Game in the Brain

One of the habits or behaviors my wife rescued me from is when let myself get carried away, helping people with no sense of context or forethought.

This behavior resulted in me helping a friend I haven’t seen for five years of more score weed, driving friends around,  and neglecting people who matter more. 

When I look back on how I had that behavior, my father pretty much was that example. My father treated friends more closely than his family. My mom would tell the story where he didn’t show up when she was giving birth to pick up a friend from an airport. One story is that we saw he took home an X-box, we saw it, and we were so happy. What my mom, later on, told us was it was for one of dad’s friend’s kids, and he didn’t get us anything. Mom had to point out that he spent hundreds of dollars on a friend’s kids and didn’t spend anything for his own five kids.  

Taking our family or closer relationship for granted is also a behavior my brother also exhibits. 

Its because we’re not good at handling closer relationships. Dad came from the generation where kids were not kids but assets. Treating family like a business asset and an extended social network is an artifact of a time of great scarcity. So I understand where it came from, but the cause to change behavior may never have happened. 

I have my wife, and she gave me that basic self-preservation-thinking I failed to develop growing up. We are teaching this to our children; of course, our son is old enough to grasp the basic concepts and not our daughter, who is just turning 3. 

One strange accidental trait of this misplaced-altruistic values is getting angry when people don’t reciprocate or creating that expectation that people should do the same. One takeaway of being able to take care of ourselves and those we care about is: when we do something out of charity, it’s without the expectation of anything in return. I think it because we are not doing charity at our loss, but when we have a surplus. When we do it at a loss, that need is left to linger and create resentment. 

I always remember the Airplane safety measures: “make sure your mask is on before you help another person with your mask.”