Thanks Jannie and JD!

Who's pulling your strings or controlling your life?

Do you care what other people think about you? I asked a few people this question and they said they don’t care what other people think. Well actually they said they don’t give a rat’s *** what people think, but I was putting it nicely.

Sometimes it seems like the attitude today, and not just from the younger generation, is: I’ll do what I please and if you don’t like it, then you can shove it. Some people like to believe that they live in their own world and nothing they do affects anyone. There is more concern about self and less concern about others.

Then there are the people pleasers who spend too much time caring what others think about them. They don’t live their life based on their thoughts, but on the opinions and approval of others. They thrive and need acceptance from others to feel validated as a person. I was reading something that said this need is like a drug, “it’s so addictive that most people will not give it up – they will keep looking for approval because the hit is so intense.”

“The price of the approval drug is freedom – the freedom to be ourselves.”

Personally I don’t care what others think about me, most of the time people get it wrong anyway, but I do care how I am perceived. That means I’m okay with being weird (or being different) I can contently dance to the beat of my own drum, but if someone thinks I’m a horrible person, then we need to talk. I do care about my character, who I am as a person.

My question to you is: Where, and how, do you draw the line on how much influence and control you give other people. The comment section is open for your participation.

Michael Miles, the author of Thirty Days to Change Your Life, for Free said that we should “live our life by means of a set of values – not values imposed from the outside by others, but innate values which come from within. If we are driven by these values and not by the changing opinions and value systems of others, we will live a more authentic, effective purposeful and happy life.”

Photo by starpixie on Flickr

I love to watch Clean House, that’s the show that cleans up a cluttered home by getting rid of stuff people don’t use or need. What surprises me about the people on the show is how attached they are to their stuff. Stuff they are not using and that’s buried under more stuff. The clean house crew literally has to pry items from their hands. People cry. I’m thinking what’s the problem, get rid of it! Now it’s possible I could be missing my sentimental gene, so I tested out my theory by walking around my place to see if there was anything I could not part with…….

The result?

I ended up putting mental price tags on everything! I don’t feel any emotional or sentimental attachment to this stuff. I have furniture, possible antiques, given to me from a relative, but if I had to sell it, without a second thought, it would be soooo gone.

So to tap into my sentimental gene, I have my daughter making a patchwork quilt with clothing from me, her dad and some of her old clothing. We’ll be collecting patches of clothing from other family members as well. Maybe when she’s done, I’ll start feeling sentimental about something, but for right now, my sentimental gene is MIA. I probably sold it at a garage sale. Just recently I asked my mother to bequeath her china that belonged to my father’s aunt to me because it’s a beautiful set and I would use it, but everything can’t have sentimental value, can it?

Please tell me I’m not the only one, are you the sentimental type? Is there anything in your home you would not part with because of its sentimental value?

I pride myself on knowing things about my friends and family, middle names, birthdays, anniversaries. I like “knowing” people and I like when people know me well enough to remember certain things about me. It tells me that you are just as interested in me as I am about you. Okay, I don’t remember phone numbers too well unless it’s one I have to memorize, but I know some people well enough to have an entire conversation with just my eyes. How do you feel about your friends or family remembering facts about you or are we all excused from remembering anything because everything is remembered for us?

I’m calling my mother back later this evening. Hi Mom, I have a question for you. What is my birth year, minus the time I was born, divided by four times two. If she gets it wrong, I will know for sure she’s hiding something. With my history, she will probably ask which one of “her” kids am I.

It was nice meeting parents that I have not met before and great seeing the parents I already knew. One parent commented on how well my daughter reads and boy, does that make me feel good! Although when it was her time to read, she didn’t read loud enough and I’m standing in the back wanting to give hand signals to direct her. Sit up. Enunciate your words. Speak louder. Hold your book up when you read. Maintain audience contact. Of course, I didn’t gesture my thoughts to her, that was just my 20 plus years of public speaking experience thinking out loud. I thought she, as well as the other children, did great reading in front of an audience. That’s not such an easy thing to do, I still get nervous.

