Pull Ups

Standing in line with a child is often stressful.  They don't want to be there, and they do lots of things to show that displeasure, such as grabbing candy off the shelves or screaming.  Zane has reached the age where he has more patience for standing in line.  He passes the time by looking around him and asking questions.  Lots. Of. Questions.  I don't mind his questions, because what else is there to do while you're standing in line?

The other day we were in line at Walgreens when two people in front of us began a conversation in Spanish.  There is a large Hispanic population in this part of Texas, and not everyone is able to speak English.  These sorts of conversations happen so often around me that I don't even notice anymore.  I tend to tune them out. My son hasn't had quite enough exposure to the world. 

"Mama, what are those people saying?" he asked.

"I don't know, son." I had to answer.  "They are speaking Spanish, which is another language."

"Why don't you speak Spanish?" Zane seemed completely flabbergasted by the idea that his mother might not know everything.  

"Because I am not smart enough to learn another language," I responded absentmindedly. I was thinking about the next errand on my to-do list, and that was when a voice startled me.

"Don't ever say that you're not smart enough!"  I turned to find the woman behind us in line giving me a hard look. She looked very stern. "You're smart enough to do anything that you want to do."

She was bigger than me, and I wasn't sure what would happen if I disagreed.  So I smiled, nodded, and said that I agreed with her. Thankfully, it was our turn to pay at the register.

But I thought very hard about what she said for the rest of the day.

If someone told me that I wasn't good enough or smart enough, my shields would go up faster than Captain Kirk could say 'Red Alert'.  I would be angry.  I would be right up in someone's face if they said I wasn't smart enough, glaring and belligerent, and tell them what they could do with their insults and put downs. I would under no circumstances put up with such rude behavior.

So why do I put up with it from myself?  Why do I make self-deprecating remarks all the time?  Thinking about it, I make at least one such statement a day, if not more.  Why?  To put people at ease?  To make people think that I'm not as scary as they've heard?

It's not just me; I hear woman saying bad things about themselves every day. It's as though we've been conditioned to put ourselves down, and maybe we have been.  Pay a woman a compliment, and nine times out of ten, she will argue with you about it, downplaying her skills and her accomplishments.  Oh, this is nothing, she'll say.

Women get rewarded for behaving that way, so they think it's acceptable. It's supposed to show that you're  humble?  You never hear men putting themselves down.  Why is that?  It's time to cultivate a new habit. Instead of putting myself down, I will pull myself up.  As soon as I hear something negative coming out of my mouth, I will turn it into something positive. Maybe after I hear it a few times, I'll start to believe it.  Because it is true:

I am smart enough to do anything that I want to do.

Late Night Musings

When I was a kid, I thought that I could reach up into the sky and touch lightning.  Whenever there was a thunderstorm, I thought I could step outside, throw my arms out and embrace the power from the sky.  I had no inkling about electrical currents and voltage at the time--I just wanted to touch lightning, and I thought that I could. That was all there was to it.  With that kind of belief in yourself, you can conquer anything that comes along in life.  Kids thrive on that belief, as long as they know that their parents have that belief as well.  As long as someone believes in them, they thrive, even under the most horrific of circumstances.  

I don't know when that feeling of being powerful enough to hold onto pure electricity disappeared.  It just wasn't there anymore one day.  Maybe it was hearing my dad tell me that I wasn't intelligent, maybe it was all the moving around we did, maybe it was being teased by other kids because I didn't fit in somewhere, or maybe it was just my trust in myself that disappeared.  For whatever reason, at some point I stopped trusting that I could handle all the tribulations of life.  That's when I became afraid of the thunderstorms, and afraid of lightning. 

Every now and then I try to recapture that sense, that almost sacred feeling, right down to the marrow of your bones, that all you have to do is want and it can happen.  I know that I came as close as possible to that feeling when my son came into the world.  I intend to do all I can to make sure that he knows this feeling of power/confidence in himself.  And I hope that he keeps it with him his whole life.