If there is one question I worry about, it is whether I’m good enough. I should probably not have been surprised to discover that my kids similarly question themselves. But I was. Surprised and dismayed. I’d like my kids to grow up to love themselves. After all, I love them and think they are amazing and wonderful. How could they possibly think otherwise? But can I teach my kids to love who they are when I constantly judge myself?
So when my son said, “I’m bad at playing my instruments,” those few words shook me to the core. I love that Uri plays the clarinet and violin. I can barely get a sound out of the clarinet when I try to blow into it, and the violin is so complicated an instrument! Yet Uri took to both with an ease that defies my comprehension, especially considering how extremely different the clarinet and violin are.
After exclaiming and disclaiming (“You play both very well!), I decided to approach the subject from a different direction. I asked Uri what it meant to him to play well. Playing well, was his response, is playing like his teachers or on CD. Wow, I guess he also got the perfectionism gene from me.
I felt inadequately prepared to discuss this. Comparing himself to professional musicians when he had been playing less than a year seemed absurd. I decided to ask Uri’s clarinet teacher, Jeff Sanford, for help. Perhaps he can convince Uri that he plays well. To my surprise, Jeff approached the subject from a different angle. Rather than looking at Uri’s playing as a whole, Jeff tackled one song at a time. He explained that “playing well” is a relative term. The first time Uri plays a song he might struggle, but after a few practice sessions he plays that song well.
I don’t know if Uri understood this completely, but this way of looking at the world was an AHA! moment for me. I judge myself constantly on my performance as a whole. It does not occur to me to say, “Today when I sat with the kids doing homework I did very well.” Instead, when I mess up in one instance (like being impatient before they go to sleep), I say “I’m a bad mother.” I generalize. And almost always negatively.
I wish to apply this idea in my life more often. I hope I’ll remember it and tell myself, “Today my writing flows.” Or, “Today I was very patient and loving to the kids.” Or, “When I listened to Eden before she went to sleep I enjoyed feeling like a good mother. I did well.”
Perhaps it’s time to put generalization to rest, to stop putting myself down. Time to appreciate myself for the little things I do and forgive myself for my mistakes. And while I practice this self compassion, I hope the kids will learn to love and appreciate themselves as well. Nothing like personal example to make this wonderful change.
If you're interested, this is Jeff Sanford's jazz website. I don't know if he has any other life advice on there, but there is good music. To learn more about self compassion, check out this great website from Kristin Neff.
Showing posts with label Self Compassion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Self Compassion. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Friday, November 11, 2011
How I Missed Having Tea With Jerome K. Jerome
I read a quote by Jerome K. Jerome this morning which said: “It is in our faults and failings, not in our virtues, that we touch each other and find sympathy. It is in our follies that we are one.” The quote appeared in Kristin Neff’s Self Compassion, in a section on interbeing, the idea that we are all interconnected, one with each other and the world
Today, after I read his compassion quote, I googled Jerome, wondering if he was still alive. Turns out he had died back in 1927, long before I was born. So I guess I missed my chance for having tea with him. I’m a little sad about that. I think he would have made an amazingly funny tea-mate.
My mother gave me Jerome K. Jerome’s wonderful Three Men in A Boat (to Say Nothing of the Dog) when I was still in elementary school. I loved it! I loved how immensely innocent Jerome pretends to be when he tells about his long-term liver disease which he diagnosed himself by his also long-term laziness (one knock on the head, he says, is a better cure for it than many pills). I loved his stories about Harris and George, how they got stuck in the maze (I will never forget them going in circles right by the half-eaten roll again and again), how Harris was attacked by the swans, how all three were almost run over by a boat in the river, and how even an undertaker with a dead body did not want to sit in the same train car Jerome rode with a package of specially stinky cheeses.
One of my fondest memories is going with my mother to the library. My mother had somehow arranged so that we were able to borrow twice as many books as were generally allowed. We would move from shelf to shelf, looking at the books, and my mother would suggest ones she thought I might enjoy. A huge pile went home with us, and during the week I would quickly devour one book after another. Soon enough, I had run out of books in the children’s library, and my mother and I began the same ritual in the adult section. I read Ivanhoe, Quentin Durward, The Red and the Black, The Winds of War, King Rat, and many, many others.
Growing up, these books were more real to me than many people. When it was difficult for me to feel interconnectedness with the world, whenever I felt too weird, I could identify with a character in a book and feel a little less sad. As I followed Jerome’s blundering passage up and down the Thames, laughing at himself, his friends, and anyone who dared brave the river with them, the world became a lighter, more humorous place also for me, and for that, Jerome K. Jerome, I am grateful.
Today, after I read his compassion quote, I googled Jerome, wondering if he was still alive. Turns out he had died back in 1927, long before I was born. So I guess I missed my chance for having tea with him. I’m a little sad about that. I think he would have made an amazingly funny tea-mate.
My mother gave me Jerome K. Jerome’s wonderful Three Men in A Boat (to Say Nothing of the Dog) when I was still in elementary school. I loved it! I loved how immensely innocent Jerome pretends to be when he tells about his long-term liver disease which he diagnosed himself by his also long-term laziness (one knock on the head, he says, is a better cure for it than many pills). I loved his stories about Harris and George, how they got stuck in the maze (I will never forget them going in circles right by the half-eaten roll again and again), how Harris was attacked by the swans, how all three were almost run over by a boat in the river, and how even an undertaker with a dead body did not want to sit in the same train car Jerome rode with a package of specially stinky cheeses.
One of my fondest memories is going with my mother to the library. My mother had somehow arranged so that we were able to borrow twice as many books as were generally allowed. We would move from shelf to shelf, looking at the books, and my mother would suggest ones she thought I might enjoy. A huge pile went home with us, and during the week I would quickly devour one book after another. Soon enough, I had run out of books in the children’s library, and my mother and I began the same ritual in the adult section. I read Ivanhoe, Quentin Durward, The Red and the Black, The Winds of War, King Rat, and many, many others.
Growing up, these books were more real to me than many people. When it was difficult for me to feel interconnectedness with the world, whenever I felt too weird, I could identify with a character in a book and feel a little less sad. As I followed Jerome’s blundering passage up and down the Thames, laughing at himself, his friends, and anyone who dared brave the river with them, the world became a lighter, more humorous place also for me, and for that, Jerome K. Jerome, I am grateful.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)