Humility, How I Love Thee

It wasn't so long ago that I was walking down a long hallway at the airport, heading with purpose towards my flight to paradise. I was lost in my thoughts because there were so many details that had previously needed my attention and I hadn't let go of the mental checklist yet.

As I got closer to my destination, I could hear a loud wailing coming from that wing of the airport. I reached the seating area and plopped down tiredly. The shrieking showed no sign of stopping. I could see a young boy standing off to the side of the seating area; his head was thrown back, his mouth was wide open, and he was screaming at the top of his lungs. I found myself being seriously impressed at the volume with which he expressed his unhappiness and the length of time that he managed to keep up his howling. I could see people looking at each other with annoyed looks, but I noticed there were several Mexican folks there and most of these people showed no sign that anything was amiss. There was even one lady who was calmly reading a book, and as the sobbing and wailing went on for several more minutes, she didn't even look up.

Oh Lord, I was thinking. Please don't let that child be on my flight. Forgive me for the thought, but I couldn't help but imagine that same scene within the confines of an airplane and I wasn't eager for the experience.

With no end in sight, the loud screaming continued, and I glanced over to see how the child's parents were doing. Both of them were kneeling beside the boy so as to be at his height; his mother's back was towards me and I could see she was holding the child but not moving. The boy's father was sideways to me and I could see he looked tired, but he was watching his boy with a resigned look and obviously patiently waiting out the tantrum. He didn't look annoyed, didn't look around at anyone else, and wasn't talking to the boy or his mother. Soon after, my flight was called and I became wrapped up in boarding.

Well, the child and his parents were in fact on my flight. I heard the same little boy talking to his parents in a happy voice. Shortly after take-off, the young man fell into a deep slumber for the remainder of the flight, having worn himself out entirely from his most recent outburst. I was so grateful to his parents for showing such poise during what must have been a very stressful situation for them. It made me think about how often I had had my son with me while shopping or running a multitude of other errands during which he started to fuss because I told him no, and I remember feeling so obligated to pacify him in some way in order to stop the nasty looks and comments that I was getting from other people. Upon revisiting these situations in my mind, I wish that I hadn't cared what those other people thought, because every time my son fussed in public, it was an opportunity to teach him better boundaries by respecting his feelings but waiting them out nonetheless while standing my ground. I strongly feel that this is the way you teach your kids to be prepared for the real world without looking through entitled eyes. I think Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones said it best:

"You can't always get what you want. You can't always get what you want. You can't always get what you want. But if you try sometime, you just might find, you get what you need!"

I was also reminded of a scene that I witnessed when my son was in high school in Oregon and I drove him to school early one morning. I was leaving and driving slowly out of the parking lot alongside a long line of parents who were also dropping their kids off, but hadn't done so yet. I was crawling along in traffic looking into several of the cars opposite to me. Almost every teenager was looking down at a cell phone, while the parents drove in silence. What caught my eye was the number of parents, whether it was Mom or Dad doing the driving, who had the very same look on their faces. There was almost universally some level of annoyance, a look of pure weariness, and something else that is hard to define, but the closest approximation would be a look of defeat. It was like they had experienced something soul-crushing to a degree and all they could do in that moment was emote an expression of stunned resignation. Granted, raising a teenager is not an easy job and I'm sure I conveyed that feeling a few times myself. What surprised me was the sheer number of times I saw that same look during that one day.

So here I am, living in Mexico, and I have met many lovely, happy and humble young people of all persuasions, and witnessed several very long tantrums from kids who are obviously well cared for by their parents. And every time, I choose not to be bothered and I smile to myself, because I know they are learning humility. And this gives me a great deal of hope for the future.