...don't shake my tree!" Sweet song.
I'm only just grasping the significance of that line.
Why is it that some relationships are so effortless and others so taxing? Sometimes the answers are easy to discern, other times near impossible.
"Would you be willing to bring in some firewood?" I ask Trinidad.
"Ugh!" he says. "No, I don't really want to."
"But would you do it because it would lighten the load of all I am working on to keep order in the house right now and because you might enjoy a fire tomorrow morning?"
"Ergh. Mom, I'm right in the middle of organizing my Pokemon. Maybe later."
My energy bleeds from me in exchanges like this. So much more ease in doing it myself. A month of mourning around how our culture is set up so that parents do not have easy support around routine tasks foundational to a family's health and well-being.
But, wouldn't it be nice if what I asked Trinidad to do was actually a joy for him to contribute? Not just something he liked to do, but something he liked to do especially because I enjoyed it, too?
I enjoy doing housework and cooking (to a point), particularly if my efforts are seen and appreciated. How can I discover and request the work that is most joyful for others to offer me? What do I enjoy receiving from Trinidad that he likes also to give?
There is a list forming in my mind. I find hope there.
I am also grateful to stumble on this question, because it seems to be at the heart of all functional working relationships, be they parent-child, employee-employer, or the work of lovers. If the mutual giving is intrinsically motivated, then there is no energy expended in the giving. It is sheer joy.
Yes, this is the Real World (even I have to smirk at our limited scope), and somebody has to clean the toilet if we don't want the smell to knock us out while we brush our teeth. So someone does the duty, maybe willing but not wanting. Okay. Some energy expended. But if the person who did the job now receives with grace the gift that others wish to give, that energy is restored. We strike a balance not in blanket giving and receiving, but by doing so with tender awareness of each others Work in the world, that we may grow and harvest in community with beauty, ease and fun.
If we do not want to take the time to imagine or get to know each others passions and how they might align with our own needs, then our world loses its human scale. We are reduced to lists that are accomplished with a sense of "have to," and we drag our feet resentfully through what could be a ritual of caring.
With this in mind, we also choose our communities. "Change the dynamic or change the person," a friend wisely suggested. Exchanging my children is not an option (with gratitude that I've never seriously thought of trying), so my determination to uncover and enjoy the gifts that I can authentically receive from them as a contribution is all the more pressing.
The commitments I have to friends and lovers is now defined by only that -- what is my level of conscious determination in finding a way that we can both be in our joy? How can the vast majority of giving and receiving between us be effortless and fun? Why did we choose each other in the first place? Has there been some shift? Are our needs still met in the balance of this relationship? Do I, in fact, have good cause to keep shaking the tree?
This effort is not about a commitment to people. It represents a commitment to love.
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1 comment:
Hey girl,
I think you are right, that it's about love. With love, many things are freely given with no expectation of "balancing the books." Max, being an only child, was perfectly willing to let us do everything, and did not get irritated at "having" to do stuff, but would get passive, not truculent, but almost immovable. He would have agreed to get wood with muttered, "yeah, yeah" and then crawled to the door, taking two hours to get there until you were so frustrated that you got it yourself.
When he got two little brothers who were cool with being waited on hand and foot, he realized that he was this way and wanted to change.
As children, we were also reluctant to do anything, I think because we did not own it. It was THEIR house and THEIR rules and THEIR orders and THEIR schedule. When left to fend for ourselves, we did fine.
In an adult relationship, I did not seek to "get the chores done" or my needs met, and, as a consequence, saw that the other invented my needs in order not to meet them and, thus to draw attention to his own need to be in trouble and rejected. In work situations it was way easier with most people, to whom I could explain the needs and ask them to comply and then leave them alone. But every once in a while this did not work and it was hell. A family is like a small company, often under stress, in close quarters, and one person expected often to carry the loads of the others. This is why most communes don't work.
So, you've hit it on the head. This, I think is the greatest problem in social cooperative situations once they get cooperative and not just competitive.
According to the Berkely Five (a personality test rather like Myers-Briggs) there is a sense that people have to help or not to help. Some people have a people sense, or an ability to cooperate, others have an object sense, that often manifests in difficulty in cooperating. After you get past emotional difficulties and protocol errors, this is the most frustrating challenge to group activity, according to these researchers.
Trinidad is extremely gifted with object-sense and will be very very good at problem solving on an abstract level and engineering type of situations. He is aware of the world around him to an extent not often found in children. So he may resent people situations more than someone like Sam who is gifted in that way.
I think the work you've done with him really shines forth in him already. Without you (and Seda and Sam) Trin would rapidly become asocial and a classic case of a person who is very good in some ways and very bad in others. Nothing abnormal, but you have given him the gift of learning skills he is not passionate about, the gift of learning love for something he is not passionate about.
Some love is in us, a reflection of god, so to speak. Other love is learned. As humans, we can do both.
The gifts you give to Trin are gifts that he may resent, but are invaluable. A big one is that he will be able to marry and have a stable relationship with a woman and not be a tyrannical father. He will be able to work on a job and be able to function as a healthy adult instead of one side-lined as "brilliant but hell to work with."
Max was 12 when he "woke up" to the fact that he was contributing to what he hated in his house, disorder and filth. Trin will get there.
Gifts differing. What a lovely name for it--not mine (Myers-Briggs). It's a challenge with two to no compare them and have one come up short.
But, you, my girl, all that you have learned, all that you have refused to contaminate your household--I see it. Trin needed you, but he's a long term investment! And I see you giving him gold.
It's wonderful to see someone giving the gold to someone so deserving. You are not throwing pearls to the swine, so to speak.
But that doesn't change the challenge or the pain. But I'm clapping here and telling you that it's worthwhile.
He's growing up into a lovely tree....
hugs
me
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