Isolation... Not Just Being Alone

I love my alone time.  I love the escape from deadlines, complaints, to do lists, and trying to make small talk.  I like being alone, isolated from the thronging demands of life.  The irony of this moment is that while I write these words my two year old daughter is behind me tucked between me and my chair drawing on my back with her finger singing about how much she likes water, pausing occasionally to lean up over my shoulder and see what I’m doing and to ask me to draw her a picture.  Not exactly “alone time”.  But there’s a vast difference between isolated alone time and the isolation that destroys people, relationships, and businesses.  This destructive kind of isolation can be found in even the busiest of people. 

“Isolation comes in many forms and most don’t even realize how isolated they are until it’s too late”

Isolation can take many appearances; from the individual who lashes out at those who offer any form of criticism to the leader seeking to surround him or her self with “yes men” to the person far to busy to truly interact with anyone.  While not exhaustive, each of these people may not be isolated in the sense of being totally alone but they have strategically isolated certain parts of themselves from outside influences.  Generally speaking people excuse their isolation with claims of desiring consistency, authenticity, or preservation.  The perceived safety of isolation distracts from it’s destructive nature.  The danger in isolation, even selective isolation, is that it skews reality. 

“Destructive isolation can be found in even the busiest of people”

Any environment in which there is only one source of influence or one provider of truth has the potential to distort reality and be destructive.  The destructive nature of an inaccurate reality born out of isolation is perhaps most visible when we look at cults or peoples living in a compound with one leader as the sole source of it’s influence and “truth”. Unfortunately, isolation in our own lives is not nearly as obvious.  Far too often I witness homes in which a spouse or a parent’s anger creates a “protective” barrier around a family consequently isolating that family from healthy external influences.  The spouses and children of angry or even violent people are forced to live within the skewed reality the isolated person has created.  Isolated leaders often use guilt instead of anger as their method of corralling followers.  Failure to grow or attract new followers is credited to the weaknesses or ignorance of non-followers.  The unchallenged concepts of a leader, spouse, or family member can rapidly become absolute truth to the isolated regardless of whether or not they are right.  The longer skewed realities are allowed to go unchallenged the more fiercely the isolated defend those “truths” they have built their lives around. 

On a personal note I have noticed my own tendency for isolation when I get so busy running from one task to another that in my overexposure to tasks I end up isolating myself.  Busyness, for me, has become the most common way to create isolation.  If I stay busy, I stay distracted and I’m never in one place long enough to see the full impact of myself on that environment.  As a result I can live in a skewed reality in which I believe that I’m more productive, successful, pleasant to work with, easy to work for than I really am.  When what has actually happened is that I’ve not allowed myself to be present for critique because I’m off to the next task or project never allowing the previous environment to fully impact me.  In this manner success can isolate by inviting the successful to ignore the things that didn’t facilitate success.  Instead of becoming aware of the things needing change for growth, we can ignore/isolate from them and subtly focus only on the qualities that brought accomplishment.

Do I welcome critique or seek to discredit contrary sources?

As I have written this post I realize that even my own children are isolated to a certain extent when it comes to their beliefs about me, their father.  Right now I am the “strongest bestest” dad who can fix anything.  It won’t be until my children are well into their teens that they realize their dad can’t do everything and that my influence on this world is frighteningly small.  If I do a good job with my kids they will not refuse to accept this truth but will accept the true reality in which they live:  that their dad, while awesome, has limits and doesn’t know everything. 

Isolation comes in many forms and most don’t even realize how isolated they are until it’s too late.  Hopefully an awareness of the potential negative effects of isolation will allow people to accept their faults and be willing to be changed by external authorities instead of defending their narrow-mindedness with anger and guilt.  Am I open to genuine feedback or am I personally offended when someone points out the error of my ways?  Do I welcome the advice of others or cringe at their suggestions and mentally discredit their perspective in order to maintain my own skewed reality?  My honest answer to these questions might just reveal an isolated environment of my life. 

Hidden Consequences to Hiding From Your Kids

I recently had an argument with my wife in front of my kids.  Well, let me correct that, I recently over reacted in a conversation with my wife in front of my kids and I enticed my wife into an argument that resulted in me walking into the garage and staring at my freezer.  Moments later my kids came out into the garage and gave me a hug followed by my wife who informed me the kids had decided, “Daddy needs a hug, from mommy too”.  My kids are 6 and 2.  So not only did I misbehave in front of my kids, I behaved in such an immature manner that it was even obvious to them.  That realization coupled with the hugs of my kids effectively melted my heart and demanded an apology from me, not only to my wife but to my children as well.

