We parents have stories we like to tell our children:
Cheaters never prosper.Honesty is the best policy.Crime doesn’t pay.Good prevails.Love wins.
Sometimes we speak these words as steady declaration of what we believe to be true. Other times they are spoken as the hopeful aspirations of what we wish were true but are no longer certain of. Still other times, they feel like willful fictions we share because the truth feels too complicated and unpleasant.Some days we fully embrace these stories and other days we're trying to convince both our children and ourselves in real-time.
We talk to them about the importance of generosity, of selflessness, of compassion.
We instruct them to take the high road, to be truthful, to treat people the way they wish to be treated, to avoid violence, to speak kindness.
We look for teachable moments where we can show them the tangible fruit of benevolence and truth and mercy.
We champion Love or God or Goodness or Karma as the thing that holds it all together and we implore them to seek it, to trust in its long but eventual overcoming.
We give them every deliciously sweet platitude packaged with brightly colored illustrations and recite them over and over as their twilight, dreamworld send off.
This is easy initially. When they're younger, our children simply receive these words as gospel; they make sense to them, they feel right—and so they accept them with little hesitation.
It isn't a hard sell at first: to make them believe that doing the right thing is always the thing to do, that goodness will always be rewarded, that loving people will eventually yield something beautiful. Childlike innocence warmly welcomes such simple life lessons and so we gladly recite them.
But when our children get a little older, they encounter evidence to the contrary. Life begins to argue with our mythologies. They walk out into the world and they see another story playing out. They begin to see the cracks in our promises when they watch people doing bad things and succeeding. As middle and high school students their present experience confronts our past storytelling:
The loud people get noticed.The bullies control the playgrounds and the hallways.The cheaters get ahead.Cruelty is rewarded with attention.Power and wealth pollute.Justice can be purchased.
Our children wonder if what we've told them all along is simply a noble fiction; theoretical instructions that sound wonderful but don't really work in the world they now find themselves in.
They ask us why they should choose the path of peace, honesty, and empathy when so much around them testifies to its irrelevance. They interrogate us regarding the veracity of the good children’s story we weaned them on—and we struggle to respond.
These days it's difficult to know what to tell our children because most of us we aren't sure what we believe anymore either.
We see what they see and feel the disconnect and we're wondering what is still true too. We are optimists considering retirement, faithful people losing their religion, good trouble travelers who've always taken the high road, now looking for an exit—and our children are watching us.
Many of our kids aren't sure the world makes any sense. They're wondering why it seems as though the bullies and the bad people have the run of the house. They're feeling like honest, compassionate, loving people are now an endangered species.
I don't lie to my children. I tell then I see it all and that it frightens me too—but I let them know that I do still believe the story we've told them. I still believe that compassion is the best path, regardless of how many take the path or the hazards we face along the way. I still believe that the treasure of the bully and the braggart is a fool's gold that will not endure and will eventually prove worthless.
I tell them that responding in love isn't what we do to be rewarded, that responding in love is the reward because it is the best way to honor being alive—that it is indeed yielding something beautiful in and around us even when we can't see it.
I remind them that so many good people still inhabit this place and that they too feel alone and frightened and aren't sure whether goodness is worth it either—and to keep looking for these people and to keep them close.
Most of all I remind them of the undeniable, indescribable beautyI see in them, and let them know that as long as I have breath I'll walk with them, and that together we'll keep writing the best story we can and trust that is enough.
May you who wonder if goodness matters—be greatly encouraged that it does.What do you teach your children and grandchildren about the right way
to live, and as they get older, how do you help them understand what they see?How do you reconcile what you believe about goodness prevailing?Tell me in the comments!
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