Brave New Kitty

A bad word whispered will echo a hundred miles.–Chinese proverb

Do you know what charged words are? Even if you’ve never heard the phrase, you can probably guess that charged words are words that evoke strong reactions in people. Charged words can be very general, such as vulgar profanity and ugly words like “lazy” and “stupid” used in overt verbal attacks. There are also those used by politicians, preachers, and advertisers to evoke strong reactions: “terrorists,” “war on drugs,” “eternal damnation,” and “weight loss,” to name just a few.

Charged words can also be very personal, used by people who know each other well; personal charged words are those that attack a person’s perceived areas of weakness or shortcoming when that perception is well known by both. Couples who’ve been together for a long time and have a lot of unresolved issues with each other are masterful at the charged words game, passive-aggressively poking at each other as though it were the most innocent thing in the world. Parents and kids are usually pretty good at this game, too, expertly attacking each other’s weak spots in an attempt to get what they want. This kind of behavior is hard to watch, because although it can result in short-term gratification, it never results in what people really want, which is feeling valued, feeling close, and feeling heard.

Charged words can also be phrases that seem harmless, but which, in certain contexts and with certain tones, can be withering. Starting sentences with phrases like “just because…”, “why do you…”, “you never…”, “you always…”, “you should…”, “everybody else…”, quite often signals that a shaming or blaming comparison or complaint is coming, and rarely serves the purpose of good communication. These types of charged words are the hardest to deal with because they’re often so subtle that we don’t recognize them and thus can’t respond well to them; we know we’ve just been walloped, but can’t quite figure out what happened. Even worse to realize is that we often use these words without being aware of what we’re saying. This is particularly true if you grew up in a family with a lot of shame, where using phrases like these tends to be as natural as breathing.

People who use charged words tend to downplay their significance and make you feel like you’re being too sensitive. “Sticks and stones,” they’ll say, or something to that effect, and maybe even laugh outright, ridiculing your hurt or anger as though there’s something wrong with you for having such a reaction. But words have power. They can unite and divide, convince and dissuade, call people to action and soothe their anxiety. Words actually have tremendous power–and people who routinely use charged words know this, even if they deny it.

Using charged words is not an either/or, either you are the type of person who uses them to manipulate others or you don’t. We are all guilty at times of using charged words in moments of anger, hurt, or confusion; sometimes we just want to win an argument so badly that we resort to this underhandedness. Politicians do so routinely, glibly hurling empty accusations and insults back and forth, which is one reason I find it so difficult to give much credence to anything they say. And they rarely show any remorse for these tactics, either, giving the impression that such low blows are completely acceptable, respectable behavior.

But using charged words is neither acceptable or respectable. It is manipulative and dishonest, and it builds walls instead of bridges, which is rarely what we truly want. Eliminating charged words from your repertoire is important to having good relationships, and this is true whether or not you are consciously aware of using them. Equally important is knowing how to respond when charged words are directed at you by other people.

Eliminating Charged Words From Your Vocabulary

• Familiarize yourself with charged words in general. One of the best books I ever read about this The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense by Suzette Haden Elgin. Here also is a link to her website, which discusses these ideas in a different format. If you learn to pay attention, you will be amazed to discover how common charged words are, and how much a part of your vocabulary they might be. As always, wisdom is power, so recognizing the words and the patterns people use, ourselves sometimes included, is a good start.
• Familiarize yourself with your personal charged words. We all have at least a vague idea about what words tweak us. One of mine, for example, is “oversensitive,” a word I heard a lot growing up when I would have a big reaction to the charged words my father directed at me. My partner knows this and is careful not to use this word with me when we’re in a heated discussion. He has his hot-button words, as well, and unless I want to escalate the conflict, I am careful to avoid using them.
• Think about what you want to accomplish in a conversation before you start talking. This may sound obvious, but most of us can benefit from thinking things through more carefully before having a conversation, particularly if we know the conversation is going to be a difficult one. When making our points to someone who disagrees, it’s so very easy to get defensive and say things we regret, or get sidetracked by charged words in a way that completely changes the outcome of the conversation, not for the better. The more aware we are of what we want, the more likely we’ll be to use language that will help us get it, and to do so without hurting or offending others.

Responding to Charged Words

• Don’t defend yourself. If someone asks you a nasty or shaming question, never respond to the question and never defend yourself. Doing either gives the question validity it does not deserve. For example, if someone asks you “Why do you always have to dress like that?”, your response shouldn’t be to answer the question or even to say, “Dress like what?” because any response like this implies that you think the question is acceptable, which it is not. Rather, your response should deflect the nastiness back onto the person asking, as in “I wonder what would make you ask me such a thing?” or “How interesting that you would ask that.” No response at all would be acceptable too, if you think it would end the conversation.
• If appropriate, tell the person in a calm voice that you think they’re using charged words and how that makes you feel. If it is a person you’re close to, or want to be close to, quietly explain what you think is going on and that you don’t want to participate. This is even better than deflecting, because it gives both of you an opportunity to increase honesty and intimacy. Not everybody will respond well to this, but if you think a person will, kind directness is always the best policy.

