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Hey “Dudes”!

As I mentioned earlier, I’ve been reading William Bennett’s Moral Compass lately.  I have a pretty stressful and intense job so I’ve been taking my lunch breaks as a chance to re-group and relax for a bit.  I just close the door, pull the Moral Compass off it’s shelf and enjoy reading a few pages while I eat.  The book is really wonderfully suited for that purpose since it’s mainly a collection of sayings, poems, short stories and such.  So far I’m still in the first section which is geared towards the moral instruction of children.  There is some REALLY great stuff in here!  And as I’ve read it I’ve seen two powerful applications for divorced men:

The first application is pretty direct; it’s a good source of inspiration and material for any father who cares about imparting a solid moral compass to his children.  As I’ve worked my way through it I’ve thought back to the time when my children were young and the things I did (or didn’t do) to instill the basic core values of our society into them. 

For those of us who are divorced the responsibility and opportunity to teach our children   positive values and the importance of a good moral character are made a bit more difficult.  The amount of available quality time, conflicting messages from their other parent and the general influence of a very materialistic society can make it seem like a constant up-hill battle.  While a lot of the stories or poems are pretty old they each contain a nugget or two of solid wisdom that are never out dated.  If your kiddos are young most of it is great material for bedtime stories – if they are older it gives some useful analogies that you can weave into your conversations with them (see my earlier post “Scars” ( http://dudesndivorce.com/2009/06/13/scars/  ). 

The second application is a bit more subtle; Lets face it – our society makes so much “noise” that sometimes it’s hard to even think.  We are assaulted day in and day out by such a withering barrage of ambiguity, situational ethics, self-centeredness and materialism that it’s easy to get out of touch with our own moral compass.  I’ve found it very affirming and satisfying to go back to the “lessons of my youth” and read or re-read stories that reinforce and amplify the direction of my own, internal Moral Compass.  While it’s been some time since I last went through a divorce I know very well how chaotic that process is and how often you are confronted with difficult moral and ethical choices;  I can’t help but think how refreshing it would be to read some of this material when going through that.

I found my copy in a flea market and paid $6 for it; probably any decent used book store would have a copy laying around for about the same.  I looked it up at Amazon and they have it starting even cheaper than the $6 I paid for it . . . I went ahead and put that up on our Amazon widget in case anyone is interested.

All in all a very good and useful book . . . can’t wait to continue reading it and letting you all know what I find!

Until next time – Be Well!

Bill