“If it’s not a behavior I want my children to possess, it should be a behavior I don’t want to possess”

While I’m certainly not proud of my behaviors that day, I have given that situation a lot of thought.  Did I drop the ball in parenting my children because I argued with their mother in front of them?  Did I just example to them how they are allowed to talk to their mother?  I have often heard parents claim that they go out of their way to keep from arguing in front of their kids.  They will often boast the fact that “our kids have never seen us argue”.  Is it healthier to hide the bad and display only the good for my kids?  If that is true, is it also true for my marriage? Should I hide things from my wife that might show me to be something other than what I want her to think I am?  What about at work?

After much deliberation, the following are reasons why I will not hide from my children when I’m disagreeing with my wife or anyone for that matter. 

#1 – What are you saying or doing in your argument that your children should not witness?  If it’s not appropriate for your kids to hear then it’s not appropriate at all!  I’m amazed at how many people have an age limit on appropriate behavior.  With society’s age based legalization of driving, drinking, and smoking, somehow morality got thrown into that mix as well.  When you are old enough to drive you are old enough to cuss… or is it when you are old enough to drink you are allowed to cuss… I can’t remember. 

Why do people even say “not around the kids”?  Isn’t it because we are trying to convey to them the right way to behave by not exposing them to wrong behaviors.  If it’s a behavior that I do not want my children to possess as adults, shouldn’t it be a behavior I do not want to possess as an adult?

#2 – Have a little self-control.  If the reason you are ushering your children out of the room for your arguments is so you can have more freedom to say what you want, then it sounds like you are creating an environment in which you are free to lose control.  What is the age that your children are allowed to stop losing control?  How long does a couple have to be married before they are allowed to quit treating one another with the common courtesies they extend to strangers?

“My arguments with others should example… proper speaking and behavior.”

#3 – If your kids never see you argue they’ll also never see you make up.  This can create in them an incorrect assumption that it is never ok to disagree with someone.  If they ever do disagree with someone then they are not going to know how to bring it to a healthy resolution.  Instead what we’ve effectively done is teach our children the importance of avoiding conflict.  Then we wonder why they get mad and retreat to their bedroom and won’t talk to us when they become teens.  When you usher your kids out of the room so you can have a conflict you are cheating them out of a learning opportunity to show them, nay, that examples for them, the proper way to argue or disagree and how to make up. 

My arguments with others should show observers that even when you are angry there is a proper way to speak and behave.  I should be modeling what it looks like to ask for forgiveness for raising my voice, storming out, or just being nasty and how to be the one to forgive.  If my conflicts aren’t teaching my children healthy behaviors and expressions of emotions then maybe what I need is to work on being a better example and stop hiding from my need for improvement.  

A Solution or A Distraction, How Can I Tell?

I frequently interact with people who find themselves or their marriages in crisis.  I’m not so naïve to think that I’m stop #1 on their journey to healing, in fact I’m often a last option to ease the conscience so they can say “well, at least we tried pastoral counseling, the church, etc.”.  They will often detail how they’ve tried talking to friends and family, other pastors, counselors, how they’ve read so many books and nothing seems to be working.  I can’t help but wonder why they are now talking to me, do they honestly believe that I am so much wiser and more competent than all those who tried to help them before?  Answer: no.  One of two things is happening.  They are either looking for a magical formula that will fix everything for them or they have become addicted to the distractions of a “new solution”. 

“The rush of a new experience can often overshadow its lack of effectiveness”

When couples find a new counselor or parents read a book with a new parenting strategy there is often an increase in energy and sense of hope that brightens their darkness for a moment.  The rush of a new experience can often overshadow its lack of effectiveness.  Consider the rebound relationship.  A new relationship temporarily distracts from the issues that brought about the demise of my previous one.  A new church or move to a new area gives the feeling of a fresh start when it really only places more urgent needs to the head of the queue for attention, the old ones are still there, just not as noticeable for a time.  How many marriages dissolve once the children move out?  The greatest reason is because the problem areas of the marriage were shuffled out of sight in order to focus on the more pressing issues of raising children.  Once the distraction of raising children was gone, the problem area resurfaces and couples end up throwing away decades of life and relationship

“Is the solution addressing my issue or distracting me from it?"

New advice, new strategies, and new methods easily put the focus on doing something else and can temporarily seem effective without actually addressing the things that truly need fixing.  Fad diets are a great example of this quick easy fix that seems to work for a time only to fail the test of longevity.  Simply shuffling problems to a less noticeable area of ones life is not the same as fixing that problem.  Hiding within the busyness of the new and fresh cheats us out of ever truly growing or developing beyond what caused us to look for a solution in the first place. 

So how can we tell if a solution is working or just distracting?  Ask yourself these questions.  Is this new solution addressing my issue or distracting me from it?  Am I still afraid to think about the problem areas of my life?  If new solutions require me to interact with the problem areas instead of offering me a guilt free way to distract from them then chances are that solution is one worth your time to see through.  People addicted to new solutions tend to run away from real solutions because they don’t want to or aren’t ready to face the hard issues in their lives.  The true challenge is to not quit when I don’t like what a solution is revealing about me.