The connotation of saying what you mean
is too often seen as being disagreeable when a more sensitive soul might have left the matter alone, used a gentler phrase or kept quiet. This may come as a terrible shock to you but I say nice things as often as I can and only when I perceive them to be true. As in the case of a young woman the other day whose coat I admired. So I said so. She looked at me as if I were holding matched snakes. “Me ?” she said round eyed. So I said, “It’s a compliment, it’s free, non addictive, not fattening. I don’t want money and I am not after your body.” Whereupon she relaxed into a giggle and a smile.
Whilst in the present ongoing unholy international stew , provocation won’t help – a bit of saying what you mean is refreshing. Last week I used a phrase from an interview with
BBC’s Emma Barnett in which she spoke about the pressure parents feel to be perfect and wanting to create a panic room for parents. A panic room for parents is a slick phrase (can’t beat a bit of alliteration) but the first given you come to terms with as a parent, regardless of whether your own were useful to you or not, is that you can only do your best and know that, with all your impeccable intentions, it may not suit your child. Styles of parenting are a whole other thing.
Communication comes into this – parent to parent, and parent to child and on into education, special interests and so on. One is never done being a parent, even if one has to learn to shut up, stand back and let be. And you may have what you perceive as a quiet sweet child. Until you discover that he or she has a will of iron.
You don’t need many words to stonewall.
We talk about children as a separate race because it is easier to sell them and their parents things for them that way but every child is set to grow and they change quite fast. Speed of development varies and perfection of children or parents doesn’t come into it. I am very wary about perfection especially applied to people, other than situationally. You can behave perfectly in a particular circumstance but that doesn’t make you perfect.
Perfection is like nirvana. You may strive for it but the journey to it is where you will learn and grow, the achievement of the final goal likely to be denied.
Perfect parenthood is like perfect health. Health is reliable, maintained through water consumption, exercise, food and rest. And so many times we say to each other “but I always thought he/she was in very good shape” as somebody staggers into cancer or heart disease, and worse.
Because we are anxious (we’d have to be stupid not to be – anxiety is there in the atmosphere, running out of money, running out of time, the pressure politically ) we turn to health as something to be maintained in perfection.
But it varies as the weather varies. That’s why it is so difficult to sell long term health maintenance to so many people. They just take their health for granted till it falters. And even if you do all the right things, it is not a marble statue – an achievable goal – perfection. It is a work in progress and the darndest things emerge as you go on. If you had been told about them, would you remember them ? Not till there was a problem.
And then we’d have to talk about what kind of a problem. Saying what you mean comes into that too. And you may be stuck with a fear for which you don’t have a language – just like the hooha currently going forward with my internet provider. Or a child you can’t reach. Or a health problem that frightens you so much, you can’t think about it. Our old friend denial- very primitive, very strong.
Communication is never wasted, even if it is awkward or unpleasant and human to human agreeably at the moment is candlelight in several kinds of dark – I will happily share my matches.
Annalog 