Threading it Through the Needle’s Eye
Life continually maintains and refines itself. The scenarios that confront us reflect the quality of our humanity and often indicate certain purifying changes that we need to effect in ourselves physically or non-physically, certain demons to be exorcised. “There is a Divine purpose and reason for each and everything that goes on in our life. That includes….bad things (Pastor Bill Keller ritten.wordpress.com).” And that purpose is to give us the chance to correct ourselves where we were wrong and to improve ourselves where we are already good even if it means dying in the process.
I used to have a cleaning lady who lived not far from our house with her husband and 7 children. She and her husband were both high school graduates. Financial restraints had prevented them entering college. They had two sons and five daughters in all. For low income families in our country the normal practice was to prioritize the education of the eldest sibling in order to have an extra source for family finances as soon as was possible.
My cleaning lady, let’s call her Laura, came to me one day asking for a loan. She recounted that her eldest boy who was entering fourth year high school had suddenly decided not to enroll in his old school. She said that he had gotten into a tangle with the toughies in that school and was avoiding the payback. She was careful to stress that the boy was not a trouble maker but that he had been bullied past the limits of his patience. Being the eldest child, they had pinned their hopes on him to help in raising his younger brother and sisters. Since it would be foolish to stop his schooling now, they wanted to transfer him to an affordable private high school where he could finally graduate. She wondered if I could extend the amount of tuition needed as an advance for her services. Their last option, she continued, would be to send him home to study in the province.
Thinking that they would have to borrow money for the trip home anyway and that the tuition installments were not much more than the fare needed, I suggested that it would be best to keep the boy with them so that they could continue supervising his studies. I agreed to shoulder his tuition fees as a loan but made it quite clear that I was extending a loan to them, not taking responsibility for their son’s schooling. In the back of my mind remained questions that were to be answered further on.
So the boy, let’s call him Greg, enrolled in the private high school and I was pleased to think that I had done somebody a good turn. My satisfaction was not long-lived. The school, being privately owned, had a list of fee requirements amounting to more than Laura could pay. In the middle of the first month of school, she came to me saying that they needed money to buy things Greg needed; that meals in the school were costly so that there were days when the boy had to go with nothing in his stomach until he got home. My first thought was naturally to indignantly remind her about what we had agreed upon, that she had some nerve to broach the topic and subsequently leave them to their own devices. But I knew their financial state and it seemed a waste to quench hopes that I had myself kindled. I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt and to throw out all malicious suspicions. But before involving myself any further, I asked to talk to the boy and see his school records.
To my dismay, neither the first nor the second warranted granting Greg a subsidy for school. His language skills were not much better than street jargon. He lacked concentration, his retentiveness was middling, he was unable to follow abstract reasoning and worst of all, did not really like to study. He had sharp instincts but lacked mental discipline. His school record was a list of c’s interspersed with some d’s for 2 back subjects from junior year which he claimed he planned to take during summer.
But I was not to be easily swayed from my purpose. I agreed to sponsor Greg until he should graduate from high school. For the next five months, I put up with tutoring the stubborn child, spent for his daily allowance and school projects, tried every means to motivate the child and make him see life from a more mature viewpoint. His performance and outlook did not improve. I suspect this was because the school had higher academic standards than Greg was psychologically and intellectually prepared to handle.
The axe finally fell on the week of the mid-term exams. I received a call from the school cashier who told me that Greg was unable to take the exams because of unpaid tuition dues. I immediately instructed Laura to send Greg to me that evening. When he arrived, I confronted him about the money I had given him for the tuition. In a slightly defensive manner, he blurted out: “I bought a cell phone with it. Why should I pay the tuition when my teachers are gonna flunk me anyway?” My voice quivering with suppressed indignation, I said, “That is not the point. Your unpaid account not only disallowed you from taking the exams, but will prevent you getting your transcript of records from them and you cannot enroll in any other school ever!”
Which is precisely what happened. Despite Laura’s tearful entreaties, I finally made her realize that Greg wasn’t really cut out for formal schooling and that they would be better off if he were to look for something practical to earn a living from. I pointed out to her that high school would be the best to expect from him, but given his present performance, finishing fourth year might take some time. In brief, Greg stopped going to school. I never paid his outstanding balance but used what I would have spent for the rest of the school year to send him to driving school. I have not doled out another centavo to him after that.
There was no need to because soon after he got his professional license he managed to get work as driver’s apprentice. He now earns an honest living as a driver, as his father did. To the disappointment of his parents, He is happily married and has two children. He has outgrown any childish resentments against me for stopping his schooling. On the contrary, he says that what he will never forget how I put up with him when he was younger and he will always respect me for that.
Laura was a person in urgent need who confused what she wanted with what she might hope to have. She lacked the means to realize her vision of success because it was not based on a truthful acceptance of her condition. She strove to adopt a “success” fairy tale taken from a different socio-economic life setting. Greg was a typical ‘from-province-to-big-city’ kid with no sign of academic ability and motivation or personal refinement. It was unrealistic for her to hope that, given his rough nature and his inflexibility, he could ever keep a job where he would be continuously twitted by a hierarchy of supervisors. In a way it was a blessing for them that they had approached me for help because they sorely needed a different success story.
Delusion is defined as a “fixed, false belief…fanciful and derived from deception” (Delusion Wikipedia). Laura’s delusion sprung from her naïve and superstitious mind which told her that Greg was intellectually capable just because he had to be so, being the eldest child. She was determined to continue in this self-deception as long as she could in the hope that one miraculous day it would come true. At length this implausible conviction insinuated itself into her son’s mind and became an irritant within him which spawned his external predicaments. Greg was unable to live up to his mother’s ambitions and this shortcoming created a loss of self-esteem which manifested as lack of social sense and a tendency to violence. Neither able to play or reject the role which was thrust on him, he felt himself pulled in two opposite directions. And faced with an uncertain destination, he dropped anchor to hold on to something that he could truly consider his, a cell phone.
Letting go the matter like hot potatoes was not an option. If I was to achieve an honorable and humane resolution of this situation I knew I had to wake Laura up by making it evident that she was forcing herself and her son to exert effort in the wrong direction. I therefore walked the extra mile to give them another chance to pursue their goal by offering to sponsor Greg’s studies, even if, perhaps the more so because, disillusionment awaited in that direction. When their goals became obviously impractical and unreachable, I made the move to redirect Greg to a path more appropriate for his temperament and talent; a path that had been under their noses all the time; where he would be doing what his sociological and ethnic background best fitted him to do – practical, if unglamorous, every-day tasks.
In all, we all came out of it changed for the better. Laura got what she needed, a cathartic purgation from her illusions, Greg was liberated and able to live his own life, I gained a deeper insight into the psychology of the under-served, and most important of all, won myself another lifetime friend.
Did I or didn’t I pull it through the eye of the needle?
Works Cited:
Keller, Bill. “No Coincidence.” Columnizer. 21 June 2008 http://ritten.wordpress.com/2008/06/21/no-coincidence/
“Delusion.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 05 June 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delusion
This is one of my essays at my blog at http://rulens-blob-blog.blogspot.com