A family can keep all the rules, and follow the directions, but it's the love of the parents and their spirit of parenting that determines how it all fits together and functions most effectively.
Timestamps:
00:00 Moby Dick, difficulties of whaling.
04:16 Why men chose the challenges.
05:51 The spirit of parenting, never-ending awareness and responsibilities.
07:16 Some parents give up.
07:41 Why most don't give up.
08:34 Simple principles of parenting allow you to enjoy it.
10:35 The love of the parents determines effectiveness.
Transcript:
The Spirit of Challenges—Whaling
When I was in high school, we read the classic novel Moby Dick, by Herman Melville. The book addressed a number of themes, but it all revolved around the occupation of killing whales for their oil—used primarily for lamps. This industry prospered mostly from the late 1700s to the mid-1800s.
A typical whaling ship was between 100 and 150 feet in length, and was occupied by a crew of 16 to 30 men. The quarters were cramped, because the boat carried all the wood for repairs at sea, the tools for said repairs, the berths for sleeping, the food for long voyages, and all the rope, ship equipment, and hundreds of empty barrels to be filled with the oil rendered from the blubber of the whales they would kill. They had a substantial hearth capable of shaping iron into knives and harpoons. It also contained the enormous fireplaces and caldrons where the blubber was placed and melted into the precious oil that motivated the industry.
Their voyages lasted anywhere from 6 months to as long as eleven years. The food was variously described as being unpleasant to revolting. It was their daily lot to live with rats, cockroaches, bedbugs, fleas, and more. The pay was terrible, with a common seaman receiving as little as 1/350th of the total profits, sometimes as little as $25 for several years of grueling work in conditions that were barely intolerable, not to mention the high likelihood of death.
Why would they do this? Why would men subject themselves to such physically miserable circumstances, with so little chance for material reward? My English teacher asked the class this question, and I can still remember responding, “It was the spirit of whaling.” Indeed it was. Men went out to challenge the unmeasurable and turbulent sea, to fight against the largest creatures who have ever lived on earth, and to discover themselves.
They were captivated by the spirit of all those challenges—by the spirit of whaling. It was an exhilarating adventure that many men just could not miss, just had to know, just had to embrace to fulfill and test themselves.
To many men, “the spirit of whaling” would have meant nothing but endless and unpleasant labor, but I can feel the thrill of it, the feeling that would come from having every fiber of my being pulled taut, to the snapping point, but also to the point of knowing the full extent of who I am.
The Challenges of Parenting
And THAT brings us to the spirit of parenting. If you put all the individual acts together:
- constant attention to endless chores (scrubbing deck),
- resistant children (waves, wind, and storms),
- the never-ending awareness of your responsibility to keep them safe (like captain of ship sailing the right waters with the right charts),
- the frequent arguments between children and between children and parents (which could easily become an unbearable chore, like dealing with rats and lice and bedbugs and fleas),
- and on and on (like the duties involved in keeping a ship in proper sailing order).
If you consider all those individual responsibilities and obstacles, it would seem that any sensible human being would run from the job of parenting as fast as they could move, as though they were fleeing a bottomless pit of pain and despair.
Parenting with the Spirit of Parenting
Yes, that is one way to see it, and it would be understandable. But oh, the spirit of parenting. The overall feel of it. The real power. The ability to raise a next generation to be happy and strong. Meeting one of the world’s great challenges and succeeding, in the process learning who YOU are and helping your CHILDREN to become who they were meant to be, with all their gifts.
We MUST remember what the spirit of parenting is—the feeling, the driving inner passion—much like the spirit of whaling. Overall, sailing a ship is a matter of information (maps, sailing techniques, and more), order (everything in its proper place at all times, since a ship in chaos will go down in a storm), and real pride in the entire adventure.
Similarly, parenting comes down to very simple principles, mainly loveandteach, which includes kindness, genuine caring, and much teaching. That’s it. That’s the spirit of it.
The rest of the principles—utter consistency, teaching gratitude, the Law of Choice, the Laws of Responsibility and Consequences, consistency, the Rules of Listening, touching, looking, victimhood, zero tolerance for unloving behaviors, punctuality, and on and on—these principles are simply the tools or laws that make it possible for children to be happy and for you to be effective.
But all those tools and principles must be guided by remembering the spirit of parenting—loveandteach, and an understanding of the indescribable opportunity we have to enable an entire generation to be happy and strong.
Yes, read the parenting book. Watch the parenting training. Ask your questions about how to apply principles to individual situations that arise. But all this is worthless without you feeling the spirit of what you’re doing, without you LOVING what you do and the children you teach.
A ship requires proper loading of provisions and cargo, meticulous order of all its parts and equipment, cleanliness, accurate charts, and more. But if a ship has all those things and no true leadership, the ship will still fail.
Relationships, like a family, are the same. You can keep all the rules, and follow the directions, but it’s the love of the parents that determines how it all fits together and functions most effectively.
You can do this. You can learn to be a real parent, filled with the spirit of parenting—the energy, the vision, the enthusiasm—of your role, which will enable you to enjoy the smooth sailing and to thrive in the face of the storms.
