I've been wondering recently why some things our parents teach us stay with us in dramatic ways while others fall by the wayside. (Note: Mom and Dad, if you are reading this, know this is by no means a critique of your instructional or parental abilities, only an assessment of my rate of absorption. I love you guys.)
My parents taught me a lot of things. They taught me to eat healthily (including to eat whole wheat bread, to limit soda drinking, and to reserve sugar cereal for special occasions). They taught me to be polite when I was someone's guest, not to use foul language and to always write thank you notes. And they taught me about a billion other things which are too numerous to list here, some of which I'm probably not even aware that they taught me.
Now, here I am, approaching 30 years old, and I can offer the following assessment of my life: I hate whole wheat bread. I do buy it and eat it because my husband (brainwashed into believing in its unique wholesomeness by his parents) demands that we have it. But I complain about it regularly, and know that if I lived on my own, it would be wonderbread and sourdough all the way. I do drink soda, a lot (diet now, I'm getting old you know), and I buy sugar cereal on non-celebratory occasions. I use foul language (although we've instituted an imaginary swear jar in our household to curb this socially-problematic habit. At this point I imaginarily owe $764, mostly due to my repeated failure to conquer Super Mario Bros Wii Level 8 Castle.)
But, I CANNOT receive ANYTHING of ANY value from ANYONE EVER without writing a thank you note. I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about lists of people to whom I should write thank you notes. I worry about whether I should write thank you notes in response to gifts that were thank you gifts to me. I write notes to my immediate family and to close friends who, on some occasions, have asked me to please not write them so many thank you notes because it is weird and guilt-inducing. I write some people several notes in one week, and I write thank you notes for things that were other people's jobs to do. I cannot stop.
Which makes me wonder: Why is this the thing that stuck? Why was this aspect of my parents' teaching so influential while some other things clearly backfired in the overall scheme of forming a future person? What is the substance of things parented that makes it stick?
NICE post. I WISH thank you notes is what had stuck with me...I owe the same amount of thank you's written......as you owe in the anti-swear jar. Truly. SO. "thank you, Liz" for writing about this subject I need work on. Nice wording there....you probably know a lot of things you're not aware they even taught you. True for all of us. Your parents, though, ARE pretty sensational and fabulous, unique, and a bit rare.... They are gems.
ReplyDeleteI think you suffer from an over-abundance of gratitude. It's not a problem. It's a revolution waiting to happen! I have never been a big thank-you note person, but I have started to be and I enjoy it. It forces me to really sit and think about the trouble the other person went to on my behalf. I can relate to the thank-you notes for thank-you gifts condundrum. I have trouble with that one too, so it made me laugh when I read that. :)
ReplyDeleteHaving been on the receiving end of several of your notes, I plead with you to keep writing them. They are such a gift, and I save them for the longest time. In fact, if I get up right now to examine my refrigerator, I can find two, actually (one complete with a gift certificate to a garden store - that's really nice, too).
ReplyDeleteSo consider this 4-second, typed-out blog comment as a virtual thank you for all of your hand-written, lovingly addressed, postage-stamped pieces of thoughtfulness.
A fair deal, I'd say.