Charged words are common, mostly because they’re effective: few of us are equipped with enough knowledge to handle them well, so we get defensive and flustered, which is generally what people using charged words want to happen. Furthermore, almost all of us are guilty of using them from time to time, even if we’re unaware of it. Paying attention to language is a way to eliminate charged words from our vocabulary and gird ourselves against attacks when they come our way, which they inevitably will. Words are powerful, and understanding how and why this is so is a way we can empower ourselves.

Critical thinking is important, but so are emotions. Some people have the misconception that being a critical thinker means being cut off from your emotions, or that reason is somehow a superior substitute for them. Many set up a weird sort of dichotomy between thinking and feeling, as though there is an either-or choice to be made and one must be sacrificed for the sake of the other. Nothing could be less true. Reason and emotion play separate-but-equal roles, each vital in its own realm. The goal should not be to have more of one and less of the other, but rather, to recognize the roles of each and strive to develop both as best you can.

Maybe the reason for the weird dichotomy so many of us have is that people do tend toward one or the other: thinking/feeling is actually one of the four axes on the Meyers-Briggs personality test. So not only is there a gap between thinking and feeling, it is considered important enough to be a defining characteristic of a person’s personality. But just because we gravitate toward one end of the spectrum doesn’t mean we can’t develop the other end, or that it is unnecessary to do so.

A good starting point might be to define the roles of thinking and feeling. Thinking is our primary survival mechanism. Human beings do not have great strength, speed, or stamina, do not have particularly good vision, hearing, or smell, we cannot camouflage ourselves or weather long spells of adverse conditions. What we do have is a highly developed brain, which we use to solve problems. The problems of today are very different than they were when we first began using reason–and incidentally, this “higher class” of problems is indicative of the great success of reason, as it has taken so far beyond mere survival–but the process is basically the same. The greater our ability to reason, the more successful we will be in solving problems. Since life is one long series of problems to solve (some good, some not so good), success at problem-solving generally means success at life.

Feelings serve an altogether different, but complementary, function. My favorite definition of feelings comes from John Bradshaw: Feelings are tools that allow us to know when we’re fulfilling our needs. Perhaps the most primal example of this is the fight-or-flight instinct. When we’re in danger, fear is always our first reaction because it motivates us to act. In this case, our need is survival, and our emotions–fear and the desire to survive–motivate us to attend to that need. Yes, reason ought dictate how we attend to that need, but the need itself is essentially emotional.

Now, Bradshaw’s work focuses on healing from traumatic childhoods, and his interest in emotions is more about identifying what we want and what makes us happy, but the definition still applies. The point is that emotions signal us of our needs and whether we’re fulfilling them or not. This includes what we want, who we want, if we’re happy, if we’re taking care of ourselves, if we’re lacking something important in our lives; basically, if we’re on track or not. People who live too much in their heads and ignore their feelings can spend years, sometimes a lifetime, doing something that isn’t what they want and doesn’t make them happy. And sadly, you can see such people everywhere you look.

Thus, emotions are necessary, as necessary as our ability to think. You might say that thinking allows us to sustain our lives, but emotions make doing so worthwhile. For example, we can think our way into making good choices, but we can’t think our way into feeling good about those choices; we can think our way out of problems, but we can’t think our way into a sense of well being and contentment from solving those problems; and we can think up new ideas and be disciplined about completing them, but we can’t really think our way into the creativity so vital to that process. In each case, thinking and feeling complement each other, creating a whole that either alone cannot.

People with highly-developed reasoning skills are the most likely to believe they can live an emotion-free life, or that relegating emotions to certain areas–one’s personal life, for example–is a good solution for dealing with “messy” and “undesirable” feelings. People who think this way, though, can be dissociated from their feelings rather than in control of them, and might be avoiding messy and undesirable feelings because they fear dealing with them. They’ve essentially thrown the baby out with the bath water: in repressing scary and unpleasant feelings, they’ve also cut themselves off from good feelings and from the sense of wholeness that comes when feelings working in tandem with reason. Not every reserved, intellectual person falls into this category, but many do, simply because so many of us have unresolved feelings and this is one very convenient way to avoid dealing with them.

