Many motivational speakers talk about having had a bad day. Most go on to share how they lost it all, or how life crushed them down below the ground level. Or left them homeless and destitute. But...
The Phoenix will always rise back up.
Never mind that quite a few stories we hear are fabricated. But not all of them.
Let's talk about truth though. True stories. Your story. My story.
Reality.
"You had a bad day."
Pain is a common topic for many people. I'm not talking about physical, injury-based or sickness-based pain. I'm talking about victim-based pain. "You hurt me," kind of pain. "You did me wrong," kind of pain.
The Internet has increasingly become a place where people enjoy airing out all their dirty laundry and pining about how much trauma they've experienced. For those inclined to see themselves as victims, the Internet is boomtown! A thriving place to enjoy feeling sorry for oneself. And for blaming others for one's lot in life.
In spite of Tik Tok influencers who want to blast the boomers (my generation) for failing to understand things like work ethic, or why we have no clue about life in the world today, or a host of other complaints which every younger generation makes about the older generation (read your history and you'll find many of those hippies who attended Woodstock went on to become quite successful on Wall Street and other places associated with financial success). Every generation thinks it's the smartest one to ever come along until they get old and realize how wrong they were. ;)
I don't care about where anybody is on the timeline of life because there's nothing we can do about it. I didn't have a say in being a baby boomer. I just was. My kids had no say in being Gen X or Millennial. By the way, if you're as confused as I am about these labels I found this chart to be helpful.
Until I saw that chart I didn't know there were 2 distinct groups of Boomers. It's such a big group I suppose they figured it deserved to be split up. Generation Jones Boomers are those, like me, who were too young to be drafted into military service because of the war in Viet Nam. Our parents were mostly those Post War folks, people whose dad served in World War II.
Times Are Always Changing
And with it, language. Words like trauma.
For my generation trauma, suffering and pain denote something very different than they do for a Gen Z person. Being slighted by somebody, snubbed or even ridiculed isn't any of those things for me, but they're common among Gen Z. If you were write a mean, hateful review of this podcast for Apple Podcasts I would not think much of it. I certainly wouldn't be traumatized by it. It would likely cause me no discomfort. I might be puzzled by it, but my viewpoint would have a lot more to do with the author of the review than me. I'd likely wonder what's happening on somebody's life that might compel them to use such a platform to air their grievance. And it'd be likely that the person to write such a review would have never reached out to me because that's not how these things tend to go.
But take that same scenario and apply it to a podcaster half my age and it could devastate them. Might even cause them to quit podcasting. A single hateful review.
A complete stranger wielding that kind of power seems strangely weird to me, but I see it constantly. Podcasters (and anybody else doing something) consider themselves traumatized by some unjust critic. The trauma is only possible because we give others permission. We say YES to whatever it is we think is happening. Or we reject it and move on with our life, which is what I choose to do.
A person has a bad day. They take it out on me. And that affects me how? It doesn't if I don't let it. It can cause me to have a day, too - IF I permit. IF I decide I'm going to be negatively impacted by some ninnie who has no clue about me, or my life, or what's going on with me - some stranger who happens to click PLAY on my podcast - then that's on me, not them. By the way, no such thing has happened so I'm only speaking fictitiously because I'm so well-loved nobody would dare be ugly about me. Certainly not in public. :D
Did my generation grow up learning to care less what others thought? Maybe.
Did my generation grow up not clamoring for approval? Likely.
Did my generation grow up working for tyrants and "the man?" Absolutely, but there were exceptions (even though they may have been few)
Did my generation learn work ethic worked and benefited our life? Of course.
Did my generation get it all right? Nope.
Here's the difference. Because Boomers are older, we've endured more bad days. We've had to figure more out because we lived longer. Experience matters.
It also means we've experienced more mistakes. Found more things that didn't work. And hopefully, we've figured out a few things that do work.
