I’ve made a decision to not talk about ’serious’ stuff here, too much. The truth is, I have a lot of ’serious’ in my life, more than I would like really. It’s part of my love life, it’s part of my kids lives and it’s part of my every day. The nice thing about the ’serious’ is that if your heart is open, you can learn a lot about the world and yourself.
I don’t talk about what I do for ‘work’ (ie. financial sustenance) because it is shrouded in a great deal of confidentiality. I work to protect people who cannot protect themselves. Children. It’s hard work, really hard some days, and other days it’s enlightening, uplifting even. There are a lot of people in my field who give the field a bad name and scary mythology surrounds it. Those are the folks who abuse the power, have a false sense of superiority, and feel holier than thou. I come to this work open, having been in the trenches of depression, challenged to the edges of parenting, I sympathize, I empathize, I hear, I learn. When decisions about safety need to be made, I am part of balanced, team decision making.
Last week I met a family who had come across my desk. At least part of the information I had about them turned out to not be true, perhaps all of it. I spent an hour or so talking with the dad, hearing his story of once being a professional in an alternative sport only to have his dreams shattered by an injury that would seem like an inconvenience to the rest of us. I sat across from him, many of his teeth knocked out from his days spent living his dream, covered nearly head to toe in body art. I heard him talk in a soft voice about doing anything (legal) he could to get money for his family, taking odd jobs, getting shorted but taking whatever money he got just because it was more than nothing, walking miles to get to a job site. I heard the sadness in his voice when he spoke about missing his family who lived many miles away who he hasn’t been able to visit in a long time because his finances prevent it. I listened to the lilt in his voice when he talked about his new dream doing something he was not only good at, but that clearly brought him joy. I sat humbled as he talked about scraping money together to move this dream forward. I was looking at a person whose fingers are white as he gripped the edges of poverty yet he is still motivated enough to find something he loved to do that would sustain him financially.
When I wrap up with folks, I ask them if they have any questions for me. The typical question is “are you taking my kids?”. He asked “do you have any tattoos?”. It caught me off guard a bit and I showed him the few I do have, somewhat trivial tats, full of meaning for me, but not exactly what I would call artwork. His face lit up, he commented on them, especially the one I have on my thigh which is the same one my oldest and dearest friend has over her heart. We chatted like people who were perhaps waiting in line at the market together, or sitting at a bus stop.
I left a bit enlightened. This guy, this family, on the fringes of society, pulling and scraping to keep their life as normal as possible, he was happy. I see so many people in the world who have seemingly everything. They have health, they have a roof over their head that they are not in danger of losing, they have enough food to feed themselves and their kids, they go on vacation several times a year, they lack none of life’s basic needs. Yet they complain about not having enough and about life being unfair to them; they go on about what they should have in this world, wanting better, faster, shinier, but none of it making them truly happier.
I think I’d much rather sit on that guys dirty back porch with him talking about tattoos for a couple hours than sit and listen to someone who has more than they need drone on about their distorted woes and the next big thing they’ve convinced themselves they must have. Because what those kind of folks are really lacking is humility. And that cannot be bought.
