I don't mean this to be in any sense political but it has been brought up. I know something about enabling. My first wife survived being in Latvia and Germany during WW-II, but, as we became secure, she became a sucker for alcohol and lapsed into alcoholism. I'm reminded of the poem by Robert Service The Ballad Of The Northern Lights, "We kept our heads at the famine, but lost our heads at the feast." If I yelled and shouted, it was all the more reason to drink. If I kept silent, then it didn't bother me. It seemed like anything I did enabled her drinking.
One day I realized that she was going down the tubes and was going to take me with her. After 31 yrs we divorced and both are still alive today though I understand she is in bad shape. After our divorce, I believe she pulled herself together pretty much. You might ask, why did I stay in this situation for so long? I had a prohibition against divorce. No one in my family had been divorced Though some (many) of the husbands had alcohol problems. Also the promise of 'til death do us part meant something to me.
True, alcoholism is different from sexual philandering, but I suspect the enabling factor is much the same. If you yell and shout, it is all the more reason to seek out your "girlfriend" for commiseration. If you are quiet, then the philandering doesn't bother you.
Showing posts with label Ballad of The Northern Lights. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ballad of The Northern Lights. Show all posts
Monday, October 10, 2016
Sunday, October 28, 2012
FIRST DAY AT SCHOOL: NO CRY, THEN CRY
When I was very small, my mother coached me on going to my first day at kindergarten. she would let me off and pick me up so I wasn't lost but in good care in the meantime. So when she let me off for school, I just marched in with no crying or hysterics. After school, my mother did pick me up and took me to a candy store to get a piece of candy for being such a good boy. While I was trying to decide what piece of candy I wanted, the store keeper asked my mother what the event was that was being honored. She said for being a good boy at my first day of school to which the store keeper replied, "Before you know it he will be in college." I cried and cried because I knew I couldn't do college work.
But wait, there is a sequel to this funny story. As it turned out, I was to spend 11 years in college accumulating Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Geological Engineering degrees, a Master of Science, and, from the Marines of educational institutions, a Ph.D.
If truth be known, I am of rather average intellect so how did all this happen? For one thing you have to want it or be highly motivated or as one professor commented, "You've got a bit of a bull dog in you."
I recognized that in the Earth sciences, there was a lot of terminology (Medicine would be another field requiring lots of memorization.). I've been told you cannot improve your memory, but that is not true. After school while I waited for my mother's piano teaching to be over, I would practice memorizing poems, any poem of my choice. I got so at one time I could recite the entire Gunga Din by Rudyard Kipling and The Ballad Of The Northern Lights by Robert Service. I could look down a list of 20 items twice and remember it for 48 hrs, which proved invaluable for tests.
The last of the principal things was to learn not to panic. If I couldn't answer the first question, I should go on until I found one that I could answer, then look for another and work my way to the hardest question. Sometimes by that point my mind had cleared, and I could even answer the hard question. Later in my brief teaching career, I found I could control the average grade on a test to a large extent as to whether I put the hardest question first or last on the examination In fact I got so I would work myself up before an examination. I'd jump up and down and repeat strings of things I knew on the examination topic (Repeat the 30 uranium minerals was one I recall or how to derive the radioactive decay equation was another.). Get the blood circulating and the mind sharpened. I call it intellectual athletics.
But wait, there is a sequel to this funny story. As it turned out, I was to spend 11 years in college accumulating Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Geological Engineering degrees, a Master of Science, and, from the Marines of educational institutions, a Ph.D.
If truth be known, I am of rather average intellect so how did all this happen? For one thing you have to want it or be highly motivated or as one professor commented, "You've got a bit of a bull dog in you."
I recognized that in the Earth sciences, there was a lot of terminology (Medicine would be another field requiring lots of memorization.). I've been told you cannot improve your memory, but that is not true. After school while I waited for my mother's piano teaching to be over, I would practice memorizing poems, any poem of my choice. I got so at one time I could recite the entire Gunga Din by Rudyard Kipling and The Ballad Of The Northern Lights by Robert Service. I could look down a list of 20 items twice and remember it for 48 hrs, which proved invaluable for tests.
The last of the principal things was to learn not to panic. If I couldn't answer the first question, I should go on until I found one that I could answer, then look for another and work my way to the hardest question. Sometimes by that point my mind had cleared, and I could even answer the hard question. Later in my brief teaching career, I found I could control the average grade on a test to a large extent as to whether I put the hardest question first or last on the examination In fact I got so I would work myself up before an examination. I'd jump up and down and repeat strings of things I knew on the examination topic (Repeat the 30 uranium minerals was one I recall or how to derive the radioactive decay equation was another.). Get the blood circulating and the mind sharpened. I call it intellectual athletics.
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