Habits, Changes, Family and Power

It is spring. And with spring comes both expected and unexpected changes into our household.

The winter semester has ended and my children are scheduled to return home from college and university. Bedrooms that have been vacant for eight months – other than a “visit” at Xmas - are now being used again. With the use of the bedroom comes a delightful package of meals, laundry, television and apparently unlimited access to a computer in Dad’s office to check your email whenever you feel the need. Even if Dad has to get started writing for the day. Good deal.

When two or more of such beloved offspring return home within the same short span one’s household experiences changes. Changes in routine. Changes in habits.

Habits. Do you realize how important habits are to you? How integral they are to daily survival. How significant they are to your ability to accomplish what little you can in a day?

We need habits.

Oops - I talked about needs – you can see where I am going now….can’t you?

But let me finish…

To add to the subtle yet considerable change, is the steady maturation of a teenage son who, though he has never stopped living with us in 16 years, has changed the way he lives with us - quite a bit. He now stays up after we are in bed – doing whatever it is he does. He insists on having his allowance before Friday night arrives. He comes home anytime before or after supper depending on when his friends eat supper. (Why they can’t go home when he has supper is one of my favorite questions.) He doesn’t ask for supper yet he is grateful when a plate is on the table just in case. Of course from time to time I scrape that plate into the waste because he didn’t show.

Of late, as the weather and his hormones have changed (Spring Fever – new girlfriend – super-hottie) he has decided that he wants – for the first time in 10 years of school - to pack his lunch.

As his parent I am thrilled to see him eat better. I am thrilled that he wants to be healthy. I am thrilled to see him stay at school during lunch and not be late for fourth period every day. Yet when he wants to leisurely make that lunch during the same morning time that I have used to make his little brother’s lunch everyday for the past 5 years – and he happens to use the last of the cold meat and the last of the cheese and the last of fruit snacks - you might see how my daily habits are… modified. And I must modify them as an exercise in improv – without warning and on the fly.

You might recognize an undertone of anger in my words.

Oops I said anger – now you must know what I am talking about.

So let me be clear – I love my kids. I love seeing my son be more responsible with his health and I love it when my son and daughter come home and hang out for a few days.

However, these changes in my life have crystallized a deep and powerful insight.

I love my habits. I need my habits. I am not very good at changing my habits without warning and I don’t like it when I do.

Of course because I understand how power works and I understand how to turn the power dynamic into depowerment, I see my need for habits as my weakness that makes me vulnerable to power.

Yes I am weak. My habit is to get up. Make coffee. Go wake up my nine year old son. Go to the kitchen make his lunch and my wife’s lunch. Pour the coffee. Take a coffee to my wife. Bring my son to the kitchen and make his breakfast. Go with my coffee to my office and begin my day’s writing.

So when my older son is in the kitchen inspired to make a lunch, I have to wait. When I pour the coffee and my daughter wants one too (luckily I made extra just in case) and she beats me to my computer – well my heart begins to feel a little frustrated anger.

And anger is a sign of power…

So the analysis ensues. What is my need? What is their need? What are my choices?

And I acquire a couple of lessons on power. First the obvious based on the analysis.

People need habits. They are essential. So they are a source of power. Anything that impacts those habits can be a mechanism of power.

Habits are about not making choices. Habits are about freeing us from having to make choices. Habits are choices already made. So interfering with habits has the effect of controlling or influencing our choices. It is simply because the regular choice can no longer be made.

Now the subtle.

Power does not have to be intentional.

Having your choices changed because of someone else is power. Power is not about the actor it is about the subject in everyway. It is about the subject because it is the subject’s choice that is impacted. It is about the subject because power is a feeling. It is an emotion in the subject that causes them to consider and make other choices than they would but for the power. Power is about the subject because what creates the power is the subject’s need. The actor’s ability, without the subject’s need, does not create power. So although many of us use power intentionally and can be very good at it most of the time, the truth is so much power is not used but arises nonetheless. All that matters is that the subject experienced it.

Power is an experience.

Now the most important…

There is no such thing as a relationship without power. To live in proximity to others means that there will be power. Because there will always be needs and there is no way to keep others from intentionally or unintentionally having an impact on those needs.

To love others is to willingly subject yourself to their power.

There are two things you can try to do in relationships that you want to have but seem to have too much power in them.

Learn to be flexible. Today my children unknowingly taught me about power. I had a choice. I could have turned it into a power dynamic or I could see it as power that was not planned and without malice. I could see it as some of the necessary power in my life. I could see it as a lesson. I could bend with the wind and become more flexible. Simple but not easy.

They don’t even know I was bothered - or that I am writing this.

The other solution is much harder…like flexibility isn’t hard enough.

Take your relationships beyond expectations and desires…

That might be true love.

Unfortunately I am no better at that one than any of you. I suffer with it every day. Like today. All I can offer you is what has been told to me and what I recognize as truth.

We must try to get outside the “self” we have created and be what we are in our essence.

Walking the path with all those we are intrinsically connected to.

I think they call that compassion.