NO 1821
Gestures and Moments that Change
Our Lives
We hear frequently that Child and Youth Care practice, especially
contemporary practice (although we remember that Fritz Redl encouraged us to
‘exploit’ the every day) is about the use of everyday life events—the simple
things—what Maier called the minutiae of everyday life. Here are some which
occurred for me.
Arctic char: One day a friend returned from the ‘great frozen north’
carrying a nice Artic char as a present for me. I thanked her and put it in
the fridge thinking it would make a nice meal that evening. It looked like a
salmon and I liked salmon, baked slowly in the oven . . . So later that
evening after my friend had left, we baked the Char and put it on the table.
Coloured sweaters: My friend is visiting and we go to the store to get me a
couple of casual sweat shirts. As always, I headed directly to the black and
grey section. “Stop,’ he fairly shouted. “Why do you always wear dark
colours. You need to brighten up a little,” he said, pulling a bright blue
pullover from the rack. “Try this instead.”
Learning grateful: Ernie always talks about gratefulness. Grateful for the
experience, whatever it might be; grateful to be doing; grateful to be. And
one day it hit me—grateful is a ‘life position.’ It is a choice we can make
about how to be towards everything in life.
Meeting Syl: So, I am standing in the room at a conference reception with a
fellow from Montreal when a stunning woman passes across in front of us.
“Look at that beautiful woman,” I say. “Oh,” he says casually, “That’s
Sylviane. We work together.
The invitation: I hadn’t seen my son in years. I had been a poor father—poor
in communicating, poor in contacting, poor in visiting. Then one day I open
my mail and there is an invitation from him to his graduation. He did not
really expect me to come, I know that—after all it was 3000 miles and a
lifetime away.
No, this is not going to go on as a litany of important moments in my
life—although I suspect it could. But it is about this:
Little moments can change your life forever.
A gesture, a moment, a small thought acted on, a chance encounter. Not
grandly planned interventions designed to alter the course of one’s life and
way of being; just simple, sometimes almost accidental moments, which change
your life forever.
And thus the reason why we say, in this field, that every moment is
important. Any moment may be the moment of significance that a young person
need in her life. Any moment might change her life forever, in ways we
cannot even imagine.
Don’t get me wrong. Intervention Plans are important. Planned interventions
are important. Intentionality is important. Having a clear framework and
philosophy to organize your interactions is important. I am not discounting
those at all.
I am saying, however, that sometimes the smallest gesture, the simplest
interaction, might have a power equal to all of those. The power to change
your life.
Going back to my list.
Arctic char: When we ate the Arctic Char that night, we discovered that we
liked it more than any salmon we had ever eaten. Later, in exploring ‘why,’
we discovered that ‘the colder the water, the stronger the oil in the fish’
and we were enjoying the flavor of that extra oil. So, this got me to
wondering about fish, and oil, and all kinds of other things so soon I was
bust acquiring new knowledge, like this definition “Arctic char or Arctic
charr (Salvelinus alpinus) is both a freshwater and saltwater fish in the
salmonidae family, native to Arctic, sub-Arctic and alpine lakes and coastal
waters.”
Now, who cares? Right? Well, see, it is not about the definition—but about
the fact that from this simple gesture of a friend came a pathway of
learning, interest and yes, life changing action. Because now, you see, we
have altered our menus at home to include more cold water fish. Changed my
life forever.
Coloured sweaters: My friend grabbed a couple of brightly coloured
sweatshirts from the counter. “Try these,” he demanded. And he was a friend,
so I did. And I actually liked myself in them. I now shop in the ‘not just
black’ section of the stores. Changed my life forever.
The invitation: I went to my son’s graduation and we re-connected. Years
later, he was here to visit recently. And last winter Don, Gill and my
granddaughter Em were here for a visit. We are still working on it,
especially given our history, but it changed my life forever.
Well, I could do the rest of my list, and many others—especially, for
example, ‘meeting Syl’ which has altered not only my life but how I
experience it. But the end result would always be the same:
A simple gesture by another person changed my life, how I live it, how I
experience it in ways both profound and simple.
I am thinking, of course, of the moments of encounter and connection which
we have in our day to day interactions with young people and other family
members. I am thinking of the days when we return home wondering about the
point of it all—why we do what we do when, on the surface at least, things
do not seem to be working all that well. And when I have those moments of
wondering and doubt, I remember these other moments, in my own life, when a
simple gesture changed it all.
So, we never know.
Sometimes the simplest gesture can make a huge difference. And that is why,
in our work, perhaps we are well advised to remember:
“This moment may be one of those moments”
And then again, it may not. But do you really want to take the chance? I
don’t.
THOM GARFAT
Garfat, T. (2008). Gestures and Moments that
Change Our Lives. Relational Child and Youth Care Practice,
Volume 21 Number 2 pp.75-76
