Magisterial children

When I was fourteen years old, I didn't like being around young children. Naturally, my mother chose that year to announce that I'd outgrown an allowance, and she'd lined up a job for me in the church nursery, sitting with two-year-olds, on Wednesday and Sunday nights. I dragged my feet the entire way. This was about a year after I'd stopped going to church, so I suspect she had multiple purposes for this move, but whatever her reasons, she downright insisted that I give it a try for at least one evening. One evening was all it took: I stayed in that job for the next four years, and would've stayed longer if I hadn't left for college. I still really don't enjoy being around badly behaved children, but after all these years of teaching, I've managed to grow a little helping of patience. I'm not a patient person by nature; it's the product of a lot of hard work and struggle, and as with most of my toughest life lessons, I've adopted a quick bit of verbal shorthand to put me back in a good mental spot when needed: "They're just kids being kids."

Kids are kids, sometimes. It's difficult, frustrating, to be a kid, and it's important to keep certain kinds of misbehavior in perspective. I'm not talking about cruelty, or the kind of violence that goes beyond simple roughhousing, but rather a certain flavor of orneriness, a certain failure to be wise. Those are just part of the ugliness of growing up. They're certainly things to reach past, to look forward to the end of, but a sharp, severe reaction to them is very likely to be an overreaction.

Those are all old thoughts. The connection I've made tentatively a few times this year, and more firmly over the past few days, is something new.

I struggle daily with anger, and in particular I get angry about politics. I have very nasty feelings, and sometimes say very nasty things, in response to twists in government wheeling and dealing. And yet, I know full well that any elected official, at any point on the political spectrum, is trapped between the needs and demands of different people who pull in endless different directions at once. I know that political language is designed to strike balances that necessarily are unstable and unsatisfying. I know that political decisionmaking is ramshackle, that compromises stray vast distances from the original need that gave rise to a proposed change, and that any reform which purports to sweep aside the swirling chaos is really just an exercise in gross oversimplification. Simple problems tend to get taken care of by the parties on the scene, without the need for government involvement. With very few exceptions, politicians who "talk straight" are the biggest liars of all, and no matter how entertaining or soothing their words might be, it's necessary to spot the mismatch between their plain speech and the ornate problems they discuss.

So what I'm trying to do, more and more, is tell myself "This is just politicians being politicians," and then to draw that thought into some measure of tolerance and respect for those whose words and decisions ordinarily would infuriate me. They're doing work I would never want to do. They're doing it under circumstances that they don't control, in a political environment they inherited. And just as I found myself more patient with children when I worked directly with them, got to know them, got to leave my mark on their behavior, I also suspect that if I involve myself more in public deliberations, the more salient the complexity of reconciling everyone's needs may be.

One of the earliest lessons I learned about working with youngsters, first toddlers and then teenagers, was "Don't take what they say at face value. Double-check for yourself." Not a bad idea with politicians either. And in all three cases, it's not an excuse for hatred or undue anger; it's just a by-product of what they're working through.