Going home, and anticipating quarrels over people’s varied politics and religions? Try a different tack. If you were in some other country, you’d be curious about the beliefs and customs of the people. Instead of arguing with your family, be glad for them that they have beliefs or ideas that do something for them, no matter how nutty those ideas seem to you. Newsflash! You won’t convert them this week to your more reasonable beliefs, so take a break. Enjoy what you enjoy about them. If there’s nothing you enjoy about them, ask questions ‘til you stumble onto something. Pretend the word “I” has left your vocabulary to go visit its own family.
Dreading the visit because someone (or everyone) there is a malevolent jerk? Arm yourself with the knowledge that vicious or potentially hurtful things people say and do are like bottles of poison they offer you; but you only feel the pain or the anger if YOU choose to drink from it. Almost all really vicious people suffered something vicious that was too big or too early in their lives for them to evade. It’s still with them. Recalling that might mitigate your annoyance at their words or conduct. As long as you’re stuck there, try two mental games: first, try to identify the pain they never could outgrow; second, try to envision that person in ten years. That exercise might help, if you can’t pity (or love) the person now.
(A third tack, for the more adventurous: ask quietly, and very casually, some direct question, such as “What is it about me that so irritates you?” or “Why are you so obsessed with denigrating my [employer, son, daughter, spouse, love, or artistic passion]. But don’t dignify the answer by arguing. Maybe shake head and smile, “Good thing I don’t feel that way.”)
I’m not saying to abandon your beliefs or values, only that how we feel is far more within our control than we often suppose. Not some tight, repressive control, but seeing your thoughts clearly, seeing that although people are as they are, your thoughts are yours.
We each get to cling to the edge of this planet for only a nanosecond, as the Earth counts time,. (That being so, why waste time being hurt or pissed off?) That, maybe, is the point of Thanksgiving, not some fable about how well colonists in Massachusetts got on with the tribes.
Besides, if you believe in some religion, these conflicts are trivial garbage that you’ll leave behind when you move on to the Happy Hunting Grounds – and being nice to folks who could help punch your ticket. If you believe this lifetime is all we get, that’s even more reason not to let people muck it up with the small stuff.
Besides, two things (beyond exercise and a sane diet) lengthen lives: gratitude and laughter. Cultivate both. Happy Thanksgiving!
– 30 –
[The above column appeared Sunday, 19 November, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper’s website ("Wherever You Spend Thanksgiving, Give Thanks!"), as well as on the KRWG website under Local Viewpoints. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/). ]
[This is what it is; but as soon as I sent it off, I was annoyed at myself over the 5th paragraph. What I aimed at was the idea of addressing root issues directly but dispassionately, letting whoever annoys you get something said, frankly. A good idea. But, extended to a discussion of one’s partner, it seems unlikely to work. I can listen all day to the crazy insults people aim on me; but if someone who knew us was blasting my wife, I’d not just sit and listen. I’d keep my temper, but respond with a frankness that might not sit too well. ]
[Writing this, I kept remembering sitting on a plane landing in ___, Florida, around Thanksgiving or Christmas, 1995. My father had just moved to ___. We never had the kinds of problems the column discusses: we differed on some things, but spoke frankly without quarreling. But behind me sat a man, and a woman, strangers: clearly he was gay and either had come out recently, much to his parents’ dismay, or hadn’t quite come out yet. The woman sitting next to him had political differences with her parents too strong to discuss amicably. They commiserated, as the plane circled. He snidely referred to Orlando as “Death’s Waiting Room.” They told their stories and joked together about each going to visit the other’s parents instead of his or her own. These days, with our much-enhanced partisanship, I keep hearing the same fears in friends and acquaintances about to spend time with families they’re not simpatico with. Taking a stab at discussing that seemed more worthwhile than talking about the tribes and the turkeys or saying, yet again, how grateful I am personally for a better life than I’ve deserved.]
[Anyway, Happy Thanksgiving!]
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