Comfy v. constructive

Three cheers for parents who help nurture in their kids a longing for a constructive, rather than simply comfortable, life!!! Who help their children - of any age - learn how to recognize harmful habits AND turn them around.  Who serve as role models in keeping at a task & who teach - through word & action - that every time we choose & do something that counters lousy habits it leaves an imprint on our brain, so keep moving forward in the better direction, even after a stumble or fall.  Who teach their family that being able to identify the positive & constructive only matters when we have the grit & persistence to make it our own.

Kids raised with those messages, with parents & other adults who model them in real life, have an unimaginable advantage in life.  

 

I don't know how those two words - positive & constructive - came to have such importance to me.  At home & in church & in the parochial schools I attended, the goal was to "see the good," which I interpreted as see ONLY the good.  

To this day, I don't know if that's the message my church & schools intended.  Am absolutely sure "see only the good" was what Mom meant. Time & again, her life would be thrown into chaos because of not being able to simply see what was right in front of her, all of it, good & bad & beyond awful. 

Somehow, "see only the good" got bent into "avoid the harsh, the uncomfortable, the uneasy."  For me, the baby in the family, that evolved into "don't attempt more than you can comfortably achieve."  

Strangely, that didn't set well with me.  Many a time, in elementary school & high school, I'd rail at Mom for offering excuses for my poor performance.  I was never urged to work harder, more effectively, from a clearer focus, with a deeper appreciation of what the teacher was seeking.  And I was too lazy to know & do that for myself.  

Three cheers for parents who get across to their kids that grunt work & slogging through difficult, tough parts are natural parts of getting from one place to a better one.  Who teach their children the importance of first knowing what you don't want to do, then what you do, then how to do it, then doing it.  All the ways, from start to finish.  Who let them know that being comfy is fine when it's a break or the reward at the end of a completed effort, but never in place of rolling up sleeves, knowing the best next step, then taking it.