Happy or good? How about both?

Lately, I've received compliments about my children, and what *good* boys they are.  It always makes me feel a little uncomfortable, being given praise for something that wasn't even my goal.  It's not that I don't like that our boys are good people, or that I don't appreciate that they are typically kind, generous, patient, friendly, and so on.  But never did I consider it my *job* as a Mom to turn them into good people. I just assumed that they'd be good people.  Always, my goal has been to help them become happy people, peaceful people and, someday, loving gentle men.  Really, my first goal is that they be happy -- that we all be happy.  Because I value happiness. I also happen to believe that happy people ARE good people.  It's happiness that gives us that *filled up full place* from which we can share goodness.

Part of why I feel awkward receiving such compliments is that I feel like I didn't really DO all that much to turn them into nice people.  At least not much in the traditional sense.  We don't punish our kids; we don't insist that they do something now; there are no set bedtimes or arbitrary rules just for kids. We've never required them to say thank you or please; there are no *magic* words here.

When Andy told me someone asked him how he *became so obedient*, my first thought was that I abhor the very idea of obedience for either children or adults. Obedient people worry me, because the word obedience implies not only that one does what one is told, but that she or he does it even when -- especially when -- it goes against his or her own instincts. If the only reason one has for being honest, friendly or helpful is fear of punishment for not being obedient, where is that person's innate sense of what's loving?  What inner sense, aside from fear of punishment, guides him?  Certainly someone whose only reason for being good is because his parents require obedience (to whom? God? the parents? the law of the land?) isn't a good resource in those moments when there's no rule book, when a situation or a relationship calls for creative solutions.  And for me life is all about relationships and creative solutions.

I grew up hearing that happiness and pleasure weren't acceptable goals. Doing what made one happy was *hedonism* (one of my Dad's favorite slurs to throw around then).  For the record, hedonism is defined as "the doctrine that pleasure or happiness is the highest good".  I always wanted to ask why a desire to be happy was bad, but it was clear that just asking that question would have exposed me as a bad person.  Why does our culture elevate obedience and goodness above happiness? Do people really believe that happiness and goodness are mutually exclusive?  Or do some people believe that obedience will bring us happiness? You know, once we make our peace with being obedient to rules that make no sense to us.

I remember hearing often that parents need to teach children to be good, the idea being that letting children have too much of what makes them happy spoils them, and they'll turn out to be selfish, bad people.  Or maybe more accurately, that if people aren't forced to be obedient, they'll never learn to be good.  I believe that we all start out good, and what our society so often desires from children (and from adults, too) is not obedience, but cooperation, consideration, compassion.  Because we've been conditioned to think that cooperation is unnatural, we believe that obedience is the path to cooperation. Experience tells me that happy people are naturally cooperative; children whose needs are met have the emotional space to cooperate, to think of the feelings of other people, to share.  Children whose needs are met become adults who know how to get their needs met, which is more likely to make for happy adults whose cups are full enough to be considerate, compassionate and cooperative themselves.

When I became an adult, and later a Mom, being happy topped my list of goals.  I wanted to be a happy person, to have happy children who would become happy (and maybe undamaged?) adults.  Often, when  people learn that we let our children do what they want, eat what they want (or not eat what they don't want), sleep when and where they want, that I carried them when they were tired (long after they could walk), that I bring them food when they're hungry (rather than making them wait until mealtime or insisting they come to the table), there are admonitions --  that they'll be spoiled, and think only of themselves; that they won't learn how to do for themselves or others.

Happy people are kind, patient, gentle, generous and cooperative.  I think happy people are all those things because being happy is easy, it's not exhausting, doesn't demand extra time or energy.  Being told you must do all the things on some list IS exhausting. When someone makes a list that implies you'd not figure this out on your own.  Exhausted people, with unmet needs, don't have the energy to reach out to others, to be kind or to care what anyone else is doing, how they feel or what they need.  Tired, stressed people are too busy trying to be sure they're "good enough" to have anything to share with anyone else.

Often, in children, happiness and cooperation look like obedience or a sign of a good upbringing.  Really, it's just the result of being happy people who live consensually, who are heard and honored and whose needs are consistently met. If that happiness results in them being good children, that's bonus in my book.