Copperhead Road & Family of Origin

Have you ever flown anywhere for a vacation? Isn’t it interesting how you have to analyze what you pack when you fly in a way that is totally different that how you pack when you are traveling by automobile? The bag that seemed light at home can get very heavy after lugging it through the airport terminal.

The same is true in our relational abilities? We learn from our parents and grandparents what a marriage should look like. It does not matter that is the right picture or not, it is the one we believe because it is what we were taught and saw modeled for us.

In 1988 Steve Earle wrote a song called Copperhead Road. The singer tells of his grandfather and father making and selling moonshine. After serving in Vietnam, he comes home to alter the family tradition a bit. He begins growing marijuana. Now, I am not approving of moonshine or illicit drug use, I am only making a point. This song is above all things a song about family systems. The main character learned his behavior from his father and grandfather. He learned to sell illegal substances and disrespect authority from his family of origin.

Each of us carries “baggage” into our marriage and dating relationships. This baggage comes from what our family “taught us.” Why not take an honest look at the preconceptions you bring to your most intimate of relationships and ask: “What should I keep? What should I jettison?”

When it comes to relationships, what has your family taught you? What have the families of those we serve taught them? In all honesty, there are things we learned from our family about relationships that are good, wholesome, healthy, and worth keeping. Discover them; name them; keep them. Perhaps even improve upon them.

However, there are those items we “learned from our family” that are just plain wrong, unproductive and in many cases unhealthy. Likewise identify them; name them; then begin the process of eliminating them from your repertoire of relationship behaviors. Those “bags” can get very heavy if you carry them for year after year after year. Maybe they need to be repacked so as to lighten the load.

Paint by Number Dreams

I think Jackson Browne is one of the greatest lyricists in American music. He is such an incredible story teller. Take for example the picture your mind paints as you read these lyrics from Fountain of Sorrow.

Looking through some photographs I found inside a drawer
I was taken by a photograph of you
There were one or two I know that you would have liked a little more
But they didn’t show your spirit quite as true

You were turning round to see who was behind you
And I took your childish laughter by surprise
And at the moment that my camera happened to find you
There was just a trace of sorrow in your eyes

Here is another. In the song The Pretender, he speaks of finding a girl and then they will fulfill one another’s expectations. Consider . . .

I'm gonna find myself a girl

Who can show me what laughter means

And we'll fill in the missing colors

In each other's paint-by-number dreams

Isn’t that a great way to describe the expectations we bring into our marriage? We have this dream. We know exactly how it should be completed. We know what color it is, what shape it is, how it is decorated and even how we will manage it and enjoy having our expectations fulfilled. We then marry another incomplete human being and wonder why we are not happy. Why did they not live up to our expectations?

This is nothing short of a recipe for disaster is it not?

Why not take an honest look at the expectations we have placed upon our spouse. Are they realistic? Are they fair? Or are they totally unrealistic and completely unreachable? In our relationships, do we have a “paint by number dream” and are expecting someone else to simply fill it in? Or are you accepting them for who they are and then growing and improving together?

The outcomes could not be more different.

Marriage the Bond of Society

Who made this statement,“The first bond of society is marriage?"

No. It was not George W. Bush. It was likewise not Barack Obama. It also was not King, Hannity, Olbermann, or O’Reilly. It was not reported on MSNBC, CNN or FOX. In fact it did not come from the United States political left or right.

The quote was made by Cicero, a Roman philosopher who lived more than 2000 years ago.

Axiom #12: Confrontation

As you may or may not know, I am originally from the south. I was born and reared in North Carolina where I lived the first 22 years of my life. It is where my heart still lies quite often. I then lived 18 years in Tennessee. Having been in Pittsburgh since 1994, I have seen one or two of the summers up here. Since I grew up and lived forty plus years in the south the heat in Pittsburgh does not bother me as much as it does a lifelong Pittsburgher.

You know how it is with humans. We adapt to what we have in our environment. That is why humanity is able to live and thrive everywhere from the bitter northern arctic cold to the heat and humidity of the rain forest. It is one of our strengths as a race of humans. We adapt quite well. Some might say that adaptation could potentially be the flip side of a negative. How so? Let me explain.

