Expectations

Yesterday, someone said to me, "It is easy to speak kindly to the children, but not so easy with other adults." I agreed totally. I would much rather speak to children than to the adults. Why is that?

This morning it occurred to me that my ease with children is based on the fact that I do not expect them to behave in a particular way. I expect adults to know better, to accept responsibility. To act with integrity. I do not necessarily expect this from children because they have not learned all the rules yet. And I think I probably hold the parents responsible for teaching them.

We are all children to some degree, but maybe some of us learn different lessons. I learned that you do not let other people down. When I wanted to quit Guides after only a few months, I received a very stern lesson on the importance of thinking about other people. This was reinforced when I did not want to finish a meal --"think of all the starving children in Africa." In some strange way I was responsible for their life situation.

But I also watched for years as one teenager, young adult could leave a family dinner table, with seconds uneaten on the plate, and there was no expectation to help with clean up or even to say thank you.

Even as I write, I sense the disdain I have for people who do not look for opportunity to support others. But I also see how all the years of being raised as I was contributed to my sense of responsibility to others - even over and above myself. But if I continually offer of myself, as I have been doing at work for the past month, I feel sick and unhappy. I sense my fatigue and general with drawl from my own life. I am not grounded, making conscious choices, I am reactionary.

Can I remember that we are all the product of our life experiences and some we had no choice in?
Can I remember that balance in giving and receiving is essential to happiness?
Can I then hold myself and others with more compassion?