After they were done reading their books, we had a light breakfast and chatted with the other parents and kids. At least once a month, I take some time off from work to doing something in her class, whether it be for show-and-tell or reading with the other kids, I think it’s important to be there. Nothing compares to the return I get on my investment, the joy on her face: Priceless.

The only SAHD that I know are called unemployed and they are there, temporarily, by default. There are, however, a growing number of men who voluntarily opt-out of corporate America and are choosing to be the primary caregiver for the kids and work from home.

Being a SAHD comes with many challenges, prejudices and sometimes even ridicule. They have to deal with stereotypes of what a man’s role in the home should be. Typically, he’s the one that works outside the home.

Then there are the stay-at-home-moms (SAHM) who are uncomfortable with a man assuming what is traditionally known as a woman’s role. Often times he is excluded from playgroup activities and mothers refuse to send their kids over to play if the primary caregiver is SAHD and the wife is not home.

Friends and family are also quick to voice their approval or disapproval on the man being the primary caregiver. This is especially true if the woman’s father is still alive. He may view his son-in-law as a freeloader who should get a real job.

Male friends may give the SAHD a hard time with the thought of a woman taking care of him and the family. Female friends may give the working mom a hard time because she is out working while he sits at home watching Oprah.

Interesting enough, statistics show that “half of all children with highly involved fathers in two parent families reported getting mostly A’s through twelfth grade, compared with 35.2% of children whose fathers resided outside the home.” Source: National Center for Education Statistics.

1.8 million – The number of preschoolers whose fathers care for them for more hours than any other child-care provider while their mothers are at work. Source: U.S. Census Bureau.

Spike TV Poll reports that 31 percent of black men taking care of their children full time compared with 18% of white fathers and 25% of Hispanic fathers.

Census Bureau estimates that across the country last year there were 159,000 fathers who remained out of the labor force to care for their children while their wives worked.

It’s unfortunate that many SAHD are looked upon as inferior or less than a man because they choose to stay at home with the kids. Parenting is challenging enough without outsiders forcing their ideas of what the roles should be in your family. Personally, I don’t have a problem with a man staying at home and taking care of the kids (sometimes, I’m glad to go to work to rest – shhhh), because parenting is no walk in the park.

The times we live in today are very different from yesterday. Whatever reasons (be it financial, inadequate childcare or a desire to be there) a family may choose in having a SAHD, no doubt it is in the best interest of their family, and if it works for them, who am I to criticize?

Basically, an aquarium requires my being dedicated to weekly water changes, vacuuming the gravel, changing the filter media, pruning live plants, cleaning the glass, spending time observing my fish and keeping an eye on the water temperature and parameters. Sure, I can skip some of these steps, but if I want to have a thriving tank and healthy fish, each task deserves some regular attention and maintenance from me!

So my tank has been up and running smoothly for weeks, but the work is not over, it’s just beginning. This is no time for me to slack off and throw it into auto pilot because I can still run into problems. There may be times when I could have issues with my tank that may threaten the life of my fish, such as disease, or I could have something I’m currently dealing with now, snails. I hate snails. “Snails are like roaches” is what my local salesperson at the fish store says. Now, not every tank will have snails, but there is a chance if live plants are placed untreated into a tank, snails may be present. So, left untreated, I now spend a good amount of time plucking these suckers out of my tank and discarding them because they are a threat to my plants.

There are times, however, when I can’t stand to look at the darn thing and that’s when I have let too many days or weeks go by without giving my tank the needed care and maintenance. If the glass gets too much algae (high wattage from the lights) on it or if the water looks less than clean, I don’t even want to look at it, it’s almost non-existent. I see it, but I don’t. I won’t even bother feeding the fish because that will just add to the chaos in the tank. To me, it has lost its beauty and I’m no longer interested because I failed on maintenance.

Now, I’m a busy person and sometimes I just don’t have the time needed to take care of the maintenance as often as I would like, but I never let it get to a point where the tank is in danger. I find it necessary to have to make, and sometimes create, the time for maintenance in order to keep me interested and the tank free from disaster.

