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| No Trust, Role Model, and Day Late | |
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| Topic Started: Apr 4 2009, 08:43 AM (570 Views) | |
| Post #1 Apr 4 2009, 08:43 AM |
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Friday, April 4, 2009 Dear No Trust: While Abby did not say anything really wrong in her answer (and while she did ask you to confide in some adult), she missed the boat in not wondering why you don't trust your parents. She, almost surely incorrectly, assumes that you don't trust people in general. You need to contact a professional such as a counselor or a pastor, to explore why you do not trust your parents. If you don't trust them because of fear that they might, rightly as parents, disapprove of your behavior, then that is not actually a trust issue. The best advice would be for you to stop doing what you are doing and start talking to your parents about moral values. If your mistrust is based on something wrong that your parents have done, that issue will need to come to light and be dealt with appropriately before the trust issue can even be addressed. A caveat though: Your parents' breaking of a confidence does not necessarily constitute a "wrong." Parents must often reveal what is said in confidence to them in order to properly do their job as parents. You should be able to trust your parents to do the right thing with information, not just to hide it for you. Dear Role Model: Please ask yourself whether you are indeed being a role model or if you are instead just being judgmental. Don't assume that the item was made from stolen materials. Accept it graciously. Model gratitude. If, at some later time, you come to know (without your having raised the question) that the item is truly stolen, then return it, bluntly explaining why, possibly like this: "I have learned that you made this gift using materials owned by your employer in a way that he would consider 'stealing.' While I appreciate your thinking of me and making a gift for me, I cannot, in good conscience, keep an item that was stolen. I hope you make things right with your employer." Keep in mind though, being a role model means doing what is right, for all to see. While I am not saying that you shouldn't speak up when someone does something wrong, I am saying that you should speak up when you know of wrongdoing, however speaking up does not constitute "being a role model." Dear Day Late: Ask yourself why you are getting the tattoo. Are you truly doing it to honor your brother? (If so, there are better monuments than a tattoo.) Or, are you doing it to recapture all that sympathy and attention that you got a year ago and that has surely waned. That may sound like a horribly insensitive question, but some details in your letter make me wonder if the latter is not the case: (1) It has been almost a year. Why now? (2) Why a tattoo? Such a memorial will follow you around all of your life. No one will see the memorial unless they are with you. And, (3) why would you consider recording your time? Are you memorializing his life or your experience of his death? Is it about him, or is it about you? Rather than permanently marking your body, something that I think is absolutely silly in any context, how about making a donation and memorializing your brother with a marker--perhaps a piece of playground equipment or something else that reflects what your brother thought was important in life. Do something that would have moved your brother. |
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2:21 PM Mar 9
