Tag Archives: support

The not-so-normal path ahead for young adults

It’s challenging to look ahead these days and try and imagine what the new normal will be?

My youngest daughter is in Grade 12. In a month and a half she was supposed to have a lead part in her spring musical. I don’t think that will happen as we imagined it would. Next up for her is graduation. Will the dinner/dance happen? Will she cross the stage with her peers? Will parents be invited?

Imagine being in senior year of NCAA basketball and you are a starter. You aren’t good enough for the NBA, so this is your final season playing for huge audiences, and your season is cut short because of a virus?

In the grand scheme of things these might seem like trifle thoughts compared to exhausted health care workers, or people on ventilators and their concerned family members. But to a young adult this is a crushing blow to their plans and aspirations.

The new normal ahead is not one that will be kind to young adults in our community. Let’s remember this when they get restless and feel down. Let’s remember this when they are connecting with friends digitally. Let’s remember this when they join us in talking about the challenges ahead.

Everything we do to bring normalcy to the coming weeks will still be far from normal, and not all young adults are ready to cope with that. Let’s try to be helpful and supportive of them.

Hurt people hurt people

I have a sticky note on my computer monitor at school that says,

“Hurt people hurt people.

Healed people heal people.”

As a principal, I think it’s important to remember that those who harm others have themselves often been harmed. This helps me focus on resolution and restoration rather than retribution.

It’s harder to remember this with adults who harm, adults who have been hurt, and leave a path of hurt in their trail. I remember years ago, when I was a middle school teacher, dealing with a hurt parent. In a meeting, this parent used language in front of their kid like, ‘he’s useless’, and ‘I’ve given up trying’. The student sat motionless, staring blindly ahead, trying to keep the tears away. Nothing I said about his endearing qualities changed his empty look any more than his parent’s insults.

Hurt people hurt people.

It has been my observation that hurt people seek out other hurt people. They do so to continue the hurt, or to try to heal the the hurt they see. However those who are hurt and want to help lack the resilience to cope, and they lack the strategies to heal. Good intentions are devoured by ineffective strategies.

Healed people heal people.

I think people need to heal themselves before they try to heal others. This is easy to see in situations such as alcoholism. We know a recovering alcoholic can do far more to help an alcoholic quit than another alcoholic can. It’s much harder to see with someone who feels like a victim trying to help someone else who was victimized, or with someone who is dealing with mental health issues trying to help someone else struggling with mental health.

The people who are struggling and seeking to help are not healed themselves, but believe they can help others when they should be helping themselves first. Their intentions are good. They want to help, but when they can’t cope with their own hurt, it’s hard to honestly help with others.

“Hurt people hurt people.

Healed people heal people.”

In some ways we are all on journeys of healing. And many of us want to help others heal too. It’s just important for us to work on our own healing before trying to heal others.

______________________

Related: Hidden Pain on my Pair-a-Dimes blog.

Surface tension

Have you ever seen a water balloon being popped in slow motion? The ballon is punctured and shrinks to its pre-blown up size leaving, for a brief moment, the water in the shape of the balloon.

After the balloon is gone, surface tension holds the shape, keeping the memory of the ballon even if for the briefest moment, only visible in slow motion.

How many places in our life do we let surface tension linger?

A frustrating tone is shared, and instead of a calm response, surface tension lingers and frustration is returned.

Concern. Anger. Greed. Envy. Distraught. These are all things that can hold surface tension. They can keep their shape even when there is nothing left to hold them in place.

It’s easy to see on the outside, when others are holding on to it. It’s hard to see on the inside, when the tension is on our surface.

We can try to keep the tension or we can help it dissipate. A pause and a deep breath can help. But trying to fix things doesn’t always help. You can’t stretch a popped balloon back around the water ballon. You can help to catch the falling water.

Our reactions can keep surface tension, or they can let that tension go.

Staying ‘on brand’ while being digitally present

A few months ago, I shared a link on Twitter to an article about James Fridman’s Twitter Account. People send James photos to Photoshop and he changes the photos in entertaining ways. Like this:

And like this:

But the ‘Featured Image’ on the post I shared was of a girl in a bathing suit who James had done one of these photoshop requests for. I shared it and then I got a Direct Message from someone in my community that I respect, who said she was surprised that I would share something like this. In all honesty, I didn’t think much of it, so I looked at the tweet again and thought two things. First, that it wasn’t a big deal that I shared a photo of someone in a bathing suit because this was about photoshop humour. Then I thought, ‘Would I share this photo on its own if it wasn’t for the article going with it?’… and I realized I wouldn’t. So, I deleted the tweet and shared one specific tweet that highlighted James’ humour, like the two tweets above.

Yesterday, I got a phone call from my sister about one of my Daily Ink blog posts. She said to me that while she understood the point I was trying to make, I came off as a bit full of myself in an unflattering way. She was right. That wasn’t my intent, but I could totally see how it could be interpreted that way. I went back to the post and made some minor changes, which I think changed the tone of the post to one that was more about my intention as opposed to mistaken interpretation.

I share a lot online. If you were to look at 100 of my blog posts, here on Daily Ink, or on my Pair-a-Dimes educational blog, or if your chose to read 100 of my tweets, I think you could learn a lot about me. I think you could get a good sense for my character, what I stand for, and what kind of a person I am. However, if you chose to judge me on my worst blog post or my worst Tweet, well then I’m sure I wouldn’t look so good. I recognize that, and I’m happy to take a look at my worst blog posts and tweets, and change or delete them. That said, I know more will come later. If I’m going to share as much as I do, I’m going to occasionally share something ‘off brand’, something that doesn’t generally fit with my identity or at least my digital identity.

I touched on this a bit in my post, Ideas on a Spectrum, where I noted that there seems to be a culture of attacking a person based on not liking their opinion or a statement they share online. I on the other hand am fortunate to have people around me that are respectful and thoughtful. The person who sent me a Direct Message about my tweet could have said something in a reply, in a public setting, to me but instead chose to send me a private message. My sister could have thought, ‘Well, that’s not like Dave’ and then let it pass by, but she gave me a call and said, “I know this isn’t what you intended, but you should know that this is how I read it.”

Public comments can help too. I really appreciated Stephen Downes helping me identify the context of a meme that I shared as my photo to go with a post. See Once upon a meme where I discussed this. Stephen said in a comment that he wouldn’t be comfortable using the meme and named the meme so that it would be easy for me to find information about it. He gave me what I needed to be informed in a pubic, but very respectable way.

These are people I want in my lives. People who know me, or I guess you could also say, ‘know my brand’, and who help me stay on course. I’ll make mistakes, and because I share a lot digitally, I’ll be making those mistakes in public. I appreciate having a community that recognize that mistakes are mistakes, and who are willing to help me.