Parent Exploratory Group...

Parent Exploratory Group Meeting
January 28, 2003

Dauphin County Technical School, Harrisburg

Introduction --
This, the first meeting in 2003 of the Parent Exploratory Group (PEG), was held on the stage of the DCTS auditorium sitting around a table on Larry Evans’ new padded seats. Our group was very small for this meeting and composed of our regular PEG attendees. Within this atmosphere came a certain intimacy – we know each other rather well now and have become friends. There was no formal agenda and nothing in particular to accomplish except to be together. PEG had not met since October of 2002 and so this meeting became a chance simply to get reacquainted as friends sharing a common purpose. Thanks Larry for letting us use your seats.

New Experiences --
The meeting began naturally with observations and stories for what has been happening with each of us. One parent spoke of her teen’s relationship with one of the DCTS shop teachers and of the lesson being imparted to her child to be constructive and not critical. Judy and I spoke of Troy and his recent accomplishments with academics and his new job gained through the DCTS work cooperative.

Larry Evans talked about teaching at DCTS. Larry feels this year to have arrived. For the first time, Larry says, he is teaching at once to his students and to himself. And Larry’s daughter, Lauren, is now one of his students. He promises big, new things for the 2003 Parent Seminar now that he is both teacher and father of a turbulent teen.

But it is Matt Koons who captured all of us with his story of continuing struggle to come back from sudden paralysis due to Gullian Barre Syndrome. Matt was infected last spring by a rare virus and within 24 hours became paralyzed from the waist down and in his arms and hands. He related to us a difficult and emotional struggle for nearly a year now to recover from and cope with the dramatic change.

When we last saw him in July Matt was wheelchair bound and had significant difficulty with movements and tasks. At this meeting Matt walked in with only a slight limp though he is still regaining the feeling in his limbs. Matt is back to work on a part-time basis and can travel, but still is not permitted to drive. He and the doctors, however, expect the full return of Matt’s functionality hopefully in time for his birthday in May.

Matt spoke to us of what it has been like for him to lose so much and then to have it slowly, sporadically be returned to him. He spoke of fears, upset, concern and fascination, but mostly what we heard was a particular gratitude from Matt for the lessons – the gains – derived from loss.

Gains from Loss --
Matt’s observations became our informal theme for this meeting of PEG. It was noted at the end of Matt’s story how few people today can see gains in the face of loss. Rather, people in our modern society tend to struggle with loss. People seek to avoid loss, to disdain loss, to attack and forcibly overcome the condition, the causes and even the nature of loss. Loss is seen only as loss – as a form of trouble. And from this attitude the real gains from loss remain largely unknown.

Matt related how, because of his paralysis, he lost physical sensations, motor functions, and the ability to conduct many normal activities. And, with a number of small images, he also explained to us what it has been like over this past year to slowly receive them back. What became obvious was that the experiences of regaining, and what Matt has come to appreciate from them, would not have been possible without first having suffered the loss.

We all know stories of people who are blind, or deaf, or physically disabled who, with the loss of one sense or ability, see the significant sharpening of others. Their bodily and functional shortfalls appear so tragic and unfair to us, and yet many of these people are far richer in their seemingly diminished capacities than we can possibly imagine.

One of the most difficult lessons for us is to see loss as gain and as blessing. Yet just as with black and white, warm and cold, day and night, good and bad, war and peace, gain needs loss in order to exist at all. If it were not for loss how would we know what gain looks like? What would ever define gain for us if its opposite condition, loss, were not present?

And who of us with any certainty can even say what is truly gain and what is loss? As with the discovery of synthetic rubber, many of our greatest inventions have come about as accidents or as sudden insights when the inventor had all but given up. Milton Hershey went bankrupt several times before he finally came to financial success. Christopher Columbus landed in America while searching futilely for a trade route to the Indies.

It is a wise person who understands that loss is not loss, but an opportunity for gain; that hardship is given to us as discipline in struggle from which to obtain more than what we have; that peace is not found in the absence of trouble, but rather from within it.

Several other members related stories demonstrating difficulties with family, children, events and personal situations that have emerged for them ultimately as gain.

Relationships: Contract or Union --
This discussion led to a brief review of the lesson provided at the October 2002 PEG meeting. During this meeting we discussed a lecture by marriage counselor, Father John Mack, in which relationships as contract were contrasted with relationships in union.

Father John established his comparison around four points:

Relationships as contract are essentially impersonal; relationships in union are always personal.

Relationships as contract place value in what the relationship can produce; relationships in union find their value in the relationship itself.

Relationships as contract are based on duty and what at minimum must be done; relationships in union are based in love and what more can be done.

Relationships as contract are based on terms and limits; relationships in union are based in unending growth.

