Rule of Life (16 page)

RULE 73

If You Are Going to Be a Friend,

Be a Good Friend

Being a real friend is a tremendous responsibility. You have to be loyal, honest (but not too honest), sincere, reliable, dependable, friendly (stands to reason really), pleasant, open, sociable (not much point having friends if you’re not going to be sociable, is there?), responsive, welcoming, and gracious.

You also have to be forgiving at times, be prepared to offer help, support, and sympathy. At the same time, you don’t want to be taken advantage of or have the wool pulled over your eyes. And you may have to be brutally candid at times and be prepared to risk the friendship by being so. Yet equally there are times you need to hold your tongue and keep your opinion to yourself. They are your friends, not clones of you—they do things differently. You have to be counselor, confessor, priest, helper, companion, friend, confidant(e), and comrade. You have to offer the friendship enthusiasm, dedication, determination, creativity, interest, passion, and drive.

And this is all what you have to do. What does your friend have to do? Well, in an ideal world the same. If your friend fails to do any of this, you will still carry on being her friend, being forgiving, being supportive, and being there.

And I guess if you have to take anything away from this Rule, the most important bit is being there. You are there when your friend is going through it and not just there for the good times. You will be there when your friend needs you in the early hours, the dark days, the times of trouble and stress. You will be there to hold her hand, let her cry on your shoulder, lend her a Kleenex, pat her on the back and make her endless cups of coffee. And you will tell them to cheer up, stop worry-

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ing, stop being such a fool, whatever it takes to get them up and at it again.

You will be there to give your friend good advice. You will be there just to listen at times. You will be there when you don’t want to be. You will be there when all her other friends have fallen by the wayside. You will be there no matter what.

Someone once said that a real friend is someone you can be having a conversation with as she gets on a plane, you don’t see her for ten years, and when she arrives back you carry on the conversation as she gets off the plane like a moment hadn’t passed. That’s exactly how it is between good friends.

T H E M O S T I M P O R TA N T B I T

I S B E I N G T H E R E … A N D N OT

J U S T FO R

T H E G O O D T I M E S .

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Never Be Too Busy for Loved Ones

It is very easy in the rush of living to overlook people close to us. I do it. I have brothers who are very special, very close to me, and I forget to phone, forget to stay in touch. Not because I don’t care but because I am too busy. Unforgivable. Every now and then I’ll complain that I haven’t heard from them.

But, of course, it is me not staying in touch just as much as it is them. We have to make time, because if we don’t, time slips past so fast that a few weeks become months, and then years are added on before we know it.

It’s the same with children. Parents all harbor a secret fantasy of, “Wouldn’t it be nice to return to the Victorian ideal of seeing them for an hour before bedtime when the nanny has them all bathed and pajama-ed and ready with the cookies and milk?” sort of thing. Well, I know I do even if you don’t. But the more time we put into our relationships—with children, siblings, parents, friends—the more we get out of them. It has to be us to make the move, to phone, to stay in touch. And what if they don’t also do this? Fine. You’re now the Rules Player.

This is what you do. You become incredibly successful at handling your life, at processing guilt (you don’t have any because you phoned, you wrote, you stayed in touch), at forgiveness (they didn’t phone or write or stay in touch), at relationships in general. You take the moral high ground and be the first to offer the hand of friendship, be the first to forgive and forget.

(And I don’t care how serious the squabble was, Rules Players don’t carry grudges, ever….)

No matter how busy your life is—and hopefully these Rules will eliminate some stress and free up some time—you have to R U L E 7 4

make time. You have to make quality time (sorry, I hate that expression as well) for all those around you to whom you make a difference. Those who love you get repaid in time—it’s a fair exchange. They love you, and you give them something of yourself, something precious. Yep, your time and attention.

