LATENESS

Wednesday, October 28, 2020

Where did I get the idea that I must be on time for appointments?  Working backwards:

When I took the Erhard Seminars Training EST inSeptember1973, one had to be on time for meetings and after breaks or one would be confronted by leaders asking why. They answer properly was because I chose to be late. Traffic, parking, crowds were no excuse except acknowledging that I chose to be late. I am responsible for being late.

After that I made my clients and groups to be on time and to start meetings on time. I. Supervised a seminarian a while back who proclaimed that she was always late. I told her never to be late for my sessions with her. It took her a while to see that she was chasing to be late. She began to see that she was living her life without regard for other people’s time. 

They are inconsiderate of other people’s time or tout it another way they are rude.

I also saw that chronically late people were acting out their anger, or expressing their anger by being late.

When I first met Ann she was always late for our dates. I indicated that I did not like her keeping me waiting. That happened when she was late. She kindly and quickly gave up being late. It looked like to me that she was just not considerate to my time.

As a therapist individuals and couples often arrived late for their appointments with me. Their lateness became an issue in the therapy. Anger and lack of sensitivity toward others were problems to be faced. I also saw that chronically late people were acting out their anger, or expressing their anger in covert rather than in healthy ways.

At St. Paul’s, my high school, the classes were very small. Being late was a source of embarrassment interrupting the teaching and learning. We were on time all the time. Some times the train was late and that was a valid excuse as many in the class were also late.

Tardiness was not an issue in our home. My recollection is that we were generally on time and expected to catch the trolley and trains too get us to school.

I do not like to be late and seldom am late. I get anxious I think might be late. I was annoyed at my doctors and dentists lateness. I don’t mind it so much now that I am retired.

Jack - A book review

 

Jack by Marilynne Robinson

Jack a ne’er do well white guy and Della a respectable black school teacher fall in love. Her family are very respectable Christians and her father is a Methodist Bishop. Jack is estranged from his father a Presbyterian minister.

The couple share their thinking about sin and guilt, marriage and family, race and religion, poetry and prose and life in segregated St. Louis and Memphis in the 1920s.

Their forbidden love produces a pregnancy. The black family has long struggled to be honourable and respectable. They knew they were educated, strong and dignified. They were proud  to be black. They chose to be separated from white society and kept to themselves, as did the Jews, Italians and Germans who came to this country.

Jack and Della’s relationship threatened their way of life. The book ends with the pregnant couple venturing out on their own.

This a marvellous book with long dialogues between the couple and also with a Baptist minister’s input into Jack’s life. The scenes shift between the two cities and in the homes of the coloured families. Robinson’s command of narrative, descriptions of places and conversations is masterful. We are shown powerful black families, a struggling white man and the disgrace of racial prejudice.

RWC

VOTED IN 2020

 Ann and I voted today with absentee ballots and took them to a local post office. What a blessing to live in a city and state where we vote with confidence that our ballot will be counted. No long lines, no shortages of mail. boxes and most important no intimidation to casting our ballot. What a blight on states and partisans that threaten and hinder our right to vote as citizens of the United States of America.