on it makes me really happy.
With love,
Jonathan
While reading this I thought about several photos of me and my two sisters where our faces are anything but perfunctory, or happy or compliant, and how happy they make me now more than 40 years later: the sistahs being ourselves, for reasons we all knew perfectly well, no fear, immortalized on a digital photo frame. I then remembered I may have written about some of the photos in one of the Life in 10 Minutes classes you and I were in a few years ago, and I'm curious to find that piece and re-read it. I also think you responded in your own piece during the next writing round, so if I can find it, I'll let you know the timestamp.