Sunday Night With John: It Rubs the Lotion on the Skin
/It Rubs the Lotion on the Skin
John Paul Derryberry
We have a problem in our culture. We love to tell others what to do. And it's tearing us apart.
Don't do drugs.
Abortion should be illegal.
Don't come to our country.
Don't date that person.
Don't do it that way, do it my way.
I used to be one of these, let-me-tell-you-how-to-do-it people. I remember talking till I gave myself a headache with a client about how she should ditch her drug-using mother. The woman had been a user for years, and no way was she going to get clean. But here sat this kid, in defiance of all the evidence that her mom would get clean, and she would not give up on her. When the evidence kept piling up that Mom had no intentions of getting clean, I approached my client again about doing what was best for her, to start living her own life. And yet, she denied my advice and her response changed my whole viewpoint. "John you are asking me to give up on my mom, to stop loving her and that I cannot do."
This kid was right because I would have had the same reaction. Heck, I've had numerous authority figures tell me what I should and shouldn't be doing. Every time they put their foot down, I usually did the opposite, mostly because, well, screw them for thinking they knew my life better than me. I realized this is where we go wrong. When we make it my way or else, we lessen the other person's ability. We suffocate the creative solutions we can ignite, and we put ourselves in a position of power over someone else. Maybe that is the feeling most of the people who think this way are chasing, they want to have power. We say I know best when in reality life is a lot more complicated than do drugs and don't do drugs.
That's not to say there isn't right from wrong, because there is. I'm just saying that no one person can be the authority over every ethical and moral conundrum we face. We must begin to talk and to listen with each person and find out why people are making these type of decisions. There is always a why, a reason, they are going down this road. When I finally asked why this kid wouldn't give up on her mom, she looked at me and said, "because you won't give me on me." So after I collected my breath at her why we had to switch the conversation. We started talking about how do you protect yourself and make decisions to move your life forward without giving up on Mom. Low and behold, we stopped arguing and began to create a plan. She could love and help her mother, but also improve her life.
Look, we are hard-wired to carve out easy solutions. We sit on our moral high ground, yelling at everyone to do it our way. We scream, put the lotion on the skin in a certain way, with a particular type of cream at a specific time of the day. Sub out lotion with any current problem: gun control, poverty, income gap, sexual harassment, the criminal justice system, even immigration, and we can begin to see why we are not solving our problems. American Culture right now is Buffalo-bill from "Silence of Lambs" screaming, "It rubs the lotion on the skin, or it gets the hose again."
So let me be one of few in our culture to say, rub the lotion on the skin, or don't. If you have a better product for skin care besides lotion, I would love to hear about and see if it has merit. Or, if you are fine with having dry skin, go right ahead. Just do not hurt others in the process of trying to prove your point and we will all be better people in the end.