September 30, 2003
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It’s a good thing.
My mother used to use the phrase, “It’s a good thing…” a lot. She didn’t use it as Martha Stewart does, as a value judgment on some clever idea or useful project. To my mama it was usually a veiled warning or sarcastic letting-me-off-the-hook statement: “It’s a good thing I wasn’t planning on using [insert whatever food, toiletries, etc., that I'd just used up].” or “It’s a good thing your mother loves you or I’d [insert some form of mayhem or dire punishment I narrowly escaped].
Mama often did refer to herself as my mother in the third person that way. I think she drew a distinction between herself as a person and herself as a parent. Perhaps it is in rebellion against her that I refuse to do that. I am myself with my children as much as with anyone, which is to say, completely, absolutely. My offspring get no special dispensations by virtue of sharing my DNA.
But I digress…. The point I intended to make there is that I learned from my mother that handy little family meme, “It’s a good thing….” Whereas she used it to make little digs at me in the guise of consolation, I tend to find it coming to mind more as self-consolation, usually with an ironic or sarcastic twist.
Very rarely I will speak aloud something to the effect that it’s a good thing I’m a generally non-violent or unvengeful person, when I get a little miffed at someone in the family and find myself feeling some destructive urge. Telling the guys I’d like to bang their heads together keeps me from having to do it.
More often, I find myself thinking to myself that it is a good thing I have one virtue or another: the courage to plow through whatever thing might have otherwise defeated me, the perception to see through a lie that might have otherwise deceived me, or the ego strength and self-esteem to cope with whatever it is I find myself coping with at the time, to name a few examples.
Life has been throwing a lot of those good things at me lately. Earlier today one came to me as I worked to get my breathing back to normal following the harrowing recall of a traumatic time a decade ago, which had been precipitated by Greyfox’s narcissitic personality disorder. (He blogged about it HERE, and I wrote in July about our decision to do this therapy thing THERE.) I said silently to myself, “It’s a good thing I know how to let things go.”
Indeed, I am glad that I have that skill, of letting myself remember past pain without denying it or repressing the memories, feeling it and then letting it go. It’s hard enough living with this crippled body, without complicating everything with the mind-crippling effects of indulging in denial or clinging to resentments.
It is also a good thing I tend to respond swiftly to insults and affronts, blow off steam and let that shit go. While I’m counting such blessings, I might as well add that it is a doubly good thing that my son Doug learned to deal with the bumps in his road that way instead of bottling them up, letting them ferment until they grow out of proportion and explode out of control. In my case, I was about thirty years old before I learned that skill in therapy. Doug, the child of my old age, got it as he grew up, without having first to unlearn the repression my mother taught me.
I sorta think it’s a good thing I noticed myself thinking “It’s a good thing…” and pursued the thought. It was that word, “good” that caught my attention. If you’ve followed my blogs much, you may recall that I’m engaged in transcending dualistic moralism. I question myself every time I catch myself using absolute dualistic terms such as “good” and “bad.”
After some thought, I have decided there’s nothing wrong with [OOooogah!! dualism alert: there's another of those words, half of the pair right/wrong.] that little family meme; it’s a good thing. I’d probably be trying to root it out of my lexicon if it came accompanied by, “It’s a bad thing…”, but the closest thing I can find in my mind to such a conversity is the implied mayhem, loss or misfortune that might result if such “good things” were not how things are.
It’s a good thing I can laugh at myself, isn’t it?
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Comments (6)
It’s all good, maaaan.
*peace sign*
(It’s all bad, too, but, like, whatEVER.)
Nothing wrong with judging things to be good or bad. If there were, how would we determine that it was wrong to judge things to be good or bad?
Like Shakespeare had Hamlet say, there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. Nothing “wrong” with making vAlue judgements, it’s just a waste of time, energy and brainpower–not to mention a huge impediment to personal evolution. Having said that, I must say that having a thoughtful, intelligent blog to read on a rainy day is a good thing.
Having interesting music playing in the background whilst doing so is a good thing.
Havng the computer pretty much to onesself is kind of a good thing.
And having a sweety like SuSu is a very, very good thing. So there.
I understand the desire to transcend such qualifiers. As it is with the Tarot, there is no good or bad card. They are neither, yet both at the same time.
So, yeah. Good and bad; or call it light and shadow. It’s all there. And it’s all good.
lmao at the book choice at the end. I need to read a book like that
I grew to hate it when my mother Judges everyone. Your either Good or Bad. She has 5 kids, 2 of them are ‘good’ Never evolved enough to consider good people can make mistakes too. Here I am washing the 80 y/o B’s kitchen floor. So small it’s easier to do on your knees with a rag. She comes charging in on her walker w/her ‘face’ on. Usual dissatisfaction w/something I’m doing, wrong, of course. I said “Whats with the face, don’t U ever smile anymore?” Shoots me the evil eye,and says “I only smile when your sister Mildred is here…”How freaken ungrateful can someone be? Mothers…so overrated sometimes! GRRRRR.
@Debski08 - Where does that cultural reverence for motherhood come from? Could it be that women taught it to their kids, as some kind of compensation, either defensive or vengeful, for the knowledge that we grow more feeble as they grow stronger, and the men tend to have the upper hand both physically and financially?