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Boundaries
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A person who loves you
07 Nov 2011 by Rod Smith / No Comments
1. Will not intentionally embarrass you in private or in public.
2. Will not use scornful humor or cutting sarcasm in private or in public.
3. Will listen to what you have to say even if he/she has heard what you are saying many times.
4. Will stand up for you when you are right and stand up to you when you are not.
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The currency of an adult committed relationship
06 Nov 2011 by Rod Smith / No Comments
Trust. Kindness. Listening. Shared adventures and challenges. Interest in, and support for individual pursuits. Enduring respect. Taking time (almost) every day to listen to each other. Focused interest and focused attention. Eye contact. Absolute confidentiality. Integrity. Truth. Laughter. Accountability. Praise. Recognition for things accomplished. Conversations. Planning holidays. Escaping routines to be together. Phone calls, text messages to keep each other updated about important and unimportant matters.
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Ten things to tell your children this weekend….
03 Nov 2011 by Rod Smith / No Comments
1. My mistakes do not have to become your mistakes.
2. Your success is up to you.
3. Honesty is more powerful than money but it is nice if you have both.
4. Chase no one for anything.
5. Apologize quickly when you know you are wrong.
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A woman writes to other women, 10 years after her divorce
30 Oct 2011 by Rod Smith / No Comments
“Please understand that what I say here is based on personal experience and is meant as encouragement to all women who find themselves on their own. I have been divorced for ten years now and it has been a very difficult and painful time. I have had to re-establish myself as my own person. The divorce has been traumatic and not the rosy, amicable arrangement that my ex seems to think it has been.
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Life is beautiful, and it’s brutal. Embrace both….
28 Oct 2011 by Rod Smith / No Comments
Value obscurity. Enjoy doubt. Celebrate ambiguity. Embrace mystery. Love complexity. Quit searching for certainty, sureness, simplicity and you will live a far less anxious existence. Not only can you not have all the answers you cannot even have most of the questions! Life is beautiful and brutal – and you can’t go too long without both.
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Verbal log-jam
When I was a boy I’d endlessly practice the fluent delivery of my name but it seldom flowed easily from my lips. As if it was new news to me, adults pointed out my stutter. Perhaps they thought I was beginning, at that precise moment, for the first time in my life to spit from the mouth, twist at the neck, jig my head back and forth trying to expel some inane statement log-jammed between my gut and my throat.
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Life in our beloved 122
If the inside of a house (outside, too, I suppose) is a metaphor of the lives of the people who live in it – which is something I once read somewhere – gosh, are we in trouble. Our house is a mess.
I consistently clean it room by room, thinking often of the legend that the Golden Gate Bridge that says there’s some guy constantly painting it. I feel for him. While I am sure the view is wonderful I must believe that the poor guy whose doing it daily from one end to the other must find the wind and the weather quite a challenge.
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Being a white South African can come with complications
Being a white South African reared under Apartheid is no simple matter. It permeated everything for me. While I do not pretend to have been a political activist, I was always cognizant that my privileges, simply a result of being born white, were unmerited, and most unfair especially when enjoyed at the expense of others who were not. I think this unsettling truth (for I took advantage of my station in life) was somewhat of a companion to me from the age of about six or seven.
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Location, location – remembering winter in August
We live very close to our school and church, so close we can hear the school bell from our kitchen and the church bells in my bedroom.
Sometimes we walk to both and we don’t see the car for days.
I like it. I like not having to get in and out of the car. I like not having to negotiate traffic, something as synonymous with life in the USA as Disney, Fast Food, and the Fourth of July.
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Ready to adopt?
If you wait until you are ready to adopt a child you never will because you will never be ready. The baby, and only the baby, will make you ready. Reading the right books will be helpful, but “ready” magically comes upon you when a real baby is sleeping in your arms or crying in the middle of the night. If you are not ready to change diapers – and I always am amused at the big deal about this non-issue – being unprepared will last only as long as a clean diaper.
Life inside the Smith household
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