What special values or insights do you share with your children?

[John Holzmann]

One of my daughters IM'd (instant messaged) me last night:

Hey Dad, how do you live without regrets? How do you "move on"? How do you not see each thing as an "if only"?

I was a bit taken back by the question. "????" I replied. "Like???"

"I mean, things happen. Life happens, right?

"_______ is blue and I'm not sure even how to help. It's hard."

I suggested maybe she and _______ and I could sit down and talk. Not at that time. (It was late last night!) But sometime.

As she explained things a bit more, and as I understood the circumstances of the person she was talking about, I eventually offered the following:

There is a fundamental way of "looking at the world" that I know I have attempted to instill in you-all . . . and that I have attempted to discipline myself to pursue. It's a way of looking at the world that, I have realized, many people have NOT learned to use. It's something I have had to work a lot on with ________ [a relative she knows]: the whole practice of "always looking back" rather than "looking forward" . . . of thinking about--as you put it--"what if?" or "if only!" rather than, "Okay. We're here, now. NOW what do I want to do? NOW what can I do and what should I do to 'move on' with my life?"

The healthy person, the strong person, the person who will "go places," looks forward. The person who mopes and "loses" is usually looking backwards.

Yes, it's okay to grieve something . . . for, say, about five minutes. But then it is time to do something POSITIVE . . . which means LOOKING TO THE FUTURE.

"It's weird," my daughter wrote, "When 'stuff' (whatever it is at the moment) seems wrong, my whole life seems wrong. . . . I really have to work on not viewing everything as completely out of control or beyond fixing . . . which has yet to happen . . . as in, it can always be fixed."

"It may be helpful, sometime," I suggested, "to think through what kinds of things bring you (or _______) down the most. What makes you become despairing . . . so you can "realize"--as [your brother] had to realize with wheat--that your feelings at those moments aren't legitimate.


"As you said, 'It can always be fixed.' "

[I should note, our son has a wheat sensitivity that evidences itself in massive, overwhelming depression. He once told us that he could tell when he had eaten something with wheat in it. He would be sitting in class at college about two hours after eating a meal and this amazing emotional curtain would descend upon him. He'd be absolutely fine one moment, and then a minute later, he would feel despair to the point of wanting to weep. For absolutely no reason. Except he knew the reason: He must have eaten some wheat or wheat product.

"It's so crazy," he told us at the time. "I'll feel so strongly like I want to cry--but for absolutely no reason at all--that I'll want to laugh out loud 'cause it's so ridiculous!"

But back to my initial point with my daughter.]

I realized there are certain disciplines involved in maintaining a positive, future-oriented perspective in life. And I have attempted--and I still want--to help my kids acquire and master those disciplines . . . even as I attempt to maintain those disciplines for myself.

So a question for you: Do you have any "lessons" or special insights that you have particularly tried to instill in your kids?

[More in my next post, immediately below.]