the good and the bad

Someone recently asked me what I thought about authenticity, in the context of how the unschooling life is depicted online. I think there is, in human nature, a tendency to depict ourselves in ways that promote the wonderfulness of our chosen life. We all want to look capable and successful. We want privacy for our flaws and foibles. We naturally feel a desire to protect our less-than-wonderful moments from the harsh judgment of others.

When we're talking about and encouraging others to understand what we love, like unschooling, it's easy to share the good and triumphant moments, and we're understandably reluctant to share the rough moments. I've always felt that's unfair to others, because sharing only from our good file can make whatever we're doing look unattainable to anyone who is slogging through the trenches. People new to unschooling sometimes reply that our kids must be easier to live with, which is unfair to their kids and ours. Some days we're all in the trenches, so it's not even fair to ourselves to pretty it up all the time.

When I share the difficult moments, I do my best to do it in ways that don't malign Gary or the boys. I don't always share everything, because as a mom, I feel a responsibility to respect my sons' privacy. The same is true for my relationship with Gary. Just like I don't complain about his flaws (no, it's not just because he's perfect), I also respect the privacy of our more personal conversations.

I don't share any bad on the family blog, and not a lot here either. I'm thinking that's about to change -- at least on this blog. The family blog address has been shared with the grandparents, and I'd rather not share my bad days with them, thankyouverymuch.

Whether I'm posting in an online unschooling forum, or talking in person with other unschoolers, when I share the things that make me look bad or petty, it's because I want to be called to task, to be reminded of my higher standards and goals. I don't want someone to tell me it's okay that I'm falling short, that my kids will forgive me or that we all fail sometimes. Still, it helps me to know that everyone fails sometimes -- not to excuse my failures and mistakes, but to let me know perfection isn't required and that I can keep trying, even when everything has me feeling like I should just give up.

I think the risk of sharing only good, happy moments is that people can become ashamed of their own ugly moments, which can result in not sharing the bad, and what's never given the light of day can't be improved. It becomes just more secret-keeping, which is crazy-making for kids. All this said, I still struggle with it today - how to keep my kids safe from prying eyes, (I'm reluctant to share my kids' bad moments because I don't want those moments to define them forever) while being honest with myself and my kids, and finding answers to our struggles -- all without ever really detailing for someone else all of our struggles... it can become a vicious cycle that increases shame.

Sometimes I need a good kick in the pants, and I count on my friends to do that for me. I've read the argument that posting about our shortcomings and failures won't help people to come to unschooling/peaceful parenting faster. Some people apparently feel that talking about failing for a moment (or several) gives the impression it's okay to be unkind to your kid or partner when you're having a bad moment/day; that if we admit that even long-time unschoolers sometimes yell at their kids (I know I do on occasion, when I'm overwhelmed) we set the standard too low. So ugly moments are seldom shared, which can leave some feeling that 'real' unschoolers never have ugly moments. Trust me, we all have them.

And maybe, I'll be sharing some of them here, when I'm feeling the need for a good kick in the pants... Now, tho, I'm off to find online info about the James May's life-sized lego house.

To ask or not to ask, and for what?

It seems everywhere I look these days, unschoolers are either embracing the law of attraction (loa), or completely refuting it. Over the past few years, I've wondered about the loa.

I have a long history with the loa, and for many years it made complete sense to me, in the way it was presented as part of Christian Science. Since leaving the church in 2002 (after spending most of my life with that as my only religious practice), I've thought about the loa a lot, wondering how much of it I could keep while growing out of the rest of the package. In my days as a religious person, I really liked the loa, and giving it up was scary. It appealed to me as a promise that if I just *knew* the right truths, and incorporated them into my life, I'd manifest only good. Of course it wasn't that simple -- no philosophy practiced in everyday life ever is.

An early question for me was whether or not I believe it is actually possible to 'manifest' or call things into my experience. I've seen many instances where, even today, I absolutely believe I have 'called' things into my experience. I've seen healings of physical conditions (really, I can't call them anything else). I've also seen physical conditions unhealed, despite the same fervency of prayerful reliance on God.

