How Affirming Can You Be?
Meet my sister and the story of some rogue pens. Once a believer, always a believer.
My sister began her career as a middle-school English teacher, where she helped kids who felt they didn’t belong find a place where they now did.
The Los Angeles school system, where she taught, provided her with an alternate setting for these students. It was a house where they attended “school,” and she taught them life skills along with English literature. If they arrived in the morning not having eaten, she would insist they make themselves breakfast first.
Some of the boys wanted to be car mechanics, so she was able to locate a car that needed work, and that became their focal point.
The students thrived as they found their interests, met my sister’s daily reading requirements, and were held accountable for being a contributing member to the group.
At some point, my sister decided to leave the school system and apply her ideas and teaching skills to a business setting. She and a dear colleague became partners, set up shop, wrote a book (and eventually many more), and created a model that helped adults develop greater emotional intelligence and higher-functioning teams. Just like the middle-schoolers she had worked with, their clients learned to navigate a common space, set goals, and achieve something they could feel proud of.
My sister and her partner’s framework was adopted far and wide — companies, universities, school systems, the public sector…you name it.
They were way ahead of their time, fueled by a commitment to convert organizational and individual potential into a shining reality.
I share this tidbit as a preface to a funny story that made me realize “once a believer, always a believer.” My sister is completely authentic in what she preaches, with apparently no limits.
So here’s what happened.
My sister had moved to a senior community as she was now 80 years old and in need of more support. I live across the country and visited to help her get organized and acquainted with her new digs.
We were going through her boxes, figuring out what to toss, what to give away, and what could be useful and should be stored. I’d been through this ordeal with my mother, and now it was my sister’s turn. The process becomes tedious within minutes, but you slog your way through it and eventually marvel at what you accomplished.
You also say to yourself, “I am never going to keep this much stuff,” which sadly is not true. Yes, I have mostly stopped accumulating, but the possessions are already possessed and stored in my home.
As we were going through my sister’s vast inventory, I found a box of accumulated pens that I suggested we go through to weed out the bad ones.
The side of my sister that was an educator and then a consultant — the side that believes in everyone’s potential and the possibility of change — suddenly reared its head. For her, the pens became a surrogate for all the teams she has helped.
Here was our conversation — a conversation that reminded me that her values run as deep as the Pacific Ocean, which she is very near.
I’ll call my sister Linda:
Me: Linda, please go through the pens and pick out the good ones. We’ll toss the rest.
Linda: Ok, I need a piece of paper.
Now I am watching her salvage almost every pen, and they seem marginal at best.
Me: Linda, why aren’t you tossing those pens? They don’t work.
Linda: Well, they might eventually. I don’t want to prejudge them.
Me: Linda, they are pens. Not people. Judge all you want.
We couldn’t stop laughing. She was now treating pens with the same dignity she treated people.
What did I have to look forward to when we would clean out her fridge next month? Maybe the rotten apple that was looking forward to turning a corner? Was the shriveled green pepper an old vegetable that we need to respect?
More laughs were clearly ahead.
But I learned something. If you believe in “things” and their ability to grow and change over time, then you can display that value everywhere. Even where it doesn’t belong.
The instance came with a P.S.
At that moment, I loved my silly sister even more. In the impending darkness of tottering old age, she was still teaching me a lesson I wouldn’t forget.
The lesson? We bring ourselves and our values to our world, wherever we go. If we’re lucky, we find the opportunity to laugh along the way.
My sister laughed plenty as she decided to bet on only a handful of pens that might change over time. To the rest, she said, “You served me well.”
That moment was her display of quiet gratitude — another sterling quality of hers.