kids...and adults

the right thing to do

The two conversations with each of my kids today are incredible gifts as they are both humbling, aware, and good people.

My son is finishing up the last puts and takes at the University of Colorado as you likely know. He has operated on a pretty measly income over the past decade, not so much due to his student status (at William and Mary, as an employee at the Chicago Botanical Gardens, and a CU in Boulder) but because of an experience he had ten years ago.

He participated in a student research cohort grooming biologists at a major western land grand university in the summer of 2013. He shared a dorm room with another guy from an immigrant family in a particularly agricultural region of the country. This fellow, without ever knowing it, fundamentally altered my son’s appreciation of life, money, and circumstances. This other student knew what few kids know in their early 20s and managed to pass this wisdom along: life is not always fair nor is it always going to work out as you’d hope but you choose what most matters to you so you will likely have to forego options you might also enjoy in a perfect world. In other words, life is a series of trade offs.

This guy saw his father foresake the family upon arriving in the United States by starting an altogether different family. When this teenager approached his father to talk him out of it, the father basically told his oldest to forget they had ever been a family. That conversation made my son’s roommate determined he would never abandon his mother or any family of his own.

Fast forward to the summer they were studying in the research program. This kid was engaged by age 20. The kid already knew, having watched his mother and siblings, what it takes to feed, clothe, and house a family, much less educate them on the salaries available in their community. The student admitted to my son that it would be great to go into biology as a field after a graduate program but he probabaly had absolutely no chance of that as he wanted to marry soon, start his own family, and take care of his birth family. Money would be, therefore, exceptionally tight.

My son had never wanted for much. His father and I were divorced but we made sure the kids had what they needed and often wanted. After the summer of 2013, however, my son’s attitude about money, about work, about respecting those who work in less well paying jobs, and about the world changed in a seismic manner. He scaled down everything he spent because he was so aware of the privilege he had. Further, he has managed to save a decent amount of money, regardless of his work status, each year since. He didn’t get to attend his erstwhile roommate’s wedding but the fellow left in indelible mark on my son’s thinking.

He also recognises that life is not always fair. He works hard, is damnably independent about it, and not one to whine about life.

So it was not surprising when he recounted this morning that he had gone out for breakfast. I asked if he met any of his Evolutionary Biology tribe at Dot’s, a Boulder institution for a bloody good breakfast. My son paused, then awkwardly said no. He then told me he had taken a homeless guy on the street to breakfast. When I expressed mild surprise, only because it wasn’t what I thought he would say, my son quietly said ‘He was hungry. He had lived in an RV for a couple of weeks but had even lost that so I took him to breakfast’. Afterward, the guy asked to be dropped off on the periphery of town where he said some other homeless people frequently gathered.

My son told me this with no fanfare, no self-congratulations, no desire for praise. He just said it was the right thing to do.

We talked about other things for the rest of our call but I was struck how much this attitude is central to his world view, much as studying math or biology or being aware of current events: they are the right things to do.

This followed on a magnificent series of conversations with my daughter this week. I am fairly certain I have had the best talks with my daughter ever as we share her post-surgery recovery. She cannot entirely operate on her own right now so I am helping for a few days. She has not complained a single bit, we have not passed a raised eyebrow or voice between us, and she has shown a similar appreciation that life is what you make of it for the reasons you find compelling.

She too had a roommate experience several years ago which sent her unreservedly towards assuming responsibility for her own life. She witnessed two young women whose parents did absolutely everything for them with no need for them to ever ponder the future of money. My daughter still recoils at the idea that these women would ever know how to complete a college program, much less get a driver’s license or pay off a credit card of any amount. Their parents simply did everything, with the money largely being incidental to the behaviour the women assumed was a given for life. My daughter supposed the parents thought they were helping but were instead planting seeds of helplessness.

As we were discussing how profoundly that had affected her, she repeated the same phrase about being responsible for her life: it’s the right thing to do. She acknowledges she could do things differently and she admits she wonders about exactly how her life will flow but she is comfortable about making her own mistakes and her own good choices because that is the right thing for her to be doing.

When I hung up with my son a couple of hours after my daughter and I had such a similar conversation, I could not get the phrase ‘it’s the right thing to do’ out of my mind. It them reminded me of Kent Keith’s words which I repeat below.

My kids have their ups and downs as we every single one do. But in this era when we see so much self-entitlement (which you have heard ad nauseum irritates me) and all-too-frequent refusal to take responsibility for our own actions, I felt hopeful for my kids’ futures. I know they are adults rather than kids which is a big deal because they are taking on their own responsibilities and making their own choices. That doesn’t mean I stop worrying nor does it mean they stop asking for feedback from others. It means they know there are some things that are simply the right things to do.

Kent Keith famously published ‘the Paradoxical Commandments’ in the late 1960s, although I first came across them during a blip of attention thirty-two years later. I close with them today as I find each and every one worth us remembering today. I am especially taken with his website’s tag line ‘Finding Personal Meaning in a Crazy World’.¹

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.

Think big anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.

© Copyright Kent M. Keith 1968, renewed 2001

1. Kent M. Keith, ‘Anyway The Paradoxical Commandments’, 1968, retrieved at

https://www.paradoxicalcommandments.com/