Who Are You?

Our frothing ball-of-fluff terrier mix is dedicated to ridding the neighborhood of evil squirrels. On our early morning sojourns while my buddies and I huff and pant, Langley charges ahead, a squirrel seeking missile, a blinding streak of speeding fury. The squirrels ignore his slathering charge, blithely squatting. When Langley is inches away from squirrel implosion, the squirrel throws a hip fake and bounds calmly to the safety of the nearest palm tree.

Undeterred, Langley sets his sights on the next sciurinae sciruus as my running buddies and I plod along chatting about optimism and whether or not dogs have imaginations and if so, what squirrel stew looks like in the mind of a canine.What also intrigues me is the relative speed of the animals, dog and squirrel. In the straight-away, the squirrel tops out at 12 miles per hour whereas Langley can hit 30 mph with one paw tied behind his back. In a mile run down Fifth Avenue, Langley has finished the race and is headed back to the hotel for a shower when the squirrel hasn’t made it half way. The slowest dog is faster than the fastest squirrel.Then why hasn’t Langley ever come close to catching and devouring a squirrel?Because a squirrel has a lower center of gravity, because a squirrel can MOVE side to side before you can blink, because a squirrel knows it’s a squirrel and knows what its strengths are.Because a squirrel knows better than to run on a straight course against a dog.In my professional practice these last 30 years, I see a lot of parents trying to force their squirrel children to be dogs.Or as Wallace Stegner said, “You can’t make a sprinter out of a 250-pound hammer-thrower or a musician out of someone who is tone deaf.”Those of you dear readers who are accountants, imagine the wretchedness of your life had your parents forced you to be trumpet players. Those of you who are trumpet players, try to envision going to work as an accountant.I have been following my students for over 30 years now. Not one of them has ever said to me, “I wanted to grow up to be an investment banker, but thank the good lord, my mom forced me to be a film-maker.”The fundamental psychic insult is to be told to be someone who you are not, to hear the message repeatedly that you are not okay as you are.Our job as loving parents is to provide opportunity, to present options, to gently guide our beloved children in the direction toward which they have the most aptitude and affection.And then to shut up.Because you can tell your trumpet player all day long to be an accountant, but it’s just not what he was meant to do.Stated another way, even if you could make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, you would still have one unhappy pig.You never see gay parents trying to convince their heterosexual children to be gay. You know why not? Because they know better. We are who we are. Every ability with which we are born is a gift, not a limitation. But don’t tell me that you could be a math professor if you just put your mind to it. If you were meant to be a professor of mathematics, you would already be one.Wallace Stegner again: “[Writing] is a function of gift-that which is given and not acquired. All any teacher can do is work with what is given.”David Altshuler again: most of the unhappiness I see in my office is caused by loving parents trying to make their kids into that which they are not.Stated another way, if you make your squirrel run in a straight line, he is going to be caught, killed, and eaten by a dog.