We All Have A Terrorist Or Two In Our Life

Now that Osama bin Laden is dead I may be allowed to say something that I have held back for a long time: we all likely have a terrorist or two in our lives. And the question is: Do we need to have them?

When I was the tender age of nineteen I sent an application to the German Diplomatic Service. Together with a small group of others I was invited for two days of interviews, tests, presentations and the like. One of the assignments we had to accomplish was to choose a topic from a list of 30 or so, put together a short talk about this topic and then present it to group of seven senior diplomats. I had the bad luck of a late draw. Most topics were already given to others. One interesting one was left: Talk about the meaning of Ayatollah Khomeini for the modern world. I had actually given this topic some thought before and had already come to the conclusion that Khomeini's appearance on the political landscape sent an important message to the US and its allies about the power and force of Islam. I warned in my talk that in order to maintain some reasonable influence in the middle east the US and their allies needed to learn from and about Islam. Khomeini's appearance meant that the western world couldn't always get what it wanted.

You can imagine that with this talk I had given myself the kiss of death. I realized it as I was speaking to the panel. Their faces spoke volumes. Honestly, when I wrote the talk, I had no idea. I was naive. I was only nineteen. I can assure you that that naivete has left me since then. 31 years later I have seen some things that can happen and I can honestly say that while the appearance of an other on our "scene" is an important event, nobody should have to deal with planes being flown into sky-scrapers. And, of course, nobody should have to deal with drones threatening to blow them out of their homes.

So, why, you may be wondering, why is he talking about terrorism, etc. in a column devoted to fathering? I can tell you why. I am talking about this because our children--foster, adopted, own--are others that have appeared on our "scene." And sometimes, when they instill fear in us, they're like little (or not so little) terrorists. So, the question is, when they attack us and tell us they hate us and say that we're the most evil thing they have ever known, when they openly or discretely wish us dead . . . should we blow them out of the water? Or can we give peace a chance by assuming:

a) they feel terror themselves, proportionate to how they terrorize us
b) they actually have important things to say to us when they act like that.


All depends on how we can move on from the initial attack. Can we overcome the feeling of revenge and anger? Or would that be just appeasement? All I know is that hate makes us blind. Blind is not the same as being determined. We have been witnessing a lot of political blindness on all sides lately. But we have very little open-eyed determination to balance all the blindness.

Children and terrorists have at least one thing in common: they challenge our notion of power, self-assurance, our sense of entitlement and our vain certainty that only we know what's right. The lessons we have to learn are not always fun. They shake the foundations of what we might believe about ourselves. But they always seem to come from a place within ourselves that we actually know, but have attempted to ignore or suppress for a long time. Here are some of the lessons I had to learn:

a) I am often dismissive in tone and posture; dismissive of what my children are saying to me.
b) I interrupt and believe I have the right to do so.
c) I micro-manage their chores, tasks, etc.
d) I am too friendly and, therefore, not necessarily able to stand up to a teacher of theirs or simply stand up for what I need.

My children, especially, the two that have now both reached teenhood, have thrown "bombs" at those things. Repeatedly. At times I did a wonderful job listening, but at other times shame made my attempts mediocre and unconvincing. My children, I realize, have the capacity to express the shadow-content of my soul. And if I neglect this fact and simply fight them for being obnoxious with me, if in other words, I act as if those charges against me are completely absurd, I risk fighting my children, repressing them and ignoring them like I have tried to ignore my own shadow. I will surely not be able to love them for who they are.

And the next time they throw a "bomb" at me I might be running the risk of "killing" them in a senseless act of revenge, anger and shame.

So, to answer my question from the beginning, we do need those "terrorists", those Others in our lives. They keep us honest in ways we, by ourselves, cannot. Let's greet them graciously and with respect.