Alan Shares ...
ServiceSpace
--Alan Zulch
2 minute read
May 3, 2011

 

My kids first and foremost look to the parents as role models, for everything, including growing in compassion and empathy.  My girls are now teenagers and continue to surprise me with how much they've absorbed – quietly, without conscious effort on our part as parents.  A few years ago. I've always gone to great lengths to rescue spiders and such from the house, and my daughters have always been completely afraid of them, but instead of following my wife's oft-example of, well, dispatching them in haste, both my girls instead put a cup over them and leave them in place for me to take care of later.  I always assumed they were saving them to humor me, rather than from their own compassion, until one time my younger daughter and I found a spider in a sink. We were in a hurry and I, in an impulsive moment of expediency, decided to wash it down the drain instead of taking it outside. My daughter and I watched in some horror as it struggled vainly to hold on for a second or two before disappearing. My daughter was horrified and began to cry, probably both for the spider and for her disappointment that her unwitting -- and very human -- role model failed her. I was mortified, and we spoke at some length afterwards. In that experience, I became more conscious in that moment about my inadvertent role modeling, the importance of consistency, and the fallibility of my self.  As a parent, I often think of Jung's quote: "It is better to be a real fragment than an unreal whole."  (Posted in a CF-cubs email thread)

 

Posted by Alan Zulch on May 3, 2011