What Is That Tiny Thing Ruining Your Relationship?

Do you remember that incredible Howard Beale scene in the film Network? The TV anchorman, Howard Beale (played by Peter Finch), tells his viewers to go to the window and shout how angry they are, in no uncertain terms. I suggest a different approach. Start releasing others. Things. Circumstances. Life. Your spouse and your grown kids and your grandkids. Start saying to Washington, DC, and its corruption and lying and dementia…I release you. Go out in the parking lot of the DMV or the bank and say, I release you. Look up at the sky and say, I release you. I release you to be different. To fail. To be stupid. To disappoint me. I release you. And in that release, I can love again.

While I served as the president of a certain university, the father of one of the students came to see me. With thousands of students on campus, I could not possibly know all of them, but I happened to know his son.

“Oh, I know your son,” I told him. “What a fine young man. He is a real leader on this campus. You must be very proud of him.”

He brushed my praise off like dust. “Yeah, yeah. I know all that. That is not why I’m here.”

“Why are you here?” I asked, more than a little shocked.

“It’s that earring. I can’t stand that thing. Every time I look at him, I can’t see anything but that earring. I’ve told him a thousand times, and he’s still wearing it.”

I tried to make my voice as soothing as possible. But seeing his expression and hearing the tone of his voice, I knew it would do no good. “Look, your son is a fine young man with a great future. Perhaps that earring…”

“Perhaps nothing. I want you to make him take it out. Do you understand? When he comes home for Thanksgiving, I want that earring gone or I will pull him out of this school.”

I wanted to say, “Look, sir, you’ve had him for twenty years. I’ve had him for three semesters. Why is it my job?” That’s what I wanted to say, but I sensed intuitively he was not going to be open to that line of reasoning. The next day, I called his son into my office.

“Do you know who was in my office yesterday?”

“Yes, sir,” he answered, “and I know why. He wants you to make me ditch the earring.”

“Son,” I said. “Your dad is a piece of work.”

“Oh, Dr. Rutland, he is driving me crazy over this earring. It’s all he talks about. He’s letting it ruin our relationship. Over an earring! Isn’t that stupid?”

“It is stupid,” I agreed. “Imagine letting something as stupid as an earring stand between you and someone you love.”

“I know,” he said.

“Think of it. An earring? That is selfish. He is letting an earring endanger a relationship as important as yours. How can he do that?” I said.

“Exactly!” the young man said. “Exactly! It is selfish. How can anybody be that… Oh, I know what you’re doing.”

“Look, son,” I said. “One of you is going to have to be an adult. And I met your dad.”

The light dawned. I could see it in his eyes. He looked like John Belushi in the back of James Brown’s church. “You’re right,” he said. “I never thought about it that way. I made it all about him. It’s about me too, isn’t it?”

I’ve never been so proud of a student in my life. He took that earring out and laid it on my coffee table like he was an old wino in a Bowery mission swearing off liquor. “My father will never see that earring again.”

I am in my seventies. I do not really like seeing males wear earrings. To me, like the bride with a dragon tattoo, they look like pirates. Or worse. Personally, I think they should give all their earrings to their sisters. On the other hand, how big a deal is it? As we age and the cultural trappings around us shift, we must decide what is important to us. Is it the earring, or is it our relationship with the person who wears it? I am not suggesting we compromise morally just because we have aged a bit. We do not have to endorse the wickedness of others but must not let trivialities destroy what is or ought to be most valuable to us.

When your grandchild comes home wearing a tattoo of a dragon, you will have some choices to make and you will have to make them fast. You can blow up and let the collateral damage happen as it will. You can do that. I warn you though. That explosion may be more destructive for much longer than you expect and the stray shrapnel may hit where you did not expect it.

Keeping on forgiving means, in part at least, letting molehills stay molehills. It means releasing folks you love, and those you don’t, for that matter, to have opinions different from yours, wear clothes you hate, and make stupid career moves you can see are stupid and evidently, they cannot. Let go. Let them do stupid stuff and be ready to catch them when they fall. If it is as stupid as you think it is, when their parents get finished explaining exactly how stupid it was and when they face the consequences of said stupidity, they will need loving, understanding grandparents when it blows up in their sweet little faces.

To learn more about Mark Rutland’s new book, Keep On Keeping On, visit MyCharismaShop.com