The Mark of Personal Power --
This review opened a question as to what each of us as individuals within our many relationships are intended to be?

In thinking about this question John Borland related a recent experience of looking at himself in the bathroom mirror following a shower.

He had done this many times before; it was nothing special. But for some reason this time what he saw was not his reflection, but a condition. He saw a person: open, vulnerable and with nothing hidden. This very compromising observation was contrasted with the more usual condition of being clothed, personally secure and able to allow exposure to others exactly on his terms.

John pondered this realization and noted that the while the second condition is what he is really most comfortable with, for a relationship to truly work as union the first condition is very likely what he should endeavor to be.

With this John unveiled the following meditation for discussion by the group:

Is the mark of Personal Power:

To become capable and self-assured, or to be able to be vulnerable and open?

To strive towards getting what you want, or to endeavor to give what others need?

To set conditions and expectations as a leader, or to respond to situations and occurrences as a servant?

To best ensure that what needs to happen does happen, or to best allow that what should happen can happen?

To put forward lessons that others will never forget, or to create example that others will always remember?

 What is the answer?

John admitted that these points have the potential to be controversial, that there is no perceived right answer and that attendees may choose to disagree with the points altogether.

It was observed that there are two conditions contained within each of the five points. A question was asked, why couldn’t each of the conditions in the points be true. John acknowledged that there was no reason at all why they couldn’t.

Larry Evans then discerned a connection between the two conditions in each point.

The first condition, Larry expressed, is really what we want. However, the second condition is really what we must strive to be in order for the first condition to be. For example, to become truly capable and self-assured you must first be willing to be vulnerable and open.

Larry’s observation was a good one and, at least in part, a point of the lesson. True personal power – the second condition – is generally less obvious to us than the gain – the first condition – associated with it. And true personal power – as with each of the second conditions – has associated with it a certain degree of loss.

For it is in daring to lose of what we think must be that opportunities for true gain arise.

Thinking Outside the System --
But there was also a second point to this lesson. As with John’s experience in the bathroom that gave birth to this meditation, there is a need to view situations from a perspective of freethinking, from vantage points that are apart from expectations and conditioned responses.

Our group was cautioned to avoid entanglements with, what was called, “systems” of thought, motivation or acceptable action.

Patterns or platforms such as intellectualism, rationalism, emotionalism, psychology, philosophy, prior experience base, business, economics, technology, politics, security, justice, comfort, pleasure or even religion insofar that any of these seek to construct predictable, certain outcomes were portrayed as systems.

These systems can be detrimental and even dangerous in that they can come to override creative thought, close down consideration for possible options and numb us against realities and other perspectives. We can become caught up in a pattern of thinking – of what comes next must come next – such that we are no longer open or aware, but rather enclosed, blinded and utterly controlled in the system we have chosen to follow.

Understand that systems in themselves are not necessarily improper, it is rather the blind acceptance of such systems that must be challenged personally and corporately against our falling into arrogance, fear, false security, legalism, certainty or, worst of all, complacency.

Like the artistic method that teaches people to draw by turning pictures upside down so that students see not the recognizable picture, but the lines and shapes of the picture, the real point of this small lesson with personal power was to help us view a situation from a different perspective – beyond the system of routine – such that we might see it anew and so draw fresh, creative insight.

What Does it Mean --
So often our choices in life, in our relationships (and no part of our lives exists outside of relationships), are driven not so much by quality of outcome as by a certain mindless adherence to pattern. We wish for ourselves to be different, but do again and again what we have always done. We wish for our children to be caring, dignified and respectful, but we fill them with examples, teaching and influences that diminish these qualities simply because the system tells us to.

How we must culture ourselves to see beyond the systems and how we must be willing to accept change, and even perceived loss, such that the things of quality that we dare to see we can also dare, painstakingly and courageously, to make real in ourselves and with our families.

We all wish to change the system, but the only real way to this is by changing ourselves, for aren’t we all part of the system?

The Future --
Larry described for us what the value of the Parent Exploratory Group really is. It is about us, we parents and friends of DCTS, getting together just to be together, to share and to support. It isn’t about notoriety and numbers don’t matter. As long as one person continues to come PEG will go on.

Larry expressed that a good time for the next PEG meeting would likely be shortly into the 2003 Parent Seminar. In this way new parents and friends can be exposed to PEG and to the other affective skills community projects available to them. As always, new people will join with us, and with them our efforts will continue.

Conclusion --
The meeting ended as quietly as it began. The weather outside DCTS on this winter night was cold and bitter, but the atmosphere, the feelings and bonds made inside the school and with us remain warm and welcome.

-- John Borland --

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Last Modified: March 23, 2003