And you do this willingly, not as a chore. You do this with dedication and commitment and wholehearted enthusiasm—

or you don’t do it at all. There is no point spending quality time with your kids, for example, and using that time to catch up on work or read the paper or get tomorrow’s lunchboxes ready. You have to be there entirely for them, or they’ll know your attention is elsewhere and they’ll feel cheated.

So when the phone rings and it’s your mom, your grandmother, or your old friend but you’re really busy doing something, don’t keep her on the phone making “uh huh”

noises while you simultaneously finish searching the web or writing that letter. Either put everything down and give her your full attention, or ask if you can call her back later—and make sure you do. One day she might not be there—and then you will so desperately wish you’d actually listened. But then it’ll be too late. So make time for the people who matter—

today.

T H E M O R E W E P U T I N TO

O U R R E L AT I O N S H I P S ,

T H E M O R E W E

G E T O U T O F T H E M .

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Let Your Kids Mess Up for

Themselves—They Don’t Need Any

Help from You

I have children, and I naturally want them to be happy and well adjusted and successful. But do I also harbor secret plans for them? Do I want them to be doctors? Lawyers? Diplomats?

Scientists? Archaeologists? Paleontologists? Writers? Entrepre-neurs? The Pope? (Look, someone has to be the Pope, and it may be some parent’s ambition somewhere to see his child as the Pope.) Astronauts?

No. I don’t think so. Hand on my heart, I can say I haven’t ever had such ambitions for them. I do hope they’re not listening, but I can say that I’ve been disappointed on the odd occasion when their career choice has seemed a bit unusual—not their sort of thing at all. But you have to let them make mistakes.

You can’t steer them right all the time, or they’d never learn for themselves.

And this is what this Rule is all about—giving your kids the space to mess things up. We’ve all done it. I was given immense freedom to screw up, and I did it big time, magnifi-cently, spectacularly. Result? I learned pretty quickly what worked and what didn’t. I have a cousin who wasn’t given anything like the same freedom. He was much more protected, and he didn’t screw up anywhere nearly so badly. But later in life, and he’d be the first to agree with this, he managed his life in such an unfortunate way that his screw-up really was spectacular. We all have to make mistakes. Better to make them while we’re young and have the resiliency to bounce back.

Being a parent is about 75 percent making it up as you go along. You too have the freedom to make mistakes. Trouble is that if you get it wrong as a parent, your mistakes can really R U L E 7 5

affect someone’s life adversely. That’s why it can be really hard to stand back and watch our children make bad choices. We want to run to them and protect them, nurture them a bit more, and keep them from harm. But they have to learn by getting it wrong. If we think they’ll only learn by us telling them, then we are making a big mistake. They have to do life for themselves to really get to grips with it. It’s real, and they can’t learn it from a book or from us or from the television.

They can only learn it by getting their fingers burned. Your job is to stand by with the bandaids and the antiseptic and a kiss to make it better.

You are, of course, allowed to ask leading questions: Are you sure that’s a good idea? Have you thought this one through?

And what happens after you’ve done that? Can you afford to take that much time off? Won’t it hurt a bit? Didn’t you try something like this before? You can also do this with friends as well when you can see they are about to make a big mistake but you don’t want to be the killjoy. Try not to make your questions sound too judgmental or moany, or they’ll ignore you and go ahead just to be stubborn.

YO U CA N ’ T S T E E R T H E M

R I G H T A L L T H E T I M E , O R

T H E Y ’ D N E V E R L E A R N FO R

T H E M S E LV E S .

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Have a Little Respect and

Forgiveness for Your Parents

This one may or may not affect you. Personally, as I am now technically an orphan, it shouldn’t affect me. But it does. Big time. I was brought up with two major dysfunctional attrib-utes. A missing father and a difficult mother. I have siblings with the same background. We have all handled it differently. I found it easier to come to terms with my mother once I too had children and could see what a difficult job it is. I could then also see that some people are intuitively, naturally good at it. And some people are, to be brutally frank, utterly useless at it. My mother fell into the latter category. Was that her fault? No. Should I blame her? No. Can I forgive her? There is nothing to forgive. She embarked on a life path for which she was ill equipped, received no help, was lacking in any skill, and found extremely limiting and difficult. Result? She treated her children appallingly, and we probably all need therapy. Or forgiveness and respect. Why should she be blamed for doing a difficult job badly? Hey, there are lots of areas in all our lives where we aren’t very efficient or skilled or even enthusiastic.

