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an impact? The short answer is I don’t know. I certainly don’t think it has hurt
their concept of self, but I suppose it will take more time to know how they
have absorbed these beliefs. Even if it has made a small impact, I recognize
that so have the many big life lessons they have learned from their parents,
family, schoolteachers, friends, the community, etc.
While writing this reflection, I asked my oldest son, who was home finishing
his COVID-19 interrupted studies in acting at the University of Cincinnati,
if he still remembered what I used to tell him. “Of course, I do,” he replied.
“Do you feel it had an impact?” I asked. “Well, I am preparing for a career in
the arts – that’s about as creative as it gets. Those attributes were probably
already a part of me, but I think hearing them repeatedly helped magnify
them,” he reflected.
As for my smart and beautiful daughter, she just graduated from college
with a 4.0 grade point average and will soon start her master’s degree program
towards a career in occupational therapy. I don’t know if those repeated
messages helped, but I’m proud all the same that she embodies all three.
It has recently occurred to me that maybe this practice was less important
for my children and more important for me. Perhaps the real value was that I
came to believe these statements as I repeated them, and in small increments,
these messages changed the way I saw and parented each child. I think the
power of repeating these messages was in the change it created within me,
not in them.
It’s also not lost on me that the value of repeating positive messages is
especially relevant in turbulent times like the ones we are living in. Whether
it’s parenting, relationships, leadership in my corners of the world, caring
for a vulnerable planet or promoting the rights and dignity of all people –
particularly my black and brown brothers and sisters – I have a responsibility
to put positive messages out into the world and repeat them over and again.
And it is just as true that these messages are as much about changing me as
those around me.
Lord knows there have been times, past and present, when I have not lived
up to my potential. Like most, I struggle to know the right thing to do and say
as often as I feel confident in my parenting, my relationships, my leadership
or my citizenship. There is no instruction manual on parenting or adulting
and the world is full of destructive messages.
Yet if there were such a document, I wonder if there would be a chapter
that focused on repeating the positive change we wish to create in the world
and in our children that would be entitled, “What the mind is bombarded
with, the mind will accept.” If so, that’s where you will find my bookmark.
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