"Do the best you can until you know better. Then, when you know better, do better.” -Maya Angelou
My son learned to play chess in middle school and naturally took to it. Back in 2017 he tried to teach me how to play, but I didn’t really want to learn at that point. And for anyone who has ever learned chess, you know it is way too challenging to learn if one doesn’t want to! Plus, I was still shoulder deep in the most intense period of personal work in my life. I simply didn’t have the bandwidth to take on learning chess.
I did like playing checkers though, so I painted a checker board on the drop down table on the inside of Hella’s back door. The kids and I played many a game of checkers on it when weather was good and we were hanging out together. A couple years ago I got a bee in my bonnet to revisit chess. I bought a cheap set of chess pieces and surprised Talon with them on one of our hangouts in Seattle a couple summers ago. He lit up like a Christmas tree at the sight of them and was thrilled to resume teaching me. It felt great! The challenge of learning the game is real though! It takes loss after loss after loss simply to become a competent beginner. Plus, up until he moved to San Francisco, I would only see him during the summer months when I’d be in Seattle. So, we’d get to play maybe 8 times a year at that rate. I’m currently in San Francisco and get to see him a time or two a week. We generally play at least once every three weeks or so. Sometimes more often and sometimes longer between. Anyway, he is so good at the game that I’ve only beaten him once before yesterday! He was pretty tipsy the time I beat him over a year ago, so that one didn’t really count in my book. But, yesterday I beat him straight up and it was such an amazing feeling! At the end of the day when we were saying our goodnights, I thanked him for the day and the game we had played. He graciously congratulated me on winning the match and without even thinking I responded by saying it was a ‘fluke’ that I had won. That ancient voice of shame just popped right out of me and past my awareness. Here’s where it gets amazing though! Without missing a beat he came back with a firm response of, “Don’t say that, you beat me fair and square. It was not a fluke, you simply out maneuvered me and won.” At the moment I accepted that and hugged and thanked him.
Twenty minutes later I was getting groceries before parking for the night when it hit me hard what he had done. Without having to think about it he saw what I was doing subconsciously and pointed it out to me in a loving and affirming way. He did for me what I have done for him for years. With ease and grace he swatted away the shame that was not mine to begin with and affirmed my worthiness. What is astounding about this is that he and I have had rather parallel paths through similar issues over the last ten years. We have walked and grown through them in very different ways. Yet here we are, both having reached a level of empathy and self-awareness that allows us to extend that sense to those around us. It’s profound to me in so many ways how far my children have come in the last decade. I’ll be the first to admit I could have done a better job as a parent when they were kids. I think just about any parent likely feels that way when their kids are grown and on their own. As we age, hindsight and life experience serve up plenty of perspective on the job we did as parents. I am proud that Pamela and I broke several chains of abuse and neglect that we had experienced as kids. In contrast, our children were protected, loved and cherished, never abused, afraid, belittled, cold or hungry. They were and are, everything to us and will forever be our priority people.
I’d have to say that one of the most profound experiences a parent can have is when their adult child lovingly points something out to the parent that the parent themselves has spent their lifetime instilling in them. To unexpectedly see it in action is stunning and so deeply moving.
It is so true that as we know better we can do better. There is much I could have done better as a dad, but there is also much I did well. It is vitally important to forgive yourself and others so you can invest your energy in stretching and growing. Nobody is a failure who learns from their mistakes and the school of life is never out. Beautiful moments will come along to affirm your growth as you actively strive to do better. And it is most often those closest to us who reflect the state of our true selves in how they interact with us.
