IF YOU REALLY CARED, I WOULDN’T HAVE TO TELL YOU.

One Christmas after my family had opened all the presents, my grandfather gave me a very large box wrapped in wall paper. Now my grandparents almost always gave practical gifts like clothes, but this was different. Inside the box was my grandfather’s silver cornet. Grandpa had been a tailor by trade, but in his early years he also played in a band. He knew about my interest in music and so was passing on his instrument to me. After all, I was the only grandson and both of his own sons were tone deaf. I thanked Grandpa. He gave a short demonstration. I tooted on the cornet a few times and then packed it in its case. That was pretty much the last time I looked at it. I was interested in playing the piano, not the cornet, so I didn’t pay much attention to it. Months later my father informed me that my grandfather was upset that I hadn’t gone to him and asked him to teach me to play the cornet.

I regret not learning to play the cornet. It would have broadened my musical knowledge to be able to play a brass instrument. I also regret hurting my grandfather’s feelings. I never intended to do that.

Many years later after Grandpa passed away, I learned there was more to this. My grandfather had been a Freemason, a worshipful master of the Sincerity Lodge. Neither my father nor his brother ever became masons. My grandfather had been upset that his sons hadn’t come to him and asked to become masons. Grandpa apparently worked with the strict rules of the lodge that you never invited anyone to join, so he never asked either of his sons to do so. But there was something more complicated going on. Grandpa had expected his sons to figure out he wanted them to be masons and to ask him to sponsor them just as he later expected me to figure out that he wanted me to ask him to teach me the cornet.

This is a strange phenomenon that I have seen in many permutations since. People have expectations that they never express, and become upset when others don’t figure that out. That is really unfair, especially with children who have little ability in figuring out unspoken expectations. All kinds of relationship go awry when someone wants something, but won’t ask for it. I have run into it again and again in marriage counseling where one partner (sometimes both) have expectations that they never express, but want the other partner to fulfil. I have heard an exasperated spouse say, “Why didn’t you tell me that’s what you wanted?” Only to be met by the reply, “If you really cared, I wouldn’t have to tell you.”

My family was notorious for this. No one said what they really wanted. So they wound up doing things no one wanted to do and resenting not doing what they wanted. This is crazy, but it’s the way things went for generations.

I have been surprised as I have seen the same dynamic at work in other families and with other youngsters. Sometimes I’ll ask a young person if they would like to do something, and I get a very noncommital answer of maybe. I suppose some of it is that they really don’t know what they want. Some of it is the reluctance to be tied down to a commitment of any sort when a better offer might turn up. But some of the problem is that the young person has already learned that when adults ask questions or make offers, they are expecting a particular answer and the young person is trying to figure out what that expected answer is.

I encourage people to ask for what they want, but with the understanding that they may not get what they want. Is that disappointing? Of course, but which is worse: asking and sometimes not getting or not asking and almost never getting? Some basic honesty about expectations would make things easier for all of us. At least we’d have some place to start negotiations.

This is another one of my ramblings that has gone off in an unexpected direction. I was intending to write about the value of a musical education. Ah well, man proposes and God disposes, only sometimes it’s my computer that disposes sending whole files into the void of cyberspace. I never know what to expect when I click save. If my computer doesn’t like what I write, I wish it would tell me rather than make me guess what it’s going to do. Maybe computers have problems being honest about expectations as well.

On that peculiar note,

May the Lord God bless you on your way and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne