Ken Potts
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I began writing a weekly newspaper column twenty years ago. Sometimes that seems like a long time. At other times, especially as I assembled material for this book, it seems only yesterday that I began to take what I had learned as a professional pastoral counselor and marriage and family therapist and tried to translate it into concepts and language that the general public could understand.
Mental health professionals have sometimes gotten a bit carried away in creating obscure languages and complex theories to describe and explain human behavior. Not that human behavior is simple to describe or easy to explain. It’s just that we don’t help matters any when we take what is already complex and make it even more so through our "professional" discourse. The term "psychobabble" was coined a number of years ago to describe this tendency. Considering the professional literature I read each week, I’m afraid psychobabble is still alive and well in the mental health field.
When readers have encouraged me to bring my columns together in book form, they usually mention their appreciation for my "down to earth" or "simple" way of writing about people and their relationships. I think that’s why many of my pieces have wound up posted on bulletin boards or taped to refrigerators. I hope that you’ll find some of them equally worth sharing. That’s why I’ve included a "TO/FROM" box at the beginning of each column. I encourage you to pass around anything you find particularly meaningful.
If I’ve learned anything in my now twenty six years in the mental health field, it’s that we are each so unique, and our relationships so unique, that there are few hard and fast rules for "living, loving, and finding happiness." So, though I sometimes express my ideas with a good deal of conviction, I also encourage you to consider them critically. Ultimately, you must make your own decisions about how to live a life worth living. If my thoughts can help you in your search then I’ll be more than satisfied.
For more than twenty years Rev. Dr. Kenneth Potts has written a weekly newspaper column featured in publications throughout the Chicago metropolitan area. A pastoral counselor and marriage and family therapist, he has helped hundreds of individuals, couples, and families to live healthier, happier, and more fulfilling lives. Ken has earned a Master of Divinity degree with a specialization in Pastoral Counseling, a Masters Degree in Counseling Psychology, and a Doctor of Ministry Degree with a specialization in Marriage and Family Therapy. He is a Fellow in the American Association of Pastoral Counselors and a Clinical Member of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, as well as being licensed as a Clinical Professional Counselor, Marriage and Family Therapist, and Social Worker. Married, a father of three and step-father of two, he brings to his observations not only his extensive academic background, clinical training and professional experience, but a breadth of "real life" encounters with the challenges of "living, loving, and finding happiness."
KIDS NEED TO FIND (AND LOSE) HEROES
Heroes - we've all had them. Athletes, actors, political leaders, soldiers, pastors, physicians, parents, etc... Heroes are the people we look to as examples, who express qualities, or act in ways we would like to emulate.
Heroes are especially important for children. Much of who we become in life depends on the adults we seek to model ourselves after when we are kids. My heroes were my grandfather (who seemed to be able to fix anything), Tom Swift (a fictional character who was a cross between a scientist and the Lone Ranger), and my pastor (who was my ideal as a minister and counselor). I can see bits and pieces of all three in who I am as an adult.
Now, as children we live in a world of blacks and whites, rights and wrongs, goods and evils. For children, heroes can do no wrong (at least, not and remain heroes). They live lives that are without fault, blemish, or error. Heroes are 'superhuman.'
It needs to be that way. When we are young we simply do not have the cognitive or mental ability to deal with the real world - the world in which even those we admire most have their imperfections, character flaws, make mistakes. To feel reasonably safe and secure, we need to believe that the world and the people in it are just as they appear to be. It is only as we grow much older that we develop enough confidence in our own ability to take care of ourselves that we can tolerate the world, and people, not being perfect.
Of course, some of us never develop such self-confidence, and we spend our lives looking for heroes to take care of us, reassure us, guide us. To some extent we remain perpetual children in our need for such idealized figures in our lives.
On the other hand, some of us are so disillusioned by our growing awareness of the humanness of our heroes that we give up on people all together. As there are no perfect heroes, than we loose our faith that anyone can be admirable, virtuous, inspiring.
There is an alternative. We can still have heroes in our lives if we accept that heroes are not people who are without fault, blemish, or error. There are no such people, period. There are, however, people who (despite their imperfections, character flaws, and mistakes) feel, believe, speak, and act in ways that we can admire and seek to emulate.
As far as I am concerned, that is really what it means to be a hero. To act heroically despite our humanity. To care when it is tempting to try not to feel, to hold beliefs that may not be popular, to speak out for what we think is right, to act when we are perhaps frightened or alone. Such are heroes - or at least heroes for adults.
As children we need to find heroes. And we need to lose them. But losing the heroes of our childhood does not mean we must give up heroes altogether. We just need to change our definition.
And a funny thing may happen in the process. For if we accept that heroes are not perfect, than we may also be able to see the heroic in our own imperfect selves. To often we are so aware of our own faults, blemishes, errors, that we cannot see our feelings, beliefs, words, and actions which are, in fact, heroic.
Heroes - they are all around us, perhaps they even are us.