Conversely, though, people who act highly emotional aren’t necessarily more in touch with their feelings. Being overly dramatic or easily upset rarely means people have a healthy relationship with their feelings (even though they may make such declarations). More likely, it means they either have unresolved issues lurking just under the surface, or that they have learned to use emotional displays to get what they want (in a rather passive-aggressive form of problem solving). Rarely are big emotional displays or a preoccupation with one’s base emotional desires indications of an emotionally well-adjusted person. Instead, emotionally well-adjusted people are simply comfortable with their feelings and have a good sense of how they fit into their decision-making processes, neither avoiding them or giving them too much power.

Emotions and reason are separate developmental streams, mutually exclusive but equally important. Being on one end of the thinking/feeling spectrum is normal, but that doesn’t mean developing the other area isn’t important. It just means it will require effort that may initially feel uncomfortable, but will ultimately have positive results. When reason and emotion work together, each fully functioning within their respective realms, is when we are operating at our highest capacity.

For some reason, I’ve been seeing a lot of articles recently about critical thinking. Or rather, about how people tend to not think critically, even when confronted with facts that contradict their beliefs. Here’s one from a Mother Jones article that names several studies showing how people resist believing new facts, no matter how overwhelming the evidence that they are true.

This does not surprise me in the least. I have thought for decades that it is a mighty struggle for most people, myself included, to be intellectually honest, most of all with themselves (myself included). Just as it is easier to be fat than fit or poor than rich, it is easier to be intellectually lazy than to think critically. Not only is it easier, it has the double whammy of being a comfort zone: people use their beliefs like cloaks against the wind of harsh reality, clutching with all the more fervor when that wind blows at them harder. Of course we do: would you want to lose your protection from the elements when that protection is so warm and cozy and has served you (and perhaps generations before you) so well?

Yet lose it we must if we truly want to be open-minded seekers of truth. This is perhaps the primary message of Brave New Kitty: that we should always be willing to let go of our beliefs when they are proven incomplete or inadequate in the face of new, more complete facts, ideas, or awarenesses. No matter what you believe, that belief should always be the raft and not the shore; that is, it should be a conveyance to greater truths and never, ever an end in itself.

But this is a hard way to live. It means that we have to embrace uncertainty as earnestly as we embrace our capacity to think and reason (and feel), and that we have to understand the significance and purpose of each. We have to come to terms with our limitations as honestly and completely as we can. And we have to do this every day, in as many walks of our lives as we can, over and over, knowing that we will never get it quite right. And as we do this, we must also, paradoxically, understand that our ability to think critically and reason things out is our greatest strength; more than anything else, it is what makes us human, and it is the backbone that supports all the rest of our humanity, including our emotions–which are equally important, but for very different reasons.

Critical thinking is not something we are really taught, specifically and for its own sake, to do. In school it’s vaguely hinted at, at least in math and hard science courses, but it is rarely given the place of acknowledgement that would help us understand its importance. Thus, most of us make it through childhood and adolescence getting by on the bare minimum of critical thinking required to get along; unless we are fortunate enough to have parents or other mentors who draw it out deliberately and show us its vast significance to our quality of life, that’s how we reach adulthood, where we tend to coast along without it as much as possible (again, because it’s just easier). We form thoughts, hold opinions, and make decisions all largely without challenging our reasoning skills any more than we absolutely have to.

That is not the amazing part; because critical thinking is not overtly taught or talked about, it makes perfect sense that this is how most of us go through life. No, the amazing part is how vehement most people’s thoughts and opinions are when they’ve put so little effort into forming them! With only the slightest knowledge of incredibly complex issues, from theology to politics and nearly everything in between, people will spout their opinions as though they’d been studying the issues for decades rather than heard them on their favorite news source that morning, a news source rarely complemented by any others (and by others, I mean those that have different basic philosophies than those we align ourselves with). The arrogance of ignorance, in many ways, is what makes the world go ‘round. Where would we be without our opinions? We would literally not be human, as the ability to grasp abstract concepts and formulate thoughts about them–a sub-category of critical thinking– is largely what makes us so.

This leaves us in a bit of a bind. We are inescapably required, by our highly developed cerebral cortex, to form thoughts and opinions, yet we often lack the skills to do so well–that is, analytically, objectively, and circumspectly. Where reasoning falls short, emotion steps in to fill the void, and because it feels right–that is, how we want it to feel–we stop there. (And whether those feelings are useful or not, and why, is important, but it is another topic.) Furthermore, because we lack the self-awareness to know that our reasoning skills are weak, we don’t recognize the problem. It’s a kind of intellectual chicken-and-egg dilemma that has resulted in some tragically serious problems in the world.

