Returning To Your Roots and Karma

Some things have happened lately that make me realize that who you are as an adult, has a lot to do with how you were raised. You can fool yourself for a little while, trying out different lifestyles, etc., but you generally return to your roots, I think. For instance, if as you were growing up, your parents emphasized honesty, responsibility, charity, kindness, etc., chances are that you will emphasize those same values in raising your own children. Or, if you were raised to believe that you've always got to be looking out for Number One and you are perfectly justified to plan and scheme every weasel-ish way to work a situation to your advantage (like someone who shall remain nameless - but I bet you can guess who it is!) then you will eventually go back to that, no matter how many years you tried to live your life a bit more honestly/generously.

I know that I was not nearly as nice of a person 20 years ago as I am now. Not saying I'm nice now, mind you, but I'm nice-er. Case in point: when Grandma Jean was still alive, we were at the park celebrating a birthday. I think it was my brother, Elj's, but I'm not sure how old he was at the time - maybe 10 or 12? Anyway, my grandma was diabetic and diabetics tend to have a lot of circulatory problems in their extremeties, so she had been having trouble with her feet. So here we are at my brother's birthday - a big day in the life of a little kid, for sure! My mom (Pegge) is rushing around, organizing the big "Happy Birthday" song and trying to light candles and everything, but my grandma was like, "Pegge? Come look at my toe. What do you think, Pegge? Do you think it's OK, Pegge? How does it look? Pegge? Pegge?"

My mom dropped everything to go look at my grandma's toe, and for some reason, it irritated the crap out of me. I was like, "Geez, Grandma - this is Elj's birthday! Can't you wait a minute? Gosh - why does everything have to be about you! Can't you see my mom is busy? Don't you realize a kid's birthday ought to center around him, and not his grandma's toe? Can't we at least sing to him first? Fer cryin' out loud!" I didn't say anything like this, of course, but I was having a lot of uncharitable thoughts about Grandma and my mom, too, for getting sucked in to Grandma's "poor me" quest for attention. I thought to myself, "Man, I'm never going to be like that with my mom, or anyone else! How would anyone know that that is inappropriate behavior, if I reward them with attention? Grrr!"

Skip 18-some odd years into the future, to a day earlier this week. I was telling my mom about a recent visit to my counselor, and how she had talked about how easy it is to assign value/give worth to others, but how hard it was for me to find charity in my soul for myself. The counselor gave me an assignment: how do you determine the worth of human being? What is their intrinsic value, not because of who they are or what they have or what they've done, but just because they merely exist, and just are? This is a topic worthy of it's own separate blog post, to be sure, and I'll get around to it, eventually, but I was telling my mom how difficult of a question I thought this was to answer.

My mom proceeded to tell me, for at least an hour if not longer, how she would answer the question. Oh. My. God. I thought I would die from boredom. I kept blanking out, as unfortunately, her voice was like the hum of an air conditioner, or the sound of far-away lawn mowers on a sunny summer day: just a distant, steady, droning of "Bzzz, bzzz, bzzz, bzzz. Buh-bzz, bzz, bzzzz. Bzzzzzzzz!" If I was still the same person I was during Grandma's toe incident, I would have been all, "Uh, yeah, OK. Thanks, Mom! Gotta go! Buh-bye!" about 10 minutes into the monologue - afterall, this was a question about me, from my counselor, that I was supposed to answer for myself - NOT my mother's views on life!

But, I forced myself to practice charity and listen generously, even though I didn't particularly want to, because I knew she was enjoying having the chance to have an intellectual discussion and a willing ear. I was surprised at my mom's depth of insight. She's actually quite a philosopher, in her own way, and rather wise for someone who never got a college degree or ever, according to her, even felt particularly intelligent.

And I realized, also, that not only will who I am now listen to an hour's worth of "speechifying" from her mother and try to find value in it, even when it's difficult - who I am now would've stopped the party to pay attention to my grandma's toe, too, if I had the chance.

I guess my mother raised me right, after all, even if it took me a while to figure it out. I must have learned, unintentionally, from my mom's example, how to be a kinder, gentler person. I did come back to my roots - or at least, I'm in the process of it. Perhaps the Karmic pay-off to my mom for listening to Grandma's toe complaints all those years ago and making her feel valued, was me learning to listen to my mom now and making her feel valued. And one day, my surly pre-teens will (hopefully!) learn to do the same for me, and that will be my Karmic pay-off.

So, yeah, I was raised to be nice, and I think I'm nicer now than I was. But - I am not nice enough, to not sincerely hope that the Karmic pay-off for individuals who return to their weasel-y roots, will come back to bite them in their weasel-y little (bleep!)!!