What It Means To Be A Kerwin

This is something I've been mulling around in my head for a long time. On occasion I give these rules to my friends when they are having a hard time getting their act together or trying to determine how they can finish tasks when they've taken on a bit more than they can chew (see rule #1).

These "rules" are what I've compiled from various Kerwins and my relatives, the most influential of which is probably my father. I should also add that this is largely what shapes me as a person, though there are lessons I take from my mother's side of the family as well. These are just the rules of my direct, Kaimuki Kerwin family, and they are probably linked to the rest of the Kerwins as well.

The order of these is important, keep that in mind.

#1 "Always take care of the little guy."

This is easily the most important rule in my family. I see it in my father's actions, my mother's actions and my brother's and even mine. It shapes how I view the world.

The "little guy" in this sense is not always someone of smaller stature, or even necessarily someone younger than you. The little guy is anyone who needs help; anyone who can't speak up for themselves; anyone whose life just isn't working out right now; anyone who just needs a quick pep talk to get themselves in gear. The little guy is sometimes a person who you might not even enjoy talking to or interacting with, but they are the little guy and you have to take care of them.

As a Kerwin it is foremost that you help someone you meet who is in need. If I see a child crying, I will get down on one knee and find out what is wrong. Lost your parents? Let's find them. Hurt your leg? Let's get a band-aid. Too scared to go down the slide? I'll hold your hand and we'll both walk back down.

An example of rule #1 that resonates well with me is this: One day in California, my father and I had just gone shopping for instant mashed potato mix for a switcheroo we were going to pull on the rest of the Kerwin clan at our Thanksgiving dinner that night. We were in the middle of a conversation when my dad interrupted me. "Hang on for a second." He pulled the car over to a man who was standing on the side of the road in tattered jeans and a dirty flannel jacket. "Here, go and make sure you get yourself some food. Happy Thanksgiving." The man's gritty teeth showed through his disheveled beard as he said "Thank you, I will, God bless."

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#2 "Get your shit done."

I use the expletive here because I think it's completely necessary. Sometimes life will give you shit, and you have to get it done. Not everything turns out the way you want it. Sometimes work is not equivalent to play. On those glorious occasions when it is, you have to make sure you focus enough to give it your best. That's an important part of this rule. Whenever you hand something in, or present something, be it a homework assignment or an essay or work for your boss - it better be your best work. If it's not your best work, why did you do it? Why are you handing it in? It's not done if you haven't tried your hardest. If you did your best and your homework gets a low grade, or your proposal is turned down, your paper criticized - doesn't matter. None of that matters as long as you completed it to the best of your ability.

This is easily the rule that I have the most trouble with. In dealing with clinical depression and mild anxiety disorder, I feel myself get uninspired or panicky in the face of large workloads. I think I had my first nervous breakdown from the inability to do an assignment in the 4th grade when I had to make a poster of the solar system. I hastily put it together and my father critiqued my work, asking me if I thought it was my best. When I looked at it, I realized it wasn't. Then I considered what really was my best work. I had another realization that there was no way I could give it my best and finish it. It was already 8 o'clock! I had to go to sleep soon! (Side note: I actually stayed up until 10 or 10:30 frequently to catch Dragon Ball Z on T.V. before spending a good amount of time not sleeping in my room). I panicked and when I realized I couldn't finish the project if I had to give it my best, my dad agreed to help me as long as I was coming up with the ideas myself - being the teacher that he is. I turned the project in, but it didn't help my abysmal spelling grades that I was getting in 4th grade. I was always the last student left correcting my spelling tests - and I was missing out on recess! The horror, the travesty of my whimsical youth! Words are stupid, who needs them?

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#3 "Take care of yourself."

Now this is where order becomes important. If you notice, this comes after taking care of others AND after getting your own stuff done. I've chosen this order for a specific reason. Rule #1 is and always has been the most important and stated rule in my family. However, rules 2 and 3 don't have such a concrete position. Really, if it were up to my dad, he would put this rule first. But I feel that's because he's imposing rule #1 in his thinking of others. If it were up to my mom, should would put "Get your shit done" first for me specifically, but this is only if you asked her very frankly. She herself easily places rule #1 as her top priority the most consistently of anyone I know. No one cares for others as much as my mother does. It's amazing, because she's a Bruhl! Names aside, anyone can adopt the Kerwin rules, and I think the only reason my mother would put #3 first is that, in my case, she is being my mom and wants me to succeed and I love her for that.

Now, for this rule... let me put it into an example. When kids wake up in the morning, they go to school. The same was true for me, but if I got up in the morning and I was sick, it was easy enough to say that I was sick and then not go to school. However, I never had to lie about being sick. First off, I wanted to go to school. There was always a reason, be it friends or sports or something fun in class - I always wanted to go. But if there was a day where I couldn't go, something in me said "you need more sleep today" or "you have to take a break and think about everything," I could just say so and then I stayed home. The next day my friends would ask "hey why weren't you in school yesterday?" They never really understood my explanation of "I just couldn't come." Now, of course, this quasi-hooky playing only really became necessary as I got older and became more contemplative about my life, my existence, whatnot.

My mother or father's response was always "you have to take care of yourself." But this rule applied, so it became: Take care of yourself, but get your shit done.

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#4 "Fix it."

Take responsibility for your actions. After all, they were your choices. If you break something, fix it.

This applies to fights amongst friends, family, even romantic relationships. It applies to actual broken objects and the like as well. If you absolutely shattered something beyond repair, take the steps necessary to make sure that you pay for it, or you replace it, or you make it up to the person somehow.

One of the ways I take this into my life is that I never let a fight fester. If there is such a problem between me and someone else that it leads to an altercation of words, or even fists, I take the means to "fix it" right away. For romantic relationships, this means that while I will let you hang up the hone, or walk away if you need to. But I will not let you "sleep on it." We're going to talk it out until the problem is fixed.

To me, sleep is a commodity openly traded for other things. Guitar, homework, games, books, love. I do understand that other people do not have the same trade-concept that I do when it comes to sleep. If it's 3 in the morning and you have a class in 4 and a half hours, I will let you sleep as long as we agree that we love each other. This might have led me to more healthy relationships; it might have led me to worse ones. I don't know. I'm not claiming these to be the perfect ways to live (though they come damn close), they're just the ways that I live.

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#5 Treat everyone you meet as though they are your best friend.

This one's not in quotes because I've never really received it as a command or spoken rule, as I have heard all the others. Though, I think this is the epitome of being a Kerwin, as far as everyone who is a member of the Kerwin clan, not specifically the Kaimuki Kerwins.

The best example of this, and I know my dad will agree, is in his father, Ted Kerwin. My grandfather treats everyone he meets as though he's known them his entire life. This doesn't just mean be nice to people when you first meet them. This also means that you are completely genuine to yourself. You remain authentic, even if you have to force kindness - because you're kind to your best friend, right? But you're also cynical to them, you're also a prankster, you're also a joker. You're you, and that authenticity from the very first time you meet someone is the best way to form a deeper relationship later.

Recently, this rule has become difficult for me. When it comes to trust, I believe people can be broken into two categories: there are the people who trust someone they just met 100%, and those that treat people they just met with 0% trust (and then you build trust up from there). These are generalizations, of course. I used to be the former group, and I trusted everyone I met completely and then lost trust in them based on their actions. In the past four years or so, I've become less of that type of person. I regret it. Closeting yourself to keep things private is one thing, but I hope to live with rule #5 in mind more frequently in the future.

So that's it, for now. I could write a book about these rules. Instead, I think I'll do the next set on what it means to be a Bruhl (probably combined with what it means to be a Ciani).