While we adapt to our surrounding climate, the core of the reason is that we know we can do little to change it. (Let’s avoid a global warming discussion here. That is on a larger scale than I am discussing.) We know that the weather is like the old adage, “everyone’s talking about it, but no one is actually doing anything.” Well . . . because in the short term, we cannot change the weather. It is beyond our ability. So in one way you could say that we sort of become anesthetized to our surroundings and just adapt to them.

Here is the rub. We do that in our relationships also. We just become numb to it all. We say “it doesn’t matter.” We pretend we do not notice. We get busy with other things. We find diversions. We ignore issues that really matter to us. We do not risk a difficult conversation with those we care about. We simply adapt.

Granted there are times to adapt. There really are times to simply let it go because it really is not that big of a deal. As I have said countless times in leadership discussions, “Choose your battles. If you die on every hill you just end up dead. Some deals are just deals.”

But, and it is a big one, there are also times to draw lines and take a stand. There are times to say, “This should not be and we ARE going to talk about THIS! We are not sweeping this one under the rug and ignoring it.” It does not and should not be this way. At that point it takes work to get to the core of the matter. Once you start to peel back the layers you may, and probably will find, that you have had a hand in the matter and you are not totally innocent. That hurts. And it hurts a lot some times.

Why do we not do it? The reasons are varied and multifaceted, ranging from learned patterns in the relationship to family of origin training to abuse or the threat of it to insecurity to this being uncharted waters to numerous items on a long list. It is like Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty sang, “Baby, you could never look me in the eye. Yeah, you buckle with the weight of the words.”

These things ought not to be. We all need to take stock of our relationships and the issues we are suppressing and addressing. The risk is high, but the reward is even higher.

Axiom 11: Pick Your Battles

If there is one axiom that carries over into all my others, it is this one. When I was younger and more foolish, I felt I had to win every argument, even if it meant shouting down my opponents with weaker logic. As I have matured I have learned the utter fallacy of that strategy. It causes disruption on almost every level imaginable. Though the years I have learned that every battle is not worth fighting.

Part of that comes from so many years in school. I have spent so much time there that some of my family calls me a professional student. The higher in education I have gone, the less I think I know.

One of my present staff members and I were discussing a particular sticky situation when I said to him, “I don’t think that is worth fighting. Think about it. Even if we win, what have we won?” He looked at me and said, “Terry, if I had known you years ago, I would have had a lot less trouble in some past jobs.”

Every good general knows that a timely retreat can lead to ultimate victory. Every good basketball coach knows there is a time to kill the clock and get the game over. Every good football coach knows there is a time to punt on fourth down and not go for it. Every winning race car driver knows there is a time to just make laps to get to the end and not fight for every position on the track.

Remember, if you die on every hill, you just end up dead.

Axiom 10: Poison the Well

I will never forget the first time I heard this saying by a friend of mine from Chicago. I do not recall the details of what we were discussing, but I do recall him saying to me, “Are you trying to poison the well?” I was not sure exactly what he meant, so he told me. “You know what their objection to your idea is going to be so you are taking the power out of it before they even state it.”

He was right. That is exactly what I was doing. I still do that in almost every situation. I do it in message and lesson preparation. I do it in staff meetings. I do it in vision talks. I do it is sales calls. I will even do it in one on one motivational conversation. I do it without even thinking about it anymore.

This axiom was probably covered in my early speech classes under the topic of audience analysis. Think about the group to whom you will be speaking and how they will react to what you are saying. If you can anticipate it, then address it ahead of time. If you know what the contents of the well where their objections are kept, then poison that well ahead of time. Reduce the power of the objection.

I am not talking about manipulation here. In order to poison the well, you will need to recognize it, evaluate its merits, and address them in a logical fashion. Manipulation demeans people. I am talking about honestly evaluating their ideas so you can address them before they see daylight. Do not deny the reality or the existence of their objection, but do not allow it to stop you when you honestly think you have evaluated them and know the best direction.

If you can poison the well, you may avoid a much more volatile conflict in the future.