Five-minute free writes, Day 25 - "Wait"

Here's a skill that's taken a long time to perfect (and I'm still working on it) - listen and wait.

In a conversation with my son yesterday in which he was disturbed about an issue at work and obviously feeling a little guilty for not having gone above and beyond with a situation that he actually have almost no control over, I found myself taking myself in hand and commanding myself to be quiet.  While the response to his worries seemed pretty obvious to me, it was also obvious that what he needed most was just to talk it out.

My son is an adult, approaching middle age, and pretty smart.  In fact, he's probably more grounded than his co-workers and even some of his bosses - but he does struggle with being able to take a breath and think things through.  It's pretty great that he's learned to give me a call and just rant a bit while he figures out an issue.  He's found that talking it out works pretty well.

I'm impressed with this behavior, actually. He's far more personally insightful than I was at his age, so confident that I had all the answers. And he's way better than I am at self-care.  So while I have learned to wait and let him get it all out, and even then to just ask a question or two, he has learned how to survive and thrive in a world that is so often frustrating to him in it's lack of logic and just downright stupidity.