While there’s not a lot you can do to solve the world’s problems, there is one very important thing you can do: you can work to develop your own critical thinking skills. I have been working on mine for a long time now and have given this topic a lot of consideration. Here are some ideas that have helped me become a less emotional, more critical thinker:

• First of all, and as with anything, study the topic. Read books about critical thinking–here’s a list. Or probably even better, read books written by great thinkers to get an understanding of their reasoning processes. The book How to Read a Book (which is itself a good example of critical thinking) contains a list at the end of what the authors consider essential reading of the Western world, and is a great place to start.
• Just read, period. Read non-fiction books. Read books you believe to be over your head. Read philosophy and science and classic literature. Your critical thinking skills can’t help but improve.
• Know that you have biases, and try to account for them. As you look around and see the problems that lack of critical thinking has caused, always remember that you need look no further than yourself to see stellar examples. We are all full of biases, blind spots, and shoddily formed opinions, and we all always will be. The best we can do is be aware of them to the best of our ability, to understand them, and to work around them as much as possible. For example, I am very cynical about politicians, so I have a tendency to jump to negative conclusions about whatever they say. But because I know this about myself, I am able, much of the time, to make myself listen objectively and try to be fair in forming an opinion. Whatever you know you’re biased about, make an effort to not to be. You will be surprised at what you learn, not only about the external world, but about yourself.
• Read opposing points of view. Rather than reading only what you agree with, read opposing points of view as objectively and open-mindedly as you can. By reading opposing views, you’ll learn how other people are thinking about an issue, which will either alter your own thinking or strengthen and refine your arguments. Either way, it’s a win-win.
• Rather than trying to figure out if you agree with what a person is saying, focus on understanding what they’re saying. We all have a tendency to feed everything we hear, see, and read through our “meshing” filter: Does what I’m hearing mesh with what I believe? The meshing filter is how we make connections and identify threats, which we are biologically wired to do, so this is all very normal–but that doesn’t mean we can’t rise above it. Differing opinions, unless backed by physical force, aren’t actually threatening, and you can learn to overcome the fear-based impulse to categorize them and instead, simply try to understand them. Ask yourself questions like What is this person saying? Why is he saying it? Where did he come up with these ideas? Is there any merit to them and if so, what might it be? Much of the heartache in the world is caused from the inability to empathize, from the reactive judgment and lack of tolerance this inability breeds. Learning to understand and empathize may not change your mind (nor should it, necessarily), but it will certainly create more tolerance for people who are also not changing theirs.
• Finally, commit Wilber’s Law to memory and apply it to every situation, idea, thought, philosophy, ideology, opinion, theory, and snippet of information that crosses your path. Wilber’s Law is simply this: No idea is completely right or completely wrong, and every idea is at least somewhat incomplete. In other words, nobody has the corner on truth, nobody. There is no single theory or idea that is perfect and complete. Certainly some ideas are better than others, more comprehensive, detailed, morally just, or intellectually honest, but all lack something. Being human means being flawed and fallible, and since humans create ideas, all ideas are likewise flawed and fallible. This is the only way it can be, and knowing this going in can be tremendously helpful in keeping an open, curious, critically-thinking mind.

Critical thinking takes effort. It is not an innate skill but rather, something you have to work at if you want to become good at it. Emotion is our most base reaction to the world, and as such it serves a purpose, but the degree to which it is tempered by a rational thought process will generally be the degree to which a person overcomes anxiety, learns to function in the world, and achieves the greatest degree of success, however he happens to define it.

We spend most of our adult lives trying to maintain control of ourselves. Our actions, our impulses, our feelings, our tongues…one accurate way to discern a mature person from an immature one is her ability to stay in control of herself. If we are able to do this with any degree of competence, it is something to feel good about.

Yet there are times when it is just as important to let yourself lose control. During activities meant purely for enjoyment, for example. As I wrote about recently, too much rigidity can be a sign of fear, and it can hold you back from getting/doing/being what you truly want. This is especially true when you start dealing with old, painful feelings, where staying “in control” can be a defense mechanism against owning that which you’d rather ignore. In this case, staying in control is like putting your finger in a dam that is not only going to break, but needs to, for your own sanity and well-being.

Nobody gets through childhood without experiencing some trauma. It’s just part of the human condition. But if a child grows up with an inordinate amount of trauma such as physical, mental, or sexual abuse, parental alcoholism, or other serious forms of neglect and emotional invalidation, that trauma is going to have a primary shaping influence on her life, particularly if the way she dealt with it was to push it down and ignore it as best she could. Since this is often the best option available for children, the result is a lot of adults out there with painful, deeply buried feelings that have affected nearly every aspect of their lives largely without their awareness. The primary examples of such effects include depression, addiction, and difficulty with close relationships.

