The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teenagers

More appropriate for me at age 50

When I was a teenager, I was more like you would expect a fifty year old to be.

I was rigid, judgmental on many things, obsessed with achieving goals and success in career, and so hardworking I should have died of exhaustion though I had energy then that I certainly don’t now. I was an ultra successful mid-career professional at sixteen. By seventeen, I was coasting toward retirement.

I think my Interlochen friends would agree, or at least laugh.

Today at work the teacher I was covering had in her classroom a book by Sean Covey, Stephen Covey’s son, called The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teenagers. I read it on her lunch and prep times. It was written by someone who seems to be a bit younger than I am, but not so much younger that that generational gap that we tend to feel with iPhone humans appears. He actually talks about friends dropping by his house to invite him out… we did that, you know? Or, the coolest guy I know had that happen. I was away at boarding school being a driven professional.

I’ve read all of the elder Covey’s books, and those of many of his proteges. I’ve found them helpful, to a point. I hate to be the person who says this, but they do reflect the choices that are open to those with privilege in a time where there seemed to be more of that distributed around. His son deals with issues of privilege head on in a way that would now be considered beyond the pale conservative and I find refreshingly honest. He talks about personal responsibility, and many of his examples are people who come from very difficult economic, social and racial backgrounds. He has a way of acknowledging the real barriers that exist while suggesting ways that all can work to change their own circumstances.

Change anything… the original title of this blog. Before it became, “meanderings and crushes of a Zionist with a cat.”

He has intensely practical suggestions, as did his father, suggestions that I would have laughed at when I was young because I felt too old for them, but that feel just right now.

There’s a lot about figuring out your principles and where you want to go in life. When I was young, I had that completely locked down. I knew what I believed and what I wanted with dead certainty, though my ability to turn on a dime if opportunity presented itself or disappeared amazed some. Now… I do not know. I know a lot about what I don’t want, less about what I do. Some very core things about what I believe in, but the names those things now go by are not the names they used to.

One of my favorite concepts is “will-not power.” You can have a whole lot more willpower if you spend less of your power on things you will not do. Some answers are obvious. I will not drink poison. I will not date married men. I will not eat tarantulas, even if they ask me to.

Others are tougher. He talks about the problem of people who make too many of their choices based on what other people want them to do, such as the kid who goes cruising all night with his friends when he should have studied for a big test and gotten sleep. The pain a young girl suffered when she decided to change friend groups in high school because she needed to move away from those who were doing drugs.

I miss a certain 1980’s realism about the world. Actions have consequences. There are many causal factors in most causal pathways, but what you do when things happen to you is mostly up to you. Part of what Covey the Younger attempts to teach is how to fully use your power of choice.

I love that. I’ve spent too much time in various circles that believe that we have no power, for varying reasons, over what we do and what happens to us. I find that… disempowering.

I’ve spent too many years trying to live up to ideals that were not really mine, while often ending up falling so far short of them that I fell off edge of the world in the map of my own values. To say I felt like I had to please people is a massive understatement. It feels like all I ever knew to do, and in frustration and anger and rebellion and failure, I often displeased and hurt everyone I wanted to please and a few (somewhat innocent) bystanders.

So now… the Coveys want me to write a mission statement that defines my values and make a map to where I want to go in life?

Who do I want to be?

Israeli, obviously. But I can’t. So what do I love about the Israelis I’ve come to know and the Israelis of history?

They are fighters. They are innovative. They are physically active and eat good food. They are cool with being a Chosen people (the ones I like. The ones who aren’t into that I do not fancy so much.) They actually believe in G-d (I know many Israelis do not but my favorites do.)

Mostly, I think they channel the fighting instinct that I used to have but that it seemed trauma had beaten out of me.

F-you to trauma says Emily Damari and the young IDF women who insisted on returning to their combat units after being held hostage. Like Mandalorians, a culture of those who fight back.

Once, and many times after, I was persuaded not to fight. Then I decided not to fight. Then I lost the will to, largely.

What do I want?

Olives. Tomatoes. Cucumbers. Olive oil and fresh cheese all in a salad. A date with Gadi Taub (look, we are talking about my fantasy here, I still don’t know his situation!)

Beyond that? Well, that would hold me for a bit…

I want security, a kind of security I never have that you can whine forever about how it has to come from within, but inner peace is helped along a great deal with economic and relationship stability.

Freedom. I really can’t stand anyone having control over me. I used up my Stockholm Syndrome a long time ago… a story for another day.

And to fight again.

I have no plans to join the IDF, run for office, or attempt to tame wild horses (the third is the least likely.)

But I can’t look at the world I live in and want to do nothing about it. I can’t look at the life I’ve lived and be satisfied with injustice, either still being stuck in it or knowing it is inflicted on others.

I love my teaching job because while I get to have a positive influence on one kid or one class at a time, I am not a part of the systematic anything. I don’t think I want to be a full time teacher though I would not rule it out.

I’d love to combine the act of teaching with my healthcare and public health background and passion for that. That’s a definite possibility.

I’d like to live somewhere safe where I could be close to my mom for as long as we have. I see her way more than many adults see their parents, but it’s always been just the two of us in most ways and I want to be closer and do things together more easily. Near a Wegman’s.

I want to become a yoga teacher by 55. That’s concrete.

And I want to pet as many cats as possible, while time allows.

Thank you for meowing.