People quoted and recommended books, and I read a few of them -- The Law Of Attraction, The Power of Now, You Can Heal Your Life. I found that each book offered some things I thought were helpful to me, but none of them really spoke to me in whole.

The idea that you can simply ask the universe and it will provide what you want -- fabulous wealth, physical health, the job of your dreams, etc -- is attractive in its own right. I was open to the possibility that there might be something to this, but still hesitant, having seen too many moments when the loa seemed not to work for some people.

All the books I read hinted that anyone not experiencing all good in his/her life just wasn't trying hard enough. None of them come out and say it, but the overall gist seems to be 'if you're not manifesting everything you want, you're just not trying hard enough", or maybe "you're asking for the wrong things for you" (maybe having enough money isn't everyone's right thing, I guess?). Does this mean that not everyone can expect goodness to come to them in the same way it came to someone else? Why not? Why can't the loa -- if it's as all powerful as its proponents suggest -- simply manifest more stuff for more people, in an endless supply of stuff? Could it be that life really does come with limitations? Ah! If that's the case, then one person's abundance might well come at the expense of others who won't be able to attract wealth because others got there first.

I understand the reason I so much wanted to believe the loa during my religious years, and why I wanted to find some way to believe it works in the years since, too. I like guarantees. Plain and simple. I like to be able to trust that if I do all the right things, things will be okay; that I don't need to be afraid. And, hey, a handy list of all the right steps gives me the power to control my experience, and I'm all about control. Those are just my reasons, tho -- I can't speak for anyone else's reasons for believing in the law of attraction.

My experiences also tells me it's not as easy as just asking and receiving. It's no secret to anyone who knows me that I wanted a daughter. It wasn't that I didn't want boys, just that I always expected that someday there'd be a little girl in my home. If it were simply a matter of asking and receiving, I'd definitely be the mother of a daughter or two. I'm not the mom of a daughter, tho. I have three magnificent sons, whom I love completely -- and I'd not trade any of them for a girl. I don't believe there was a was a particular purpose in all my children being boys. It just happened that way. I can assign a purpose to it if I want, but even that conveys some kind of qualifier that makes it okay that I didn't get what I asked for. I'd much rather see my sons' presence in my life as pure love and joy, so I'm doing all I can to take joy in the life I have today, and to not dwell on the things I don't have.

After all the reading and exploring and thinking, where I am today is a meeting of expectancy and pragmatism, I think. Here it is:

Life is unfair. Things happen -- some of them seem good, some seem bad. It's not because I was carelessly thinking about the right or wrong thing, or because I asked for the wrong things, or because I didn't pray/hope hard enough. When bad things happen, there's no inherent purpose in them. The can only have the purpose/s I assign to them. And, really, why would I want to assign power and purpose to bad things? I'd rather assign purpose and power to my response to those bad things.

So, when something bad happens, I have a couple of choices. I can surrender and let them win (never my first choice), or I can ask questions and make what I feel are my best decisions, those most likely to serve me and my family. I can respond lovingly, kindly, and with an expectancy of good. I can strive to be fair to everyone, keeping in mind that I cannot possibly know what the right path is for anyone but myself. I can trust that everyone's motives are good and that we are all, every moment, doing the very best we can with what we have and what we know.

When good things happen, I'll enjoy them, expecting that good will continue -- or at least that I'll manage to find the good in my life, no matter what's going on around me. I'm not comfortable taking credit for any good that doesn't result from actual steps taken by me, just as I won't take blame for any bad that happens despite my best efforts.

Maybe Shakespeare was right when he wrote, "Nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." Which brings me back to the whole idea of assigning purpose and value to events as they happen. If that's the case, all I can do is try to stay in a mindset of expectancy of good, hopeful that things will all work out for the best, remembering I have no real idea of what the best might look like for anyone else.

After all, if I have no idea what's really good or bad, how will I know what to ask for?

And if I don't know what to ask for, how will I know when *it* has arrived?