If you are a regular reader of this blog, none of this is new information to you. Coming to terms with these old, unresolved feelings is a large part of what I write about. But in talking with a friend who’s in the throes of this difficult process, I remembered something that I hadn’t thought about in a long time: that awful fear of being out of control, and how it held me back from coming to terms with those frightening aspects of myself.

I remember sitting through many therapy sessions, feeling close to those feelings–ready to have them, physically feeling them straining to get out, but holding myself back with everything I had. Even so, I kept doing the work and I kept getting closer and closer to those feelings. As I did so, I had this sense that if I let them out, they would consume me, engulf me, take control of my life, rob me of my sanity in a way I couldn’t come back from. In my darkest moments, I was afraid these big scary feelings had the power to literally kill me. And I do mean literally: I actually believed that I might die if I allowed myself to feel those feelings, that’s how big they were. I knew it was an irrational feeling, but it was there nevertheless.

Paradoxically, it may have been this irrational fear itself that finally brought me to the point of letting go of control and allowing the big, scary feelings to come out. Because I knew that this fear was irrational, I was able to do two important things. The first was that in recognizing how big these feelings really were–so big that they caused me to fear death–I began to get an inkling of just how much influence they’d had over my life, over my thoughts and choices and all the crazy, self-destructive things I’d done. This made me want to do something about them in a powerful way, and the thing to do, according to the books I’d read and the people helping me who knew about this stuff, was to “have my feelings.” This led to the second important thing, which was to guide myself through the fear: by recognizing the irrationality of it, I was able to intellectually take myself through it: it was as though my adult self took my inner child self by the hand and said I’m here. I’ll protect you. It’ll be alright. Come on….

And sure enough, once I put those pieces together, the feelings began to come out, and they were almost as big and scary as I thought they would be. Mostly they came out as tears, but once the tears came, they kept coming and coming, as I wrote about here. And through much of it, I did feel out of control, probably because I was out of control. The feelings were huge and demanding and once I let them out, they kind of took over my life for a while. I felt raw and exposed, sometimes just barely making it through the day, or so it seemed, with a pool of grief so close to the surface that I was sure everybody could see it on my face, hear it in my voice, feel it in my presence. For a couple of years, that’s just what life was.

As awful as all that might sound, it wasn’t. It wasn’t awful at all. The feelings were finally coming out because I was finally able to take care of myself enough to let them come out. Through hard work and a growing willingness to face the unfaceable, I was finally purging out all the poison that had been crippling me; this awareness not only kept me going, but gave an energy and vitality to the process that felt good: honest, whole, and full of potential, all validated by the serenity I felt after each session. While in private I was losing control and letting the big scary feelings have their way with me, in public I was just fine. I was even, according to some reports, “glowing.”

I’m not sure about glowing, but I was certainly growing. The vitality I felt was, I knew, a direct result of letting go of control, of trusting myself enough to go to the edge and jump and know that I would be able to take care of myself. Sometimes I think that all thrill-seeking–skydiving, hang-gliding, mountain climbing, and the like–are metaphors we act out as our subconscious attempts to reintegrate the lost and broken aspects of our selves; thrill-seeking offers that exhilaration temporarily, but only inner-seeking can provide it permanently. It’s what we all want, even if we aren’t aware of it.

In an odd way, being emotionally stuck is a gift. Depression is a gift. Addiction is a gift. Anything that drives us to the edge of that emotional precipice is an opportunity to do things differently. It takes courage to even peek over the edge. And having peeked, it can take a lot of time and effort to develop the courage to let yourself jump, and the confidence that you can pull yourself back.

The thing is, it’s a delusion that we have a choice about it, anyway. Those big, scary feelings are going to have their way with us one way or the other. We can face that fact directly and embrace them to the best of our ability, which often means losing control for a little while they work themselves out. Or we can think we’re in control as we run and hide from them, numbing ourselves to their effects and wondering why we feel so disconnected from ourselves, our loved ones, and our lives.

When I was 15, I had a conversation with the school librarian about having kids. I was adamant, even at that tender age, that I did not want children. The librarian laughed at me, then she bet me that I would change my mind. She promised me that by the time I was 25, I’d have more kids than anyone else in my graduating class. She was so confident, she wrote and signed a note to this effect, handed it to me, and told me to bring it back in ten years to prove her right. A small wager, I think $25.00, was made. We shook hands.

Around that same time, there was a famous poll in the Ann Landers advice column about having children. 70% of respondents said that if they had the choice to do it over, they would not have children. Debate over this went on for months, maybe even a couple of years. People were shocked, outraged, incensed at this percentage, and put a great deal of effort into coming up with reasons why so many parents would answer this way. For some reason, a lot of people had a difficult time accepting that 70% of parents didn’t believe children were precious bundles of joy.

