EXPERIENCE OF THE SOUL
This entry was posted on 3/3/2008 7:11 PM and is filed under uncategorized.
When I was growing up, it took me a long time to realize that things just weren't quite right at home. We had what appeared to be a normal, suburban family, but something wasn't right. There was no alcoholism or drug abuse or violence or molestation or divorce or any other red-letter stand-out problem that would make me a million bucks if I should write a memoir.
But somewhere about the time I went into junior high, I just sort of took over the role of grown-up; the mama, if you will, of my younger siblings. When they reached adulthood and their lives began to boomerang out of control, it took many years for any sort of professional appraisal, and when all was said and done, it seemed that manic-depression ran through the family, and that if my mother had ever actually seen a shrink, well, the joke is that the shrink would have eventually needed a shrink.
Two of my siblings led lives of high drama and much personal heartache before eventually getting some help and getting themselves together. I am very proud of them both.
And, two of my siblings--one older, one younger--have, in their adult years, grown estranged from our mother and no longer speak to her. I stay in the middle, like Switzerland, the family peacemaker. I try very hard not to take sides and not to allow one family member to manipulate my affections over another. But I try to be there for all of them, because they seem so alone, somehow.
No one should ever feel alone in his or her own family.
Looking back, I think that there are a couple of reasons that I grew up as the token sane person of the family (and I say that with great affection and respect for my siblings). For one thing, I had a different biological father, whom I finally met when I was in my 20's. He was a retired Marine Corps Master Gunnery Sergeant, the kind of guy who badgered the Marines into sending him to Vietnam when he was over 40 and had five kids at home--and what he said was what he meant and what he meant was what he said.
He was--and still is--a rugged outdoorsman and individualist, and there wasn't a neurotic bone in his body.
This proved to be a great comfort to me, and I cherish his presence in my life to this day. My only regret is that he wasn't around back in the crazy days, when that stability would have meant a great deal to me.
Another reason I emerged relatively unscathed from so much family dysfunction was that, more than 30 years ago, I made a very good choice of a spouse; a calm quiet man of deep personal character and honesty who lived and worked outdoors and with animals in a place geographically far removed from the chaos of my family. I often joke that he is the serene ocean liner to my bobbing schooner, sailing smoothly through troubled seas, hauling me along in his wake.
But through the years, I've had to develop pretty sophisticated diplomatic skills in order to be there for my family without being used by them against one another. Occasionally I'll act as "interpreter" when one hurts another's feelings and try to diffuse an explosive outburst or hardening of the heart. Sometimes, when one or the other of them is going through a hard time, they will turn their frustration on me, and it can hurt deeply. I have to forgive, to be patient, try not to over-react. I know they don't always mean it, and that they don't really want to drive me away. But it's hard, sometimes.
I imagine a great many people share this kind of growing-up; this pressure to be the grown-up while still a child; the desire to keep a family from disintegrating.
The reason I bring it up here is to make a very personal appeal for, of all things, a political candidate. Anyone who's read my blog more than a few times knows that I support Sen. Barack Obama for the Democratic party nomination and for president of the United States.
But few know the personal reason why.
Two years ago, long before he declared his candidacy, one of my sisters, who is a conservative Republican, gave me Obama's book, THE AUDACITY OF HOPE, for Christmas.
And as I was reading, I was struck by the ease with which he seemed able to listen to and consider all sides of an issue, to show respect for opposing interests, and to seek solutions somewhere in the middle. I was so moved by it, in fact, that every now and then I would catch myself weeping.
I did not understand this deep visceral reaction to a politician, in fact, until I read his first book, DREAMS FROM MY FATHER, that he'd written not long out of law school, long before he ever went into politics.
And I saw then that, even though our upbringings could not have been more different, we still shared one common trait: being caught in the middle, trying to reconcile opposing and sometimes intense emotional forces in our own lives.
For instance, he said that, when he first became aware of racial differences, when he first started to hang out with black friends, and he would hear them say things like, "You can't trust white people. White people are this or white people are that," he would think, "Well, my grandparents are white. My mom is white. I trust them, and I know they're not like that."
