Transformation: Making the Negative Positive

Learn from others’ mistakes to make your life the best it can be.

The years that Dwight D. Eisenhower (above) spent serving as Douglas MacArthur's aide taught him both positive and negative lessons. Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Here in the Life & Tradition section of The Epoch Times, readers frequently find stories of men and women leading good, even noble, lives. These accounts of mothers and fathers, coaches and mentors, friends, and neighbors can prompt in us a desire to imitate their resolve and strength of character when confronted by our own hardships.

But what about negative examples? Certain people—parents, friends, teachers, employers, celebrities, and politicians—have the power to corrupt or debase those around them in profound ways. From the mother who day and night verbally abuses her daughter to the CEO whose weak leadership is bringing the company to ruin to the social media influencer advocating for unhealthy lifestyles, examples of how not to live or behave abound.

Can we learn from them? Can we use them to our advantage? And if so, how?

Failures

Search online for “famous people with awful parents,” and we find celebrities who, having suffered abuse or neglect at the hands of a parent, become bad parents as well.

Dad and mom to the “Jackson Five,” Joe and Katherine Jackson deprived their children of a normal childhood through their strict discipline and criticism and by forcing them to practice music to the point of exhaustion. Their most famous progeny, Michael, became a parent chiefly renowned for dangling his son Blanket from the fourth-story balcony of a Berlin hotel.

In “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” playwright Eugene O’Neill recounted the drug addiction of his mother and his father’s lack of connection with her and his two sons, yet O’Neill himself failed as a father, neglecting his three children. As adults, his two sons both indulged in heavy alcohol abuse, as had their father, and both eventually committed suicide. He had little to do with his daughter, Oona, during her formative years, and he cut her off completely after she married the much older Charlie Chaplin.

In so many such cases, the “sins of the father,” or for that matter, those of the mother, pass on to the next generation.

Eliminating the Negative

In another camp are those grown children who reject the bad parental behavior of their mothers or fathers and strike off on a more virtuous path.

In “How to Be a Good Parent After a Bad Childhood,” writer Jacquelyn Mitchard briefly describes her family life as a child. Her parents often left their children at home, sometimes for days, to attend riotous parties. Mom and Dad fought and screamed at each other, and at the children, and “it was bad when they were drunk, which was most of the time.”

Ms. Mitchard then relates the ways in which children of such parents can escape this legacy. They must recognize the problems and behaviors that their parents dumped on them, resolve to break that pattern, educate themselves on becoming better parents—Ms. Mitchard did this in part by reading parent manuals—take small steps to change their behavior when they become parents themselves, and while realizing that there are no perfect parents, strive to do the best they can for their children.

“Because of how I was parented, I’m even more motivated to do the right thing than some of my peers who had luckier childhoods,” Ms. Mitchard writes. “I’m determined to offer empathy where none was offered to me because I am acutely aware that I’m not just raising today’s young people but also tomorrow’s parents.”

In that paragraph, Ms. Mitchard gives us a final, important point: To turn negative influences into positives, we must want to do the right thing for the right reasons.

Lessons From Afar

Taking note of a negative influence, rejecting unacceptable behavior and actions, and seeking self-improvement through positive change extends far beyond the realm of parenting. The negatives we see and reject in others can run the gamut from the workplace to interactions with family and friends.

During the 1930s, Dwight Eisenhower served as an aide to Douglas MacArthur. For much of that pre-World War II decade, MacArthur valued Eisenhower for his loyalty. But though Eisenhower remained impressed by his superior’s brilliance and savoir-faire, over time, he became disenchanted by some of MacArthur’s leadership practices and personality traits, especially his self-conceit and his unwillingness to accept advice. The precise lessons that Eisenhower took away from their years together are difficult to determine, but surely they had some bearing when he came into his own as supreme allied commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, where the ego had to give way to diplomacy and cooperation.

In “20 Coaches Who Were Huge Jerks,” Dan Carson ticks through a list of sports figures, some of whom coached winning teams and who were terrible examples for their players and fans. Some associates of New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick cheated by illegally taping their opponents’ signals, and the organization was heavily fined. Manager Billy Martin of the New York Yankees made the papers time and again for his drinking, his physical confrontations, and his explosive temper. Several of those on Mr. Carson’s list coached adolescents, using bribery and causing injuries to members of the opposing team for the sake of winning.

On the other hand, sports and those who play them, whether professionally or as youngsters, have seen countless good men and women devoted to victory and good character.

Closer to Home

Nearly all of us encounter negative personalities in our lives. An irascible or weak-kneed supervisor may make our lives miserable. A relative’s rants about the state of the country can tempt us toward despair. A friend can entice an impressionable young person down the rabbit hole of bad habits and cynicism.

If we keep our wits about us, we can recognize these negative influencers for who and what they are and refuse to allow them to dominate our lives. Here, Scrooge’s nephew in “A Christmas Carol” comes to mind. Unlike his wealthy but stingy curmudgeon of an uncle, Fred revels in the Christmas holidays, is generous and kind-spirited, and marries for love. Meanwhile, Scrooge showers the young man with acrimony and “Humbug” until his change of heart at the book’s end. Throughout the story, Fred not only refuses to go down his uncle’s abysmal path, which might have made him rich, but continually treats him with goodwill and pleasantries.

We can’t pick our parents, and even many of our coaches, teachers, and other mentors fall outside our power of selection. As we enter the age of discernment, however, and in fact for the rest of our lives, we can use our judgment and common sense to evaluate the people around us. Those who give us gifts that make us better human beings should be treasured and thanked; those whose counsel and behavior we deem wrongheaded, or sometimes even evil, we should reject out of hand, vowing never to yield to the temptations they offer. It’s this rejection of the negative that allows us to sleep with an easy conscience or look at ourselves in the mirror in the morning without shame.

“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants,” Sir Isaac Newton famously wrote. Here, Newton was thinking of his advancements in the field of mathematics and physics, but the sentiment has a broader meaning as well. If we wish to stand on the shoulders of giants, we must avoid those who would drag us into the pits.