True value is from the self-reflection on those experiences though. The passing of time isn't where the magic is found. It helps and it's necessary, but it's only valuable if we learn from it. Learning demands self-reflection and sober thinking about what we've experienced.
Perspective matters when it's based on accumulated wisdom. Accumulated wisdom only happens when we learn, grow and improve.
Parents get it. As we're teaching our kids certain things that we learned long ago, it's disconcerting whenever they behave as though they've already figured it out when we see them clearly struggling to learn it. But with youth comes a degree of insecurity manifested as arrogance.
Well, permit some clarification. Some of us who are older parents get it. ;)
Just this week I was listening to a couple of podcasts whose hosts were between 30 and 45. One told the story of being down on the beach and his 4-year-old daughter refused to come in. The family had been at the beach all day and it was time to retreat back to where they were staying. The little girl didn't want to leave and began to pitch a wild-eyed fit. Dad picked her up and she started screaming, "You're hurting me, you're hurting me." Followed by, "I hate you, I hate you." He had to carry her about 150 yards he said with her yelling those things the entire time. During the podcast he's lamenting, "There's just nothing you can do."
They get to their room and he's trying to clean the sand off of her in the shower, but she's continuing her rebellion. This continues, according to him, for 15 minutes while inside the bathroom. Again, he repeats, "There's just nothing you can do. You're stuck."
I'm listening to this thinking, "Oh, yeah. There's plenty you can do." In fact, there's so much you should do as a parent.
The other podcast a mom is talking about her daughter going ice skating for the first time. The daughter has never skated and doesn’t know how, but she's screaming at her mom to let her go. Like the other little girl, she's screaming how the mom is hurting her even though mom is simply attempting to hold up so she can stay on her feet. "What do you do?" asks the mom on the podcast. Her co-host, another mom, says there's just nothing you can do. "You don't want people to think you're abusing your child."
And I'm thinking, "...but you are abusing your child by not correcting them and disciplining them." Spanking is political suicide because people stopped listening to God. We think leaving children to themselves is wise, but God sees it as a source of shame for parents. Society used to see it that way, too. But we outgrew God and His wisdom.
The Bible has a lot to say about what we owe our children in order to serve them.
"The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother." - Proverbs 29:15
So many parents have a bad day because they're unwilling to correct and serve their children. Now both parent and child are having a bad day. That bad day grows into a bad month, a bad year and may result in a bad life. All because the child deserved to learn what's right and what's wrong. What's acceptable and what isn't. Good or great behavior versus bad or poor behavior.
Political correctness has created so many bad days for so many people. And thankfully, the tide is now beginning - just beginning - to turn.
I avoided so many bad days because my parents and other adults in my life delivered a bad moment to me. A moment when I was spanked. A moment when I was scolded. A moment when I was warned - not threatened - that if I didn't behave differently, then I'd suffer a consequence. Thankfully, I grew up in an era when parents warned. The difference between a warning and threat is a warning will most certainly have consequences if it's not followed. A threat is empty. There's much less certainty that there will be a consequence.
Bad Days Are Compounded When There Is No Correction
I was a pre-schooler in a small Oklahoma town where my dad had a service station and garage on Main Street. I enjoyed the smell of new tires, oil and all the other odors associated with that business. Mostly, I enjoyed the pinball machine that was inside the showroom area. I loved hanging around the place.
A preacher was coming to town, due to arrive at the bus station some blocks away. My dad was to pick him up.
This preacher was a fixture in my life. I loved hearing him preach and tell stories sitting in our home. But I was scared to death of him because he was an old man who didn't suffer foolishness. Any kid who was unafraid of him was an idiot. If he scolded you, you snapped to.
I'd been lying. My mother's attempts to correct this bad behavior had evidently fallen short. Knowing this preacher was mere moments away, and knowing how fearful I was of him, my mother warned me what would happen. Scared, I ran into the men's room of my dad's garage and locked the door refusing to come out. No screaming. No pitching a fit. Just fear knowing that I now had to face the conseq
