My mom tells the story of how her mom and her aunt used the same disciplinary punishment on their children: standing alone in a dark closet for a few minutes. My mom found the punishment almost procedural. Standing alone in the closet as a time-out didn't seem terribly serious to her and she just waited the prescribed two or five minutes until she was released and went about her day. Her cousin, on the other hand, found standing in a dark closet cruel and scary.
Now there could have been other variables like how their mothers talked to them, how they framed the punishment, the size and feel of the closets, the exact number of minutes in the closet that could have played important parts in the perceptual gap. But assuming the two sisters punished their kids in comparable ways, this could be a great example of two people with different internal, emotional compositions who experienced the same basic event in very different ways.
Any police officer or litigating attorney knows groups of people all watching the same event – an accident, a crime, a conversation, a meeting, a deal – will give varying and sometimes widely varying stories of what happened with complete honesty and good faith. Causes can be as simple as where someone is sitting or standing at the time of an event; how we interpret what we see and hear – because our brains sometimes fill in details incorrectly; and our individual experiences we apply such as judging what someone meant by their words or which tones denote anger or pleasure.
On Patmos, one of the most contested conversations can be which beach you like best. Kampos gets throngs of visitors because it's shallow, sandy, calm and therefore ideal for families. I've met groups of families who center their entire vacations around it and spend weeks there every year. Kampos is their annual pilgrimage. Frankly, if my kids didn't want to go, I'd probably never spend a day at Kampos. The pebbly beach at Petra with its gorgeous blue water set against the backdrop of "Shepherd Island" and deep, swimming pool-like quality works better for me. It's my ideal beach day. Yet, the other night the owner of a nearby clothing store told Ailyn and me how she can't go to Petra these days because of her five year-old – Petra is not at all for small kids. Sennen and Ailyn used to go and enjoy the day there when they were four and six. In fact, we also have adorable photos of Sennen playing on Petra when he was 15 months old.
This morning Sennen asked what time here would equate to 8 am at home. And what time for 6pm? His friend Eliana starts Middle School today and he wants to wish her well and check in on her after school – which I love. Eliana is in the Oak Park school district which starts two weeks before most – but seeing his friend launch her middle school journey got Sennen excited.
"I'm really excited about Middle School!" Sennen declared today. I was happy he was happy. It's a big transition and the right attitude helps a lot.
A few hours later Sennen began contemplating hair options for his first day. Would he rubber band his currently bushy hair into "dreads", show up with his current "long" hair or get some variety of fade haircut?
I immediately did not want him to go in with "dreads" for a number of reasons including that it's likely to be seen as stupid and be made fun of. There's also the issue of a relatively short-haired Jewish kid trying to have dreadlocks and all the potential messages and issues around that – but we can leave that to the side for now.
Happily, before I responded I paused for a moment to consider the reason for my position and it was mainly my own perception and thoughts from my own middle school experience. I had a pretty good Middle School experience – though I think it was heavily shaped by my being tracked in the GATE program. Having a group of kids who were different in the same way I was different gave me a safe space and a lot more confidence than I might otherwise have had. I also remember seventh and eighth grades being the ages when kids reached peak asshole. Middle schoolers can tear each other down for no real reason. It's an age where seemingly nice kids turn mean on a dime. To me, the idea of Sennen walking into Middle School on the first day with rubber-banded, mini-pig-tail-looking "dreads" seemed like lowering chum into a shark tank.
I explained to Sennen that right or wrong, Middle School is a time of conformity. Kids basically come with bumper stickers that say, "You're different and that's bad…" I also believe that's not the right way to live life. We're all different, we should feel free to be creative, express ourselves and not be punished for being us. So I suggested perhaps to start the school year a little more muted – like with a fade cut – and once he's found his people and mastered the lay of the land he can begin to get more creative and daring. He'll have developed the foundation to live out loud.
I don't know if that's good advice. It's informed by my own experience – at the exact same school, to be clear. It made me wonder what other answers people might give and how their perhaps different experiences or perceptions shaped those answers. I realized in wanting to protect and guide my son, I was really trying to reach back in time to protect and guide myself.
Ailyn weighed in with a similar message – the "dreads" are cute for vacation, but perhaps not for school. They then spent a half hour online searching for the perfect back-to-school hairstyles for them both.
Still I wondered, how much do we really know anything? Our brains are in some senses amazing and in other ways, limited tools. We're unable to explore, query, investigate and challenge every piece of information we get, let alone every perception we intake. For better and worse, we rely on lots of shortcuts which include a large foundational download from our parents, family, teachers – the people who explain our world to us. Those foundational assumptions form operating systems on top of which we function. I don't spend my time running experiments to prove the world is round – I accept my education which provides seemingly reasonable evidence of the world's roundness. I never considered checking birth certificates or asking for DNA samples to see if my relatives are really my family (although some you can just tell by look and mannerism), I accepted my family tree.
But how reliable are our sources?
For the most part, we trust news anchors, reporters and media outlets because we don't have time to fly to Ukraine or Israel to assess the situation for ourselves – and even if we did, we can't see everything going on the way a government or news organization with networks of communication technologies and sources can. Yet if you watched every major news outlet, you would be struck by at best confusing, if not contradictory accounting of events in these places. It takes a lot of thought and will to find the unvarnished truth.
When it comes to seeing ourselves, our sources are no more reliable. Not only do all the people in my life see me from their lenses – which reflect them, their compositions and experiences – but they also see different parts of me. We never really know the whole person – which is why you can spend a lifetime getting to know someone. Sometimes there are facets of a person that just never come out for you. If one person thinks you're amazing and another says you're an asshole, which are you? One, both, neither? Any are possible, but it's so hard to really know.
When is someone else's criticism a reflection of them and when is it a sometimes difficult to swallow gift for you? When is someone's praise and support a reflection of your fabulousness and when is it loving shortsightedness – or worse, a manipulation?
I've struggled with these questions my whole life.
The same is true in reverse – as it was in my response to Sennen. How much is my view of the world even accurate enough help someone else? What is my experience worth and does it translate? What do I really know? And therefore, is what I have to offer really Good?
One of the most confusing moments for me is to decide when I might be an outlier to a group thought or opinion and when I'm right in spite of one. In other words, when do you hit the brake? Or when do you drown out the noise?
Because whatever you do, someone's going to disagree and let you know.
In my work, my strength is building teams and governing with consensus and unity. My weakness is usually seen as niceness and softness. They're two sides of the same coin – bringing people together through common values and safe space – or harmony – and being loathe to make a hasty or harsh call because of my value on harmony.
So when I guide my children, I know for better and worse I'm trying to shepherd them toward harmony. I mean, I literally take them to Patmos for that reason. I want them to live stable, happy harmonious lives. Perhaps my lessons don't give them the right skills – or maybe not all the skills they need. Perhaps the other adults in their lives – maybe some who are more comfortable and skillful with discord - are important voices. We all need a lot of voices and examples to help us learn to navigate the world.
I just hope as my son enters Middle School and my daughter fourth grade – and whatever they each face beyond those – whatever dark closets they may find themselves in, they are the non-scary ones that just last a few minutes and mean nothing afterwards.
