One Sunday afternoon years ago, relaxing at home with my young children, I posed a question. “Do you know,” I said, “you don’t have to do what I say? You don’t have to obey your mother either.”
I have six children. At the time, the youngest was six, the oldest fourteen, a perfect age-span for this breaking news.
They thought it a trick. But it wasn’t. “In fact,” I said, “from this day forward, you don’t have to go to school or do your homework either.”
I paused to let it sink in. They looked for a hint of humor. This had to be a joke. No, I was dead serious.
When they saw that I meant what I said, it sparked their curiosity. We all could sense the excitement in the air. This was a groundbreaking day in the Van Alstine household. It was skydiving freefall, earth-shattering Emancipation Proclamation and Declaration of Independence wrapped in one. It was Martin Luther King Jr’s ringing voice, “Free at last…free at last…Thank God Almighty, I’m free at last.”
I wasn’t about to burst their freedom bubble. I wanted them to feel the full force of their independence.
“Yes, I’m serious. You don’t have to clean your rooms. You don’t have to do your chores. You don’t have to do anything, anytime, for anyone, from this point forward. In fact, if you think about it, you don’t have to do anything at all. I bet you can’t think of anything that you actually have to do. Can you?”
“You have to breathe,” Grant said. He thought he pulled an ace out of his sleeve.
“No, you don’t,” I replied. “You can choose to stop breathing, and die of asphyxiation. Unfortunately, people around the world make this suicidal choice every day.”
“You have to eat food,” said Madison. But she knew what was coming.
“No, you can stop eating, and die of starvation. Ever heard of a hunger strike?”
“Well, don’t you have to work?” they asked.
“No, I don’t,” I replied. “I can stay at home, sleep, and play video games here in the living room with you.”
“But how would you get any money?”
“I would just do without it.”
“How?”
“I’d get by. First, they’d turn off the electricity. Then the gas. We’d run out of food. Then we’d be out on the street. But I could leave you to fend for yourselves, hop a train, and live out of garbage cans in Southern California.”
“Well, you wouldn’t want that, would you?”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
“So you have to work, right?”
“No, I choose to work, because I want electricity to light this living room, gas to heat my shower every morning, food to eat like the dinner mom is cooking, and a home with all of you. You see, I choose work every day not because I have to – but because I want to. I, like you, am completely free to choose.”
I paused there in the living room, letting the point sink further. “There’s really only one thing I have to do,” I stated. “and that is, accept the consequences of my choices.”
Ever since that day, my kids have enjoyed the freedom, and the consequences, of their newfound emancipation.
