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It's Oscar time, so get ready to hear all about all the movies you "must" see in order to be in the know, on top of things, and popular at the water cooler. I'm always wondering who the heck has time to take in the "25 Movies You Must See Before the Oscars"? Believe me, I preach the need for couples to have regular date nights, but creating the time and babysitting and money to see 25 movies over the next two months just ain't happening. I guess I could skip working out at the gym, but then I'd end up looking like George Clooney in "Syriana."
Which is one movie that I have seen. And whole-heartedly recommend. The other is Steven Spielberg's "Munich." While certainly not the feel-good fare you may seek out on your date nights, both of these films have ways of shaking up, or maybe waking up, the integrity within all of us. The integrity that tells us something's wrong with the world.
Forgive me for this brief two-week foray into the world of geopolitics; I know you are used to my articles explicitly about parenting and family relationships. But the principles of ScreamFree apply to all relationships, not just those within the home. And that means we at home can learn a lot by observing other relationship patterns, even those between tribes, factions, and governments thousands of miles away.
Both "Syriana" and "Munich" take the Middle East, and its relationship with the world, as the central crisis of our time. "Munich" portrays Israel's retaliatory assassinations against in the wake of 11 Israeli athletes being murdered by a Palestinian terrorist group at the 1972 Olympics. "Syriana" is a purely fictional examination of the sickeningly intricate web of relationships surrounding the world's demand for, and the Middle East's supply of, oil.
Growing up, I used to think that the Middle East strife was too remote and too removed to deserve all the attention it does. Now I know it helps to remember this: The most emotionally reactive (and thus, least ScreamFree) political region in the world is also the central location of 1) the largest depository of the fuel that literally fires our world, and 2) the geographic beginning, and thus, home, of the world's three largest religions, representing over half the world's population.
And for those of us working hard to create the families we've always craved--the families the world needs, these films offer two haunting lessons: 1) reactive dependency turns us all upside down; and 2) reactive reciprocity leaves us all dead.
1. Reactive dependency turns us all upside down.
Most of you familiar with ScreamFree Parenting have heard me preach that our families get so upside down whenever we focus all our energy and attention on our kids. We begin to orbit our whole lives around them, thinking that such attention to them and their needs is what they need to be made right. To be made whole.
So we end up depending on our kids to make us and the whole family happy. Think about it. I need my kids to obey me in order for me to feel sane, or powerful, or validated. I need my kids to respect and appreciate me in order for me to keep my cool with them. I need them to get good grades, or demonstrate good manners, or whatever else, in order for me to feel validation as a parent, even as a person. Thus I am putting all of my emotional "eggs" into their basket and begging them not to spill it! So the emotional stability of the family, and thus its ability to live according to principle, is in the hands of the least mature members of that family.
That's what has happened with the Middle East. In the words of President Bush two nights ago, "Here we have a serious problem: America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world." Because the rest of the world is so dependent upon the Middle Eastern region for its oil and its religious meaning (thus, both our materialism and our spirituality), the entire emotional stability of the planet is in the hands of its least stable, least progressive, least "mature" societies. The Middle East is not made up of immature people, just very immature systems that "haven't had a good century in 900 years" (Thomas Friedman).
But just like with our kids, we cannot orbit our lives around these societies without giving them the impression the world revolves around them. And so, of course, they act self-centered. Look at Saudi Arabia actually reducing oil production in the fall of 2001, after 9/11. Fifteen of their boys destroy the towers, and they decide to reduce production, causing a price hike that continues to this day. But why should they act any different? They know that even after 9/11 the world will continue to orbit around them, needing ("addicted to") their supply.
And no one is guiltier of this than the U.S. We in this country represent only 5% of the world's population, but we use 25% of the world's energy. And a significant amount of that energy we use comes from the Middle East societies we want to grow up and change. And we wonder why it seems so difficult to influence these societies to reform? Why they seem to only resent our efforts to urge them toward modern public policy? What possible motivation do the leaders of these nations have to institute serious reforms of their governments, serious restraints on their hatred-based Islamism, as long as we are lining their pocketbooks in order to cart our soccer teams around in our latest Ford Excessives?
The very instability that threatens to create scores more Osama bin Ladens, that seeks only to destroy all forms of democratic government and religious tolerance, is not one-sided. It is not just that these terrorists need to see the error of their ways and then change for benefit of the rest of us. That type of other-focused thinking is exactly what is going wrong in our families! We focus so much on our kids, needing them to please, appease, respect, appreciate, and validate us, and then, of course they don't. They instead defy us, disrespect our authority, intentionally test us, as if they don't see us as people worth listening to, or learning from. Well, why should they? What's their motivation for doing so as long as we NEED them to? As long as I need my kids, they inherently know that something's wrong, something's backwards. And that's when they will make stupid choices to blatantly go against me, even if they know it will make things worse for themselves. Kids are masters at cutting off their own noses in order to spite their faces. That's because it's the only way they know how to express that something is wrong with the whole setup.
And is that not the best way to explain the current defiance of Iran, and before 2003, Iraq? Refusing inspections, refusing to let the world keep them from growing in the ways they want (militarily), they only make things worse for themselves. But that's because they know what we know (but don't ever make public): we need them. How can we have any authority to tell them how to run their country (in their minds) as long as we so desperately need their oil? There's only one way out, one principle to guide us toward authentic change, both geopolitically and in our own families:
What kids need most are parents who do not need them.
Now, first of all, I am not saying that the U.S. is a parent over the Middle East (they might feel that we think we are, which only fuels their resentment). But the U.S. is the most powerful military and economic country in history, and the world looks to us for influential leadership. So what would happen if the U.S., through radical efforts to reduce its consumption and supply its own resources, were no longer dependent on Middle East oil? How would that completely change the dynamics of its relationships with those societies? How would that completely change the dynamics between and within those societies? By changing its part of the pattern, the U.S. would necessarily change the whole pattern itself. And force other parties to change theirs.
Similarly, what would happen if we parents, through radical efforts to give our kids the space to make their own choices (and walk beside them as they taste the consequences), were no longer dependent on our children? What would happen if we no longer needed our kids' behavior to validate us as parents, and realized that only our own behavior could ever do so?
My daughter had a party to attend one night last week, and I explained to her that she wouldn't be able to do any homework while there, and it would be past bedtime by the time she got home. I wasn't entirely shocked by her response: "But I don't want to do my homework!! You can't make me do my homework!! Why are you trying to make me?!?"
"Honey, I didn't say you had to do your homework."
"Yes, you did! You said I couldn't do it later so I'd have to do it now!"
"Honey, I want you to listen to me very carefully, okay? Whether you do your homework is up to you, not me. I'm never going to make you do it because then I'd be acting like it was my homework and my life, not yours. All I'm saying is that you cannot do it later tonight." And then I turned away, resisting my urge to see her response.
"Whatever!!" she shouted. And the next time I saw her, she was getting her bookbag out and getting started.
What kids, and nations, need most are parents, or superpowers, who do not need them.
[to be continued]
Hal Runkel, LMFT, is the author of ScreamFree Parenting and founder of ScreamFree Living. For more information, visit http://www.screamfree.com
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