But the poll made perfect sense to me, validating what I already believed. People weren’t saying they didn’t love their kids. They were merely saying that they wished they’d given the issue more thought because having kids hadn’t turned out to be what they expected. What I didn’t understand was why people, like my school librarian and the millions who wrote in to Ann Landers to dispute these poll results, had such a hard time with those who did not want children (or who wished they’d given the idea more thought before they had them). To me, it was the most natural–and rational–choice in the world. To me, wanting children was what seemed unfathomable. And I have felt this way for as long as I can remember.

Many people see this as the result of some kind of trauma or neurosis, because women are supposed to want children; we are biologically wired to want children. I believed this myself for a long time, as I grew up with a mother who married at 15 and felt cheated out of a “real” life. She made no effort to hide this from us. She told all of us, over and over, Don’t get married. Don’t have kids. For a long time, I believed my aversion to having children stemmed from her example. It certainly made sense that it would–until you considered the fact that both of my sisters happily took on parenting, just as I happily did not. Maybe we dealt with our trauma and neuroses in different ways, or maybe it had nothing to do with that. Maybe we just made different choices. Also, I’d like to think that biological wiring can be transcended, or at least redirected as a person sees fit. Statistics corroborate this, indicating that as a woman’s education and economic status increase, the likelihood of both marriage and motherhood decrease. This would appear to be the very antithesis of trauma or neurosis.

So my lack of maternal desire may not have been pathological, but did it not belie a certain selfishness or self-indulgence in my makeup? I guess I thought this too, because for years when people asked me about having kids, I loved to answer that I was too self-centered. I thought this was clever, and it usually squelched any more rudeness along this line. Until one day a friend of mine, then in her forties and also voluntarily childless, pointed out to me that it is generally more self-centered (she used the word “narcissistic”) to want children than to not want them. That is to say (she explained), many people have children to satisfy their own needs rather than out of any real desire to bring new little lives into the world and nurture them to fruition. This made sense to me, too. I could name, just off the top of my head, half a dozen women who’d gotten pregnant to get a man to commit to them, and half a dozen more who did so to fill a void, avoid getting a job, or “have someone to care for them when they were old.” Now granted, most of these were very young women, but I could also think of several more mature women who’d had a child to try to save a marriage, or because they thought they should have a baby before they were too old, or simply because they thought it was expected of them. Most people, my friend said, have children for reasons that have little to do with actually wanting them, and I began to see that, sadly, she might be right.

She was definitely right, though, that we were no more selfish than women who chose to have children. All the women I knew, or knew of, who’d made a conscious decision not to have children were thoughtful people. They weren’t baby haters, or so screwed up from their childhoods (as I’d feared about myself) that raising children was beyond their capacity. Rather, they were women who had given the issue a lot of consideration and decided it wasn’t for them. Their reasons varied greatly, but they all shared one common characteristic: they had been arrived at through a careful, rational, introspective process. Some women had had a lifelong aversion to motherhood (as I did), which they explored thoroughly until they determined it wasn’t something they were going to change their minds about; others had started out wanting children, or assuming they wanted children, only to realize after serious analysis that other interests had taken a higher priority for a reason. Yes, we were the exceptions rather than the rule, but we were definitely not a bunch of neurotic, self-centered, maladjusted flakes. Of the people I knew who had children and the people I knew who did not, the did-nots were generally the more thoughtful, more mature, more conscientious group. Not unanimously, of course, but on the whole. The sad truth is that many of the parents I knew–and knew of–took on the job without a lot forethought, and many of them ended up saddled with a task they were not prepared for and which disappointed, disillusioned, and overwhelmed them.

I know this sounds cynical, but it’s true. And there is really no rational reason for it. In the U.S. and all other industrialized countries, information about child-rearing is abundant and people are literate enough to find it if they want to. Furthermore, contraception is cheap and easy to obtain, as is information on how to get and use it. You’d think unplanned pregnancies would be rare, or even non-existent where such access to personal choice exists. But according to a Wikipedia article on unintended pregnancy, almost half–half!–of the pregnancies in the U.S. are accidental, resulting in about 3 million unintended births and about 1.3 million abortions annually (this statistic was for the year 2002). Things don’t get much more cynical, or sad, than that.

I am stymied by women who give motherhood less consideration than they would give to, say, buying a car. No decision could change your life more, yet it’s taken on with shrugs, hopes, and grave delusions about what it means to be a parent, gravest most of all for the babies born into such an environment. Such lack of consideration seems far closer to pathological than choosing childlessness–and corroborates the statistics of the Ann Landers poll, which, if done today, I suspect would have similar results.

