Ask anyone who knows her and they will agree that my mother is one of the wisest, most intelligent, and vital women on this planet, but while she tells me my daughters are amazing, she seems to think I am too lenient. I believe her exact words were: "A mother’s job is to tell a child what needs to be done and when." She worries that I allow my daughters too much freedom and too many rights. I, on the other, hand want to trust them until they give me reason not to trust. I want to let them make their own mistakes and find their own boundaries. It’s not easy when it could mean their lives, but both of my girls have good heads on their shoulders and I believe it will not reach any extreme.

This all brings me to a moment I experienced last year while teaching middle school creative writing. One boy in particular was known to have all of the answers. I found that he knew quite a bit of trivia, but often had not heard of what I was teaching, yet he felt compelled to pretend he had heard of it, as though his life were at stake. He was able to write nonfiction, but when it came time to use his imagination, it was clear – he had none. When I pressed, he appeared bewildered and deflated – as though I found his Achilles Heel. I took him into the hall and suggested he close his eyes while we brainstormed good topics. A woman down the hall glanced over and her eyes widened with alarm. She strode over and asked “What’s going on here?” I did not take kindly to the interruption and replied, “Why do you need to know?” to which she responded, “Because I am his mother.” His eyes, of course, had flown open when he heard her voice, but there was no happy embrace. I explained that we were brainstorming. She looked as though she smelled something disgusting and told the boy: “Well, for God’s sake, sit up straight so that oxygen can flow to your brain!” When she was out of ear shot, I countered, “Sit up straight when you are writing essays, but while daydreaming for short stories, slouch, squat, stand on your head – do whatever you want.” But it was too late. The mood had been ruined. He sat as though he had a board in his back and did not come up with a single idea. This year the boy did not return to the school, but he spent the summer learning Latin and was sent to a boarding school in London.

I have nothing against intelligence and rigor, but not when it is driven into a child at the expense of creativity and spontaneity. My Lithuanian mother grew up in a work camp in WWII where doing the correct thing meant sparing your life. But in an era of relative peace, something else is going on when intellectualism is valued over mysticism and creativity. (And my mother is one of the most mystical and creative women on earth, so the only reason I can think of she flips into this other side is old survival patterning, which declares that it is better to do the right thing - often based on some unrealistic model of perfection - than honor personal truth.) This is no small issue. In fact, I believe it is the basis for whether humans survive or perish. It will not be our brains that save us from ourselves, but our brains it the service of our intelligent hearts.