Letters to the Editor

• The Drop Dead Plan

  [Read the article: My friend suddenly died -- and I think I want his job!]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  Dearest LW, it sounds like this is a corporate job (only corporations have "Midlevel Managers.) Most departments have "drop dead" plans, a plan for how to cope if a key employee suddenly drops dead. Yes, that is how some companies actually refer to it in casual conversations, because dropping dead is less likely that getting fired or quitting suddenly. It is likely that your friend's "functions" are being "covered" indefinately.

  Corporations have long, drawn-out hiring processes. If and when your friend is replaced, it may be after a corporate reshuffling or major re-alignment of responsibilities. There are plenty of folks on the inside of the company who want your friend's job, and probably fellow mid-level managers are jockeying to take over his functions, which means his job may not be the job you coveted if/when it is posted. Also, corporations tend to hire from within, so the odds of you getting his job are probably not so great, unless you have another "in."

  The best face I can put on this is that you are feeling desperate for a change. This is not what I would call a normal reaction to the death of a friend. If this is the case, then try and figure out why your friend's death is making you so itchy to take over his job. Maybe it is simple financial pressures, maybe it is emotional. Whatever it is, you need to get past the desperation in order to move forward in life.

  The other possibility is that you are crass and opportunistic. If that's it, then may God have mercy on your soul.

  Permalink Tuesday, September 25, 2007 06:01 AM

• The connundrum

  [Read the article: My Christian daughter says I'm going to hell]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  Thirteen is the age when many religious/cultural traditions hold rites of passage acknowleging a transition from childhood to adulthood. There is a near-Universal acknowledgement that a child this age has reached an "age of reason." Developmental psychology teaches us that it is around this age that humans develop abstract reasoning. It is healthy to encourage a child to begin to assert his/her autonomy at this age; to increase the child's responsibilities and privileges in order to begin to prepare him/her for adulthood.

  The LW's connundrum is that in asserting her religion with him, she is asserting the opposite of autonomy. She is clinging to a childlike state of religious/emotional dependence. He doesn't want to make her cry when she thinks about him in relation to hell, but literature and history suggest that the passage from childhood to adulthood is a crisis. You can support your child as he/she wrestles with this transition, but I don't think making it pain-free is healthy.

  Your daughter's mom is a religious extremist, and you are at the opposite extreme. You believe that all organized religion is harmful to rational development. Your daughter is being taught by her mom and church that all people who don't believe exactly as they do are damned to eternal torture.

  I don't hold out a lot of hope that your daughter's mom will admit that there is a chink in their armor. The stakes are pretty high for them (eternal bliss vs. eternal damnation.)

  The stakes are somewhat lower for you. You're not afraid of hell and you don't believe in heaven. You have a lot less to lose by moving into middle ground--say, by acknowledging that in some cases, or at least theoretically, religion can be good for some people. Here's an example you might find at least somewhat compelling: the religious community was the institution most responsible for developing the leaders among the African-American community who spearheaded the civil rights movement.

  You need to allow your daughter the space to develop into her own person. It has to be okay for her to think differently from both you and from her mom. She may eventually end up intellectually where you hope she does, or where her mom hopes, or somewhere else altogether. You can make it clear that you will love and accept her no matter what she thinks about religion at a particular moment. Her mom will never do this. Eventually she will figure this out. In the meantime, you can explain to her that God will forgive her for not attending church when she is at your house, because she has no control over it. If her mom and her church insist that God won't forgive her for this, it will help her think painful but ultimately liberating thoughts about her faith.

  In my experience parents have many hopes and dreams for their kids, but ultimately all kids want from their parents is to be loved and accepted for who/what they are. Her mom probably can't do this for her. Let's hope that you can.

  Permalink Thursday, October 4, 2007 01:27 PM