TimWoolery.net Documenting the Journey and the Learning Curve

#84 – The Family Miranda Rights

#84 - The Family Miranda Rights or It’s the Principle, Stupid

I feel like I should be advised of my rights whenever my travels take me in close personal contact with my family. That’d only be fair, right? Have a little guy in a tuxedo appear out of nowhere to read from a printed card:

1. You have the right to remain related.

2. Anything you say can and will be remembered for as long as necessary if we decide it proves what we’re trying to say.

3. You have the right to remember what we say, too.

4. If you cannot afford to remember it, the other side will remember it for you (God help you, then)

There doesn’t exist a fight that’s more vicious, intractable or liable to get personal than a family fight. Seriously, the Yankees vs. the Johnny Rebs take a back seat to these fights, you might have to carve out your own personal Mason-Dixon line before it’s over. I guess that’s why cops have an entire section of their police reports devoted to “domestic disturbances”. I’m not exactly sure what your family fights are (or maybe I am, but am being judiciously ignorant). The ongoing battles in my family have turned into a Cold War and I am hoping that this one ends without the collapse of one whole side a la the Soviet Union.

I’ve been writing a lot lately, just not anything that I’d care to publish. Mostly, e-mails to one member of the family or another where we discuss how bad things have gotten between us, why and where we should go from here. There’s no point publishing them, who wants to read the Woolery version of “The Federalist Papers”? Without turning the web page into my personal “This is why I am right and this is why the other side is wrong”, the one thing that hit me as a blinding flash of the obvious is what I think will eventually be our road out of family fight hell.

But slow down, let’s talk some more about the problem. About 99.99% of the problems in our family (without naming names) boil down to one thing – someone’s being unreasonable. Unreasonable opinions, unreasonable needs (wants or demands…) – it’s always something along those lines. When these come up enough times, it creates a supercell of family tension. Think of it militarily – have enough border skirmishes and you got yourself a war! I guess I’ve been in war mode for a while now – everything is starting to look like a battle to me. I gotta admit: I’m getting tired of it now. Like a war, you’ve got three options: win, surrender or die. Winning one of these wars is like the U.S. conquering Vietnam – we’ve proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt now. I’m not going to die over this – it’s not worth it; life is not like a Shakespearian play. Surrendering is also not an option; our character doesn’t respond well to oppression – like the French under Vichy, there will always be a resistance. So, three options and none of them are very attractive. I guess we’re stuck, right?

Wrong.

There’s a great book I read a while back (it’s pretty short) that’s called ”Nasty People: How to Stop Being Hurt by Them Without Becoming One of Them” and it’s got a pretty good strategy for breaking free of people who are, shall we say, emotional bullies. Emotional bullies, (any bully, really) exert their power to force you to accede to their will. Having been on the wrong side of that in many ways, I can tell you that it doesn’t feel good. And yet, there’s a simple concept in the book mentioned above. Bullies work by limiting your choices. Physical bullies give you two choices – do what I say or get hit. There’s a story in there about a monk giving his pupil a bowl of water and showing him a stick. Drink from the bowl of water, the story goes, and you will be hit. Do not drink from the water and you will be hit. Most people confronted with that problem will only see the two choices, likely they’ll end up drinking from the bowl because hey, if you’re gonna get hit anyway…

But there were more choices than the two presented – you could also take the stick away. You could also run away. You could hit the master. You could see that there were more options before you than the two (or other limited number) presented to you.

Once that concept was explained to me, it opened my eyes to a range of stuff that I didn’t understand before. Most of these conflicts were framed in such a way that you were always given two impossible choices; the frustration from them often drove me into depression. Realizing that more options might exist made me start looking for them and that’s where a sea-change started to occur. There were more options than were being presented to me and yes, I was being bullied. The usual anger that comes over you at that point passed; I was finally able to articulate a large patch of rage that previously existed only as a grey chunk of misery. Consider that specific point sufficiently articulated and then let’s move on.

So – where are we now? We’re already into the new paradigm, whatever it’s going to be. That started back in March when Grandpa had the stroke. At that point, the family unit was turned on its ear and the opportunity to really break up some old bad habits presented itself. “Nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come”…remember that? I started to see it in action. None of what I said before has the distinct ring of Genuine Insight. You’ve probably recognized most of it from other more intelligent sources of wisdom.

One of the final (really, really BIG) points fell into place for me (leading to writing this piece). The new system here is really us going back to where we should have been all along. We’ve been stumbling along on a bad path for a very long time because we were being presented with only two options. But let’s talk about the system itself, first.

The new paradigm (fancy word for system – I like fancy words) is that we’re going back to upholding and supporting the right principle(s). We’re getting off the track of upholding and supporting people. Hey, nobody’s perfect – given enough time everyone will eventually disappoint you. So, don’t support a person who isn’t right all the time – support a principle that is. A good principle is like that – you can be wrong many times but you’ll always be able to say “It’s still a good idea!” What kind of principles am I talking about?

You can wrap this in as much as you need to but since this is a secular source, I don’t want to say this the wrong way. I believe our family can behave like mature, reasonable people who, because they conform to a higher standard of conduct, are able to love each other on a deeper and more meaningful level than is experienced by most people. I believe that – I truly believe that. We’ve strayed from that principle and now it’s time for us to go back.

Without realizing it (or being able to explain it), this is where I’ve been wanting to go for quite some time. I’ve watched people bully my family (directly or through other family members) for way, way too long. It’s time to stop – it’s time to be better. Not because of Grandpa and not because we have other family members who will be joining us in the future. It’s just simply time.

So what’s this Dose about, Tim? Put it directly: this is another opportunity to communicate where I think I need to go and where I’m hoping my family can come, too. I want a family that loves each other, can be in the same room together not just today but tomorrow, next week and for all the important moments in our lives. I think we all want that, at some level, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to focus on it – kind of like trying to negotiating a peace treaty during Tarawa. Even if someone were to come up with some familial A-Bomb, you wouldn’t be able to build on what would be left.

Yeah, a place on the Clinton/Gore campaign tagline “It’s the Economy, Stupid”. It’s the principle, stupid. Focus on that and everything else falls into place.

- Tim Woolery, 10/25/2005