Where am I going with this? I was just thinking how relationships are like fish tanks. They need to be maintained, some things need to be changed, other things monitored, some things pruned and sometimes things, like snails, need to be removed for the overall health of the tank.

I’m just wondering what we do when problems arise in our relationships. Have we slacked on maintenance? Do we look the other way? Do we ignore the symptoms? Do we lose interest? Are we too tired to deal or are we quick to pluck these “snails” from our lives and make the necessary changes? Regular maintenance of your relationships, any relationship, is what will help it thrive into a thing of beauty. May you never be too tired or busy to maintain the fish tanks in your life.

PS – Here’s a link to small video of my fish tank. Okay one more.

Maybe parents want to be their kids friend and as long as they are not doing anything illegal, then some parents seem to tolerate unacceptable behavior. They are afraid to parent and set rules.

The article went on to say, and I love this thought, a “family should not be run as a democracy, as if the parents’ right to enforce rules were somehow dependent upon the children’s approval.”

It makes you think…..I would love to know your opinion on why, in some cases, the tables have turned.

Last night after my daughter and I finished reading to each other and it was time for her to go to bed, she went to look for her stuffed monkey, Max. Max gets around. He has been on car tips, vacations, airplanes, sleepovers, in fact, I’m almost sure he has more frequent flyer miles than any monkey I know. I’m sure at some point, we will need to get this monkey his own passport.

Well Sunday night, my daughter stayed at her aunt’s house and of course, Max went with her. Well guess what? Max did not come home last night, he must be out there monkeying around. (In my mind: Uh Oh!) My sister does not live around the corner anymore, she’s an hour away, round trip, on one of New Jerseys most suicidal highways, Route 22! There are so many things going through my mind because I really don’t want to make the trip, so I tell her that we will get him and not to worry. Now, I’m waiting to exhale because in my mind, I’m thinking the weekend.

“But I’ve never slept without Max before. What if he’s being elbowed and rolled on.” she says.

Bomb drop! I already know what I have to do.

I call my sister. I can’t ask her to put Max on the phone to ask him if he’s alright, so I tell her that Victoria left her monkey and to please put him in a safe place. She sympathizes and asks to speak to her assuring her that Max would not be hurt.

After I hung up the phone, I say I can’t believe I’m actually going to drive that long way to pick up a monkey. This makes her laugh a little and we pick out surrogate stuffed animal to fill in for Max.

The things you do for your kid(s). I don’t know what I’m smoking, but I do know what I will be drinking, after we get back, of course.

*I’m a non-smoker, guess I just like my lungs pink!
Proofreading by Maxine, the Editor

EDIT 10/11/07 here’s a picture of Max:

Gee, I don’t know how this translation got lost over time, but this is not The American Dream most people are familiar with. The American Dream is a house, a lot of money, a nice car and another nice car, a spouse, 2.5 kids all enclosed in a white picket fence and a dog. Sadly, this is what many Americans are in pursuit of. Not too many people are thinking of social order and equality. It’s the “I Gotta Get Mine Syndrome”, the appearance of “I’m doing well” or “Look at me, I made it”, regardless of what it really costs.

Take for example, a home. One of my favorite financial guru’s always says, a home can either be a curse or a blessing. If you don’t have the money to maintain a home, it will be a curse. If you save your money, put a 20% down payment, then it should be blessing.

The American Dream sounds good, but in reality, that’s all it is, a dream. It may even be somebody else’s dream. I’m certainly not buying into what people think I should have. All of those things mentioned above is great. Everyone deserves their own home, nice things, a great salary, but not at the expense of self-destruction. Have a seat, think about what YOU really want and then go for it, but not before calculating the costs.

A quote from a magazine I read: “The more we want to do something (fill in the blank) the more likely we are to make unchecked assumptions and pay attention only to the data that tells us what we want to hear.”

My dream is to be debt free before the end of ’07.

Recommended Reading:
Cashing in on the American Dream
BLACK WALLSTREET – A Lost Dream