I feel good that I never brought a child into the world for selfish reasons, and just as good that I didn’t do so accidentally, out of lack of interest in my own future. But most of all, I feel good about choosing childlessness out of respect for the immense job that raising a child is. Because the contract we make with the Universe (or are supposed to make with the Universe) when we take on child-rearing is gargantuan. It dwarfs all other contracts on any scale you care to measure. When you become a parent, your life becomes a vehicle for the child’s. You are completely responsible for the child’s well-being, of which food and shelter are the barest of minimums. You must give the child your all, you must devote yourself to nurturing this young life to the very best of your ability, and you must instantly sacrifice self-interest when there is a choice to be made, which will be often. If you take on parenting, you take on exhaustion, frustration, worry, and heartache as an everyday way of life, a way of life that goes on for the rest of your life. Maybe most importantly, you must not expect anything in return. No gratitude, no obligation, no guilt, not even a guarantee of a decent relationship. Since the child did not ask to be born, that’s the only way it can be. And even if you do take the job on voluntarily, with a clear vision of what the future holds and no expectations about how your kids should or shouldn’t be, the amount of physical, mental and emotional effort involved would require tremendous fortitude, self-discipline, and will. Because I saw parenting for the huge and critical job that it was, I knew I did not want to take it on, would never want to take it on. As noble a cause as parenting is, and it is as noble as they come, I knew it was not for me.

I don’t know how I knew this, but I did. It began as a vague certainty that took decades to mature into the philosophy I have today. But it has always been a part of who I am. I’m sure watching my parents break nearly every stipulation of the parenting contract was a factor, but I think more importantly, I realized the sheer weight of the burden and felt exhausted by it. You could put a negative spin on that, and call it laziness or narcissism, as many people have over the years, or you could put a positive spin on it and call it a wise, responsible, loving decision. I freely admit that pursuing other interests has always been more important to me, but I also think it is wise and loving indeed indeed to do what you want with your life. We women who choose childlessness have taken responsibility for ourselves, not only reproductively, but also emotionally and intellectually. And that can only result in more positive energy, in general, in the world.

I don’t mean this as an indictment of parenting; quite the opposite. And I’m certainly not saying good parenting means you have to do everything perfectly (in fact, you have to be really good at apologizing because you will do so many things imperfectly). But I do believe that if more people put as much thought into what’s involved in being good, thoughtful, loving, responsible parents, fewer would choose to have children. I know there are parents out there who’ve made their choices circumspectly, who want and are in a position to provide for their children and who understand the immensity of what they’ve taken on. I just wish there were more of them.

I never went back to the librarian to collect my money. It seemed kindest not to. She would have had a hard time fitting me into her world view, even in the late 1980’s. I’m glad that’s changed, that I live in a time where a woman can choose not to be a parent without getting sideways glances and pursed lips, or at least fewer of them. I’m glad a person’s areas of obligation and self-sacrifice can be freely chosen and that I don’t have to feel the burden of motherhood, like my mother did, unless I truly want to. I applaud any woman who’s made the choice to be childless even if it has displeased people in her life, maybe especially if it has displeased people in her life. Mostly, I applaud anyone who makes a choice from her heart and has the courage to stick to it. The world needs more people like you, too.

Years ago, when Jim and I took our first vacation together, my sister and her family also went on vacation around the same time. The contrast between our itineraries was striking, to say the least. Jim and I took a motorcycle trip. We packed camping gear, so if we couldn’t find hotel vacancies, or happened to be in a remote area at dusk, we could set up camp and have a reasonably comfortable night (maybe with dinner, maybe without). We had no schedule, going where the day took us, stopping for things that sounded fun, working our way West, then South, then back home again. Our longest day of riding was about 600 miles; our shortest, about 20. Because we had lingered too long in California, our last day of riding was a brutal one–too cold, too long, and too far past dark. But we had to get home for work the next morning, and as far as we were concerned, it was worth it; the trip was sublime. Seeing the country from atop a motorcycle is an indescribable experience.

In contrast, my sister took a family road trip out to the East Coast. They had everything planned almost down to the hour. They knew how far they’d get each day and had hotel reservations made for each night, out and back. They knew exactly which attractions they were going to see and had allotted an exact amount of time for each one. They knew how long the food in the cooler was going to last, how long the snacks were going to last, how many meals they were going to eat out, and how much they were going to spend on each meal. They had a budget for souvenirs and T-shirts. When I asked her what they’d do if they saw something they wanted to do that they hadn’t planned for, she said it would go on a list for another trip. She joked about how her “drill sergeant” husband’s job was to keep the schedule on track.

