My dad wrote to me recently, referencing this article which had turned on a light over his head on how he was raised to be non-confrontational. Generations of Dutch/German farmers survived because their personalities were tuned to be cooperative, slow to anger, and non-violent. Those attitudes were encapsulated in the Christian sect following Menno Simons, a 17th-century monk turned Protestant, who preached non-violence as a way of life. His followers are modern-day Mennonites and Amish, most famously around the Lancaster, Pennsylvania area. A hundred years after Simons, a Mennonite farmer named John “Pruppacher” (they used phonetic spelling in a county land grant) came to America in 1715 and settled down to farm in Pennsylvania. I’m a ninth generation descendant from John.
As my dad pointed out, Brubaker men have inherited traits that served small-town farmers well, steadiness, self-reliance, calmness, but also passivity in the face of aggression and a turn-the-other-cheek attitude that risks being a doormat in the big city. Because of his Mennonite faith, my grandfather became a medic in World War I, instead of a rifle-carrying soldier. He would rather die for his country rather than kill somebody, so the Army had him tend to injured soldiers on a hospital ship carrying them home.
Dad regretted passing on the passivity and non-aggression that served the German/Dutch Brubaker farmers so well through the generations. He said that this was how he was raised by his father (a banker and WWI vet) and his grandfather (a lemon-grove farmer) and so on up the line through six generations of Midwest Brubaker farmers. I agreed that those passed-on inherited behaviors did affect me. In school, I got in zero fights. Yes, zero in 12 years. Being the tallest kid in every class I was ever in helped me avoid fights, but I can think of one occasion where I was slugged by a kid a foot shorter and 50 pounds lighter than me and didn’t fight back. I simply didn’t know how to fight; the concept was alien to me at that age. I remember one day when the neighborhood kids used another of my family as a pinata, only stopping when I showed up.
I pointed out that he passed on many fine traits handed to him: self-reliance, calmness, steadiness, and patience. And in any case, now at the age of 49 I have long since taken responsibility for my own life. In my teens I overlapped my first year of college with my last year of high school, had paid all my own bills since the age of 16 (except room and board) including all college costs, been a National Merit Scholar, and got myself through several levels of flight training, including private, instrument, multi-engine, and commercial. By my early 20’s, I had incorporated my own software consulting business, built an airplane in his garage, started making six figures, and become a flight instructor and Airline Transport Pilot. So he didn’t raise me too badly. Easy Dad, you did ok.
This episode brought out these wisdom points:
- We are a stew flavored by our parents, but not composed by them. Our lives bear the marks of every experience we’ve had, just as our bodies bear the scars of injuries long-past. Yet we are not our scars. They mark us, but are not what we are.
- Be aware of the mental software that colors the way you act and perceive the world. Your history and family can create mental models that you might not want. Examine your mental software and reprogram it to suit yourself. Don’t allow “You, version 1.0” to go un-updated. You’re not an animal, driven by locked-in instinct. Human brains have software that is reprogrammable. Examine and take command of your personal software. Change your mental maps so they work for you today.
- Regret is corrosive, leads to despair, and is a tool of the Devil. But to dispel regret, you cannot either run from it or just dismiss the situation that caused it. You regret something because there’s a lesson trapped in there. The only way to clean the wound that hurts you is to face the situation and understand it. Once you understand the background of all the people involved, plus their motivations, fears, angers, and prejudices, then you can realize why it happened as it did. Then the dark clouds of regret are dispelled and you are wiser. Have the courage to face it, based on the faith that assures you that this Life is here to make you grow.
- Own your sins and weaknesses. Acknowledge them, face them, and confess them. The Adversary will attack you from your weak side and you want to be prepared.
- Homework assignment: Muse on this analogy, “Life is a bootcamp and God is the tough-but-caring Drill Instructor trying to make a soldier out of you.”