When To Push

Don’t worry; this article isn’t about childbirth.

It’s about that difficult question:  When do we make someone do something they don’t want to do?  When do we push?  When do we ease up?

Some things are distasteful but necessary – like taking out the garbage or cleaning the toilets.  Some things have to be done.  Some things don’t.

This past week my daughter begged to be home-schooled again.  It was okay with me, but we had to consider what was best for her.  Did she need to work through this?  Did we need to make her stick it out?

I think such decisions require us to ask at least five questions:  1) Is it necessary?  2) Is there an alternative?  3) Is it affecting one’s health?  4) Is it becoming a pattern?  5) What are the possible future consequences and are they acceptable?

Sometimes making a decision is like stepping into the dark.  Sometimes the light doesn’t come on until after we’ve taken that first step.  I found this out 17 years ago.  My fiancé and I were great friends and had the same goals but I was completely miserable when we got engaged.  Breaking it off was hard but right.  I was sad but at peace.

It’s okay to turn around if we find we’re going the wrong way.  In fact, I think it shows wisdom, character, and humility to say, “I was wrong; I need to back up and try something else.”  My mom will be forever grateful her parents pulled her out of boarding school when she was 12.  I’ll be forever grateful I was allowed to quit jazz when I was 15.

Perhaps great leaders choose to motivate, inspire, and invite because really, who likes to be pushed by anyone but ourselves?

There's No Place Like Home

We added a few days to the long weekend and headed south for a vacation.  We attended a Valedictorian niece’s graduation, visited my husband’s grandma in a nursing home, celebrated our son’s first birthday, played games with my sisters, and watched fourteen cousins of varying ages interact.  It was wonderful!

But when we passed Edmonton on our way home, I got very excited.  The anticipation of getting home was greater than the anticipation of going away.  I couldn’t wait for my own bed, my own bath, my own kitchen, my own closet, my own computer…

Vacations are fun, but there’s no place like home.

The place we call home can change many times during our lives.  When I left home at the age of 19 and moved to Calgary, I still considered my parents’ home in BC to be my true home.  “I’m going home for Christmas” I would say.  I’m not sure when I stopped thinking of my parents’ home as my home; I think somewhere around the time I got married and started my own family.

I sometimes miss the acreage where I grew up, but that’s what memories and photographs are for. 

As I’ve moved from city to city, I’ve learned that home isn’t so much the location or the structure, but what’s inside.  We fill our homes with the people and things that we love, that make us comfortable, that make us happy.  It doesn’t matter if it’s an apartment, a mobile, a mansion, or a tent.

I’m thankful my parents (who are both 70 this year) realize this.  They took their most precious possessions and favourite furniture and moved into a seniors’ lodge.  They’re downsizing, reducing their luggage, understanding the vacation will end someday and they might as well be prepared for that inevitable, joyous move Home.