In other words, he was not comfortable with either-or rhetoric, and learned at a very young age that there are many sides to an argument.
Obama once joked that family reunions, for him, are like meetings of the U.N. His sister is half-white and half-Indonesian, and she married a Chinese-American. He has Indonesian cousins, and he has half-siblings and grandparents who are Kenyan, and he has relatives who are white. The white grandmother who helped raise him still lives in Hawaii.
This has given him a unique perspective on life that should not be discounted just because it doesn't fit on a resume.
When you grow up as a sort of family diplomat, there are two things that make it work for you. One is that it is, to some extent, a gift at birth. You are either born with the inate patience and compassion to assume that role or you are not; sometimes it's genetic, and sometimes you're just an old soul.
But secondly, through the years, in often highly-charged, intensely emotional scenarios, you develop a skill that enables you to listen respectfully to violently opposed points of view, consider them, and search for middle ground.
You also learn to recognize rhetoric and incalcitrance when you hear it, and you gain the courage to stand up to it when all else fails. Being a diplomat is not the same thing as being weak. Sometimes, firmness is called for.
In my family, I finally had to offer a "deal" to my loved ones. When I was with one set of estranged relatives, we would not discuss the others, and vice-versa. I would not be a pawn in some sort of emotional game-playing. Once that was established, I was able to enjoy time with both sides of my family and to always be there for them when they needed me. And I think they would be there for me, too.
With Obama, what he lays out in AUDACITY OF HOPE is a fair-minded, open-minded look at issues that effect us all. He takes on sacred cows of "liberal" interest groups and asks them to admit when there are areas on which they could give, areas that have become calcified over the years but that might have been overtaken by new developments in technology or by world events or other issues.
He takes a stand when it is necessary, but he LISTENS.
In my family, most of what I do when I am in the company of any one of them is listen. Sometimes, I listen for hours. Sometimes, they don't think to ask how I'm doing. That's okay. I've got somebody at home who listens to ME.
When it comes to our government, usually, in any given area of disagreement, especially in recent years, one of the reasons partisans get so angry is because they are convinced that the other side is just not listening and never will listen to their concerns.
It's important to listen, but it's also important to weed out the grandstanders. It's important to respect the passions brought by a given group, but it's also important to get them to see that theirs is not the only way. It's important too, to get them to listen to EACH OTHER when possible.
Ever since the Clinton/Gingrich years, our government has been polarized and paralyzed by opposing interests who have degenerated into virtual shouting matches on the floor of Congress that wind up accomplishing little, and the country has suffered greatly for it.
Barack Obama brings a unique gift into that gridlocked process. It is a gift that is very rare, because not that many people are born into a situation that calls upon them to develop those skills.
Right now, our country needs this gift even more than it needs a stellar resume (though he has that too) or a powerful political machine.
There are times, reading blogpost comments, that the virtual screaming and nastiness that goes on by both factions can sound very like family arguments between siblings in the Democratic family, and spreading out to the extended family of Republicans. Our in-laws, so to speak.
It is time for somebody to be the grown-up, the mama, if you will. Someone has to be the peacemaker.
Because I can tell you that when a family turns its back on loved ones and no longer acknowledges them or speaks to them, it is a tragedy. When I was still in college, my adoptive father died suddenly, and at his funeral, siblings of his came who had not seen him in 20 years because of family feuds. This means I was seeing uncles I barely knew, and meeting cousins for the first time in my life.
This is not normal, and it's not right.
It's sad, it's lonely, and for the family of our nation, it's downright dangerous. I implore everyone who still has not cast a vote, to stop and consider that there are some kinds of experience that may not fit on a resume or shine in a soundbite; experience that is gut-level, experience of the soul.
It is this kind of experience that I believe our country needs now more than ever. There have been great emotional wounds in our family of a nation, and if we are willing to trust it, this could very well be, at least, the beginning of a healing for--and of--us all.