Your parents do the best they can. And that might not be good enough for you, but it is still the best they could do. They can’t be blamed if they weren’t very good at it. We can’t all be fabulous parents.

And the absent father? That’s OK, too. We all make choices that others can judge as bad or unforgivable or just plain selfish and wrong. But we aren’t there. We don’t know what weaknesses people have or what drives them. Or indeed what is even going through their head. We can’t judge until we, too, have to make the same choice. And even then if we choose a different way, then that’s fine, but we still can’t judge or blame.

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So, for the fact your parents brought you into the world, have a little respect and forgiveness. If they did a good job, then tell them. If you love them (and there is nothing that says you have to), then tell them. And if they were appalling at parenting, then forgive them and move on.

As offspring, you do have a duty to be respectful. You have a responsibility to treat your parents kindly and be more than they are by being forgiving and nonjudgmental. You can rise above your upbringing.

H E Y , T H E R E A R E LOT S O F

A R E A S I N A L L O U R L I V E S

W H E R E W E A R E N ’ T V E R Y

E F F I C I E N T O R S K I L L E D O R

E V E N E N T H U S I A S T I C .

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Give Your Kids a Break

We’ll talk in a bit about what good parenting is—what your role as a parent is. First, let’s look at this Rule—give your kids a break means support and encourage your children. In fact this should be support and encourage all children, not just your own. Children get a pretty poor deal of it. They hear it from all directions, and the word that figures most in their lives is “no.” No, you can’t do this. No, you’re not old enough for this. No, you can’t have that. No, you’re not going there.

No, you can’t see that film.

Cast your mind back, and see if it wasn’t the same for you.

“No” is terribly easy for us to say. It’s the word that trips so readily off the tongue. But to give support and encouragement, we do have to train ourselves out of it. We have to learn to say

“yes.” Obviously we need to qualify our “yes,” depending on the age or skills or development of the child. But a resounding

“yes” gives kids a great boost even if it is followed by a “but not at the moment,” or “when you are old enough” or “when you have saved up.”

It is also easy to say to a child, “You’re not very good at that,”

or “I wouldn’t do that if I were you; you’ll only fail.” Better to encourage a child and let him learn that he might fail than to set the idea running in his mind beforehand. I know we all want to protect kids from harm, from failure, from disappoint-ment. But sometimes we have to push them forward and shelve those worries for the moment.

Truly successful parents are the ones saying, “Go on, you can do that, you’ll be great at that, you’ll be terrific.” By voicing such positive enforcement, our children get to believe in R U L E 7 7

themselves and can do more, be more, achieve more. If we just say “no,” they’ll grow up with low self-esteem and lacking in confidence.

A friend recalls how she desperately wanted to be a ballet dancer when she was 6 years old. She was already showing the signs of being destined for her current 6 ft tall, large feet, athletic build—as far from a ballet dancer as you can imagine.

Her parents must have been able to see this and could have told her that really she should do something else. Like all-in wrestling for kids. But instead, they found her a ballet class. It didn’t take long for her to realize that ballet wasn’t right for her, and she stopped going because it made her legs hurt.

However, it was her choice to stop. And she left with her self-esteem intact. (She only wishes they hadn’t taken the photos.) Whatever kids want to do, it is not your job to edit their dream, stand in their way, voice your concerns, limit their hopes or discourage them in any way. Your job is to give guidance while supporting and encouraging. Your job is to give them the resources to achieve whatever it is they want to.