Childhood Lessons

I was watching my usual gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Democratic National Convention last night. I know it is nothing more than a precisely choreographed infomercial with fake drama and I shouldn't give credence to such things, especially being the anti-party, independent voter that I am. But I can't help it, I am an admitted political junkie. I'll even watch the Nazi....err, I mean Republican Convention next week. Only for that one I'll have to change the channel several times a night as my blood pressure rises and I can feel my neck veins about to pop out because of the stupid crap that will be flowing forth from the mouths of morons.

Anyway, that's not my point today.

I was watching Joe Biden's speech last night and he pointed out his mother in the audience, then went on to talk about the important things in life she taught him. One of those lessons was the usual thing about how nobody was better than him and he wasn't better than anyone else.

Now I understand why parents tell their kids this, and there is probably a good chance that I will try to impart the same lesson on my soon-to-be-born daughter. I want her to have the confidence in herself that I was lacking as a kid without the cockiness of a spoiled brat. The simplicity of the "good as anyone, not better than anyone" lesson is probably a really effective way of imparting this.

But isn't this a pretty dishonest thing we tell our children? And won't they realize that we were blowing smoke, eventually, after they get older and have more life experience?

Aren't lots of people better than other people? By the same token, aren't lots of people lesser humans than others?

Name anyone and I can name someone who is better than that person and someone who is worse than them. Except for maybe Hitler, I doubt I could think of anyone worse than Hitler.

Isn't accepting the fact that some people are better than you a part of being a grown-up? Knowing that you are a better person than some others is also just a fact of life, not always an uppity attitude.

I have no problem accepting that Martin Luther King, Paul Robeson, John Lewis, Sargent Shriver, Aung San Suu Kyi, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, my wife and the founding doctors of Médecins Sans Frontières are/were better people than myself.

I also know I'm a better human being than Stalin, John Gotti, Dick Cheney, Robert Mugabe, Mother Theresa, Cindy McCain, Vladimir Putin, Ralph Reed, the entire Bush family and all 265 guys that have been the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church.

Each list is a lot longer, of course. These were the ones I thought of off the top of my head.

I don't believe that not thinking of myself as equal to the people on each list is a bad thing.

But I'm sure that won't stop me from feeding my daughter that other line of crap.

*