We parents have stories we like to tell our children:
Cheaters never prosper.
Honesty is the best policy.
Good prevails.
Love wins.
Sometimes we speak these words as declaration of what we believe to be true.
Other times they are spoken as aspirations of what we wish were true.
Some days we fully embrace these stories—and other days we’re trying to convince both them and ourselves in real-time.
We talk to our children about the importance of generosity, of selflessness, of compassion.
We instruct them to take the high road, to be truthful, to treat people the way they wish to be treated, to avoid violence, to speak kindness.
We look for teachable moments where we can show them the tangible fruit of benevolence and truth and mercy.
We champion Love or God or Goodness or Karma as the thing that holds it all together, and we implore them to seek it.
We give them every deliciously sweet platitude packaged with brightly colored illustrations, and recite them over and over as their nightly twilight, dream world send off.
This is easy initially. When they’re younger, our children simply receive these words as gospel; they make sense to them, they feel right—and so they accept them with little hesitation.
It isn’t a hard sell at first, to make them believe that doing the right thing is always the thing to do, that goodness will always be rewarded, that loving people will eventually yield something beautiful. Innocence warmly welcomes such stories and so we gladly tell them.
But when our children get a little older, they encounter evidence to the contrary. They walk out into the world and they see another story playing out. They begin to see the cracks in our promises when they watch people doing bad things and succeeding:
The loud people get noticed.
The bullies control the playgrounds and the hallways.
The cheaters get ahead.
Cruelty is rewarded with attention.
They wonder if what we’ve told them all along is simply noble fiction; theoretical instructions that sound wonderful don’t really work in the world they now find themselves in. They ask us why they should choose the path of peace and honesty and empathy when so much around them testifies to its irrelevance. They interrogate us regarding the veracity of the good story we weaned them on—and we struggle to respond.
These days it’s difficult to know what to tell our children because most of us we aren’t sure what we believe anymore either. We see what they see and feel the disconnect and we’re wondering what is still true too. We are optimists considering retirement, faithful people losing their religion, travelers who’ve always taken the high road now looking for an exit—and our children are watching us.
My kids aren’t sure the world makes any sense. They’re wondering why it seems as though the bullies and the bad people have the run of the house. They’re feeling like honest, compassionate, loving people are now an endangered species.
I don’t lie to them. I tell then I see it all and that it frightens me too—but I let them know that I do still believe the story we’ve told them. I still believe that goodness is the best path, regardless of how many take the path or the hazards we face along the way. I still believe that the treasure of the bully and the braggart is a fool’s gold that will not endure and will eventually prove worthless.
I tell them that responding in love isn’t what we do to be rewarded, that responding in love is the reward, because it is the best way to honor being alive—that it is indeed yielding something beautiful in and around us even when we can’t see it.
I remind them that good people still inhabit this place, and that they too feel alone and frightened and aren’t sure whether goodness is worth it either—and to keep looking for these people and to keep them close.
Most of all I remind them of the undeniable, indescribable goodness I see in them, and let them know that as long as I have breath I’ll walk with them, and that together we’ll keep writing the best story we can and trust that is enough.
May you who wonder if goodness matters—be greatly encouraged that it does.
