emotional kryptonite

  

Yesterday we had cartoons on the TV, and there was a Batman/Superman/Spiderman thing the children were watching.  My daughter commented she likes Superman - but also Hulk.  It seemed to be about being strong and brave.  So it got me to wondering about how I could relate these ''superhero'' qualities to the values and characteristics I have been trying to work on with my kids.


As I have mentioned over at my other blog as well, there's been a lot of talk at my house of late about hurt and forgiveness.  These are big concepts to grasp, especially for children. And so I had been trying to work out how to get these ideas into practical terms for my 9 year old (in particular) to understand.  We've talked about how being angry is like letting someone mean live in your head.  We've talked about how forgiving someone makes your heart feel lighter.

The superhero thing suddenly made a whole lot more sense.  And in particular I was thinking about what super-qualities might apply to anger.  There it was:  Forgiveness is like kryptonite to conquer anger.   I talked about this with my daughter last night, as she is currently wrestling with the idea of having to forgive someone who hurt her deeply as a very young child.  She says she's almost afraid to do it -  I think perhaps she feels that the anger gives her some power over her thoughts and reactions to that person.

I left the ideas with her, reassuring her that it was not something that might happen easily, and nor would the feelings magically disappear - but that by applying her ''kryptonite of forgiveness'' to the angry feelings, she could take some of the sting out of them.  She understood and promised to think about it.

Keep you posted

human nature

“It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.” 
― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

Up until very recently I subscribed to the Anne Frank view of life.  I want to believe that despite it all, we human beings are decent people.  That we are fundamentally ''good''.

Unfortunately recent events are leading me to re-evaluate that opinion.  A person who is extremely close to me has been badly deceived by someone she trusted.  It's not important to go into the details, but suffice to say, her belief in the goodness of mankind has been somewhat shaken too, and I'm seeing the after effects and pain that results from the deception.

And so I've changed my perspective.  I still hold the belief that human beings have the potential to be good.  That we have an underlying drive for self preservation and also for the preservation of each other, and that includes upholding our core values.  But I also think that maybe we have an equal potential to be ''bad''.

I am still not entirely convinced of the Christian theological position that we are all inherently evil and born that way.   But I am becoming more and more sure that we have it within our selves to be sinful (to use a Christian term), or hurtful/selfish (to use a more humanist term).

 And, I'm beginning to think that maybe it is not until we experience hurt ourselves, that we can shine the light on our own hurtful behaviours and take steps to change them.  

This conclusion makes me sad.  And even though I still have at the root of all this, the belief that every person is redeemable (there's another of those Christian explanations), and that no-one is irrecoverably broken, the fact that we are human makes us capable of harm without effort or even intention.