difficultrun.nathanielgivens.comDifficult Run – I had another dream, I had another life

Difficult Run I had another dream, I had another life Menu About Difficult Run The DR Editors The DR Book Collection The DR Taglines Advertising on DR The DR Comment Policy Contact Topics Arts Humor Politics Religion Review Society Technology Tell Your Children When You’re Wrong September 7, 2022 by Nathaniel By @kellysikkema via Unsplash In one of the most poignant scenes from The Adam Project, Ryan Reynold’s character meets Jennifer Garner’s character by chance in a bar. Garner is Reynold’s mom, but she doesn’t recognize him because he has time-traveled into the past. He overhears her talking to the bartender about the difficulties she’s having with her son (Reynold’s younger self) in the wake of her husband’s death. Reynolds interjects to comfort his mom (which is tricky, since he’s a total stranger, as far as she knows). If this is hard to follow, just watch the clip . It’s less than three minutes long. The line that really stuck with me from this was Reynolds telling Garner, the problem with acting like you have it all together is he believes it.” When I talked about this scene with Liz and Carl and Ben for a recent episode of Pop Culture on the Apricot Tree , I realized that there’s an important connection between this line and apologizing to our kids. And it’s probably not the reason you’re thinking. The reason you’re thinking has to do with demonstrating to our kids how they should react to making a bad choice. This is also a good reason to apologize to your children. Admitting mistakes is hard. Guilt doesn’t feel good, and it takes practice to handle it positively. You don’t want to allow healthy guilt to turn into unhealthy shame (going from I did bad” to I am bad”). And you don’t want to allow the pain of guilt to cause you to lash out even more, like a wounded animal defending itself when there’s no threat. So yeah, apologize to your kids for your mistakes so they know how to apologize for theirs. And, while we’re on the subject, don’t assume that apologizing to your kids will undermine your authority as a parent. It is important for parents to have authority. Your job is to keep your kids safe and teach them. This only works if you’re willing to set rules they don’t want to follow and teach lessons they don’t want to learn. That requires authority. But the authority should come from the fact that you love them and know more than they do. Or, in the words of the Lord to Joseph Smith, authority should only be maintained by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned; By kindness, and pure knowledge” ( D&C 121:41-42 ). If your authority comes from kindness and knowledge, then it will never be threatened by apologizing in those cases when you get it wrong. In fact, this takes us to that second reason. The one I don’t think as many folks have thought of. And it’s this: admitting that you made a mistake is an important way of showing your kids how hard you’re trying and, by extension, demonstrating your love for them. The only way to never make a mistake is to never push yourself. Only by operating well within your capabilities can you have a flawless record over the long run. Think about an elite performer like an Olympic gymnast or figure skater. They are always chasing perfection, rarely finding it, and that’s in events that are very short (from a few minutes to a few seconds). If you saw a gymnast doing a flawless, 30-minute routine every day for a month you would know that that routine was very, very easy (for them, at least). You can’t tell if someone makes mistakes because they’re at the limits of their capacity or just careless. But if someone never makes mistakes, then you know that whatever they are doing isn’t much of a challenge. So what does that tell your kid if you never apologize? In effect, it tells them that you have it all together. That, for you at least, parenting is easy. That’s not the worst message in the world, but it’s not a great one either. Not only is it setting them up for a world of hurt when they become parents one day, but you’re missing an opportunity to tell them the truth: that parenting is the hardest thing you’ve ever done, and you’re doing it for them . Don’t take this too far. You don’t want to weigh your kids down with every worry and fear and stress you have. You don’t want to tell them every day how hard your job is. That’s a weight no child should carry. But it’s OK to let them know—sparingly, from time to time—that being a parent is really hard. What better, healthier way to convey that than to frankly admit when you make a mistake? The problem with acting like you have it all together is he believes it. Maybe he needs to know that you don’t. It’s OK if you don’t.” Share this: Facebook Twitter Reddit Email Categories Personal , Religion 1 Comment Anti-Provincial Provincialism and Fighting Monsters April 12, 2022 by Nathaniel Part 1: Anti-Americanism Americanism I ran across a humorous meme in a Facebook group that got me thinking about anti-provincial provincialism. Well, not the meme, but a response to it. Here’s the original meme: Now check out this (anonymized) response to it (and my response to them): What has to happen, I wondered, for someone to assert that English is the most common language only in the United States ? Well, they have to be operating from a kind of anti-Americanism that is so potent it has managed to swing all the way around back to being an extreme American centrism view again. After all, this person was so eager to take the US down a peg (I am assuming) that they managed to inadvertently erase the entire Anglosphere . The only people who exclude entire categories of countries from consideration are rabid America Firsters and rabid America Lasters. The commonality? They’re both only thinking about America. It is a strange feature of our times that so many folks seem to become the thing they claim to oppose. The horseshoe theory is having its day. The conversation got even stranger when someone else showed up to tell me that I’d misread the Wikipedia article that I’d linked. Full disclosure: I did double check this before I linked to it, but I still had an uh oh” moment when I read their comment. Wouldn’t be the first time I totally misread a table, even when specifically checking my work. Here’s the comment: Thankfully, dear reader, I did not have to type out the mea culpa I was already composing in my mind. Here’s the data (and a link ): My critic had decided to focus only on the first language (L1) category. The original point about most commonly spoken” made no such distinction. So why rely on it? Same reason, I surmise, as the only in the US” line of argument: to reflexively oppose anything with the appearance of American jingoism. Because we can all see that’s the subtext here, right? To claim that English is the most common language” when it is also the language (most) Americans speak is to appear to be making some of rah-rah ‘Murica statement. Except that… what happens if it’s just objectively true? And it is objectively true. English has the greatest number of total speakers in the world by a wide margin. Even more tellingly, the number of English 2L speakers outnumbers Chinees 2L speakers by more than 5-to-1. This means that when someone chooses a language to study, they pick English 5 times more often than Chinese. No matter how you slice it, the fact that English is the most common language is just a fact about the reality we currently inhabit. Not only that, but the connection of this fact to American chauvanism is historically ignorant. Not only is this a discussion about the English language and not the American one, but the linguistic prevalence of English predates the rise of America a great power. If you think millions of Indians conduct business in English because of America then you need to open a history book. The Brits started this stated of affairs back when the sun really did never set on their empire. We just...