While such strict planning might make for a more efficient use of time and budget, and is perhaps more necessary when kids are involved, this all sounded awful to me. It sounded a lot more like work than play! If you’re going to be that un-spontaneous on vacation, of all things, why bother?

One of my favorite writer/philosophers, Ken Wilber, talks about spontaneity and flexibility as being the earmarks of a “second-tier” thinker. Without getting too much into his theories of personal development, or what “second-tier” thinking means, I’d like to address how spontaneity and flexibility are good indications of a person’s level of confidence and general development.

First of all, what do I mean by these terms? Dictionary.com defines spontaneous as “coming or resulting from a natural impulse or tendency; without effort or premeditation; natural and unconstrained;” and also “arising from internal forces or causes; independent of external agencies; self-acting.” It defines flexibility as “susceptible of modification or adaptation; adaptable,” and “willing or disposed to yield; pliable.” So if you put the two qualities together and apply them to a human being, you come up with a person who acts naturally and without effort, independently of external agencies, who is able to modify and adapt to change with relative ease.

Conversely, when people aren’t spontaneous and flexible, they tend to be very much the opposite: stiff and rigid, setting rules and schedules for themselves and finding great distress in interruptions to their routines. They do not like unplanned free time and like to fill their planned free time with specific activities. Spontaneity upsets them. Flexibility is often seen as a weakness of character.

Maybe all of this is common knowledge. But if you take it to its logical conclusion, you might find a new way to look at yourself and human nature in general. And that logical conclusion is that the more rigid, controlling, and habitual a person is, the more fear-based they tend to be.

Not universally, of course, or without qualification; mature thinking also requires the ability to be consistent and disciplined when called for (e.g., as in one’s work or raising of children). But spontaneity and flexibility are important concepts even within the confines of disciplined action, often making the difference, for example, between leaders and followers (leaders being quicker to recognize, embrace and adapt to change). Also, it is important to distinguish between true spontaneity and the chaotic, impulsive behavior of a person who lacks self-control and, for whatever reason, has not yet developed the ability to choose when to follow the rules and when to bend them. The easiest way to see this distinction, perhaps, is to focus on the capacity for spontaneity and flexibility, when called for and when it would produce the most joy in a person’s life.

That said, you can apply this axiom–that the more rigid, controlling, and habitual a person is, the more fear-based they tend to be–both to yourself and to other people. Everyone is fearful and anxious in at least some areas of their lives, so by gauging these areas, in yourself and others, you can pinpoint the areas of greatest fears. In yourself, this means you can explore these areas with new understanding (and thus, I hope, greater compassion). In other people, this means you can better understand their behavior, and thus (I hope), have greater tolerance for that which seems irrationally rigid, closed-minded, or otherwise lacking a spontaneous, flexible approach to life.

I guess this sounds like I’m saying I’m a more developed, less fearful person than my sister (and her husband). Sigh. I suppose I am saying that. Having grown up in a horrifically invalidating environment, we were both very fear-based, and we both needed to find serious life coping skills once we reached adulthood because we had so very few to draw on. Mine moved from drugs and alcohol to therapy and sobriety, eventually becoming a quest for deep understanding of myself and the world, a journey which I now see as never really over. My sister, on the other hand, found her coping skills in fundamental Christianity, the kind that preaches an “us versus them” message that everyone who doesn’t believe is going to burn in hell, while everyone who does is going to live forever in a state of bliss. The up-side of this belief is the unconditional solace that it offers; the downside is that the price for this solace is a true believer mentality that keeps a person stuck in a rigid, closed-minded, shame-based belief system–one that thrives on fear and ignorance and effectively halts higher levels of personal development (emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually). Which explains, I think, my sister’s lack of spontaneity and flexibility in most areas of her life.

Anyway.

(And as an aside, spontaneity and flexibility are also good gauges of belief systems themselves: in general, the greater the level of philosophical spontaneity a belief system has, that is, the more open it is to new ideas and intellectual challenges, the more sophisticated, life affirming, and moral it is.)

Spontaneity and flexibility, as a basic approach to life, are not something you can really set about to develop. Rather, they will occur naturally as you face and explore the fears that hold you back and become a more developed, more confident, more critically-thinking person. When you find yourself feeling resistant, anxious, or unwilling to let yourself go in situations where there is no reason not to, this is almost certainly your fear taking control, and it is a golden opportunity to observe and explore this fear: where it comes from, why it’s there, what it’s trying to tell you, what it’s trying to protect you from. Having such curiosity about your fears is itself a form of spontaneity, I think, as it has the power to move you past it, thus creating a new paradigm to deal with it, which in turn creates endless new possibilities for the direction your life takes, each one yours for the choosing.