Patterns of Thought

"Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking."
- Marcus Aurelius

He's right, of course. It's easy enough to say, but like all things, it is something else entirely to come to comprehend this as a truth deeply, to "feel it in your bones." Time has done much to bring it closer to me, to help me understand exactly how it operates - how it is true as a function of the machinery of the world which acts on all of us. 

I suppose I came to understand it first as I vacillated for many years back and forth into and out of depression. It became apparent to me that nothing much was actually changing in the world - that only the way I judged myself was shifting. Those days, I didn't do much - I was fixated on discovering a good life to live, a way to be self-satisfied as a function of the outer world. I pursued this mostly by observing the world passively, as if I might notice something that I could then put into action. It would take years for me to see that this effort was misguided, as I repeatedly fit whatever spurious explanations I could find onto the fleeting satisfactions that came to me. Maybe they were, even, brought in by the tide of the outer world, but that is hardly the point - what kept me from happiness was myself, my own evaluation of myself, that I had failed at something profound - the keeping of a self-opinion that accepted myself for who I was.

The proverbial role of "responsible adult" has since brought the same puzzle back to me in a new form. I find my time overcome by the roles and responsibilities into which I have stepped, and I am sad for it - disappointed that all the effort I have put towards freeing myself of obligation has gone the other way. What is to be made of this disconnect? Did I make some mistake in failing to do what I set out to, or have I fundamentally misperceived what has happened?

Maybe both. I certainly can't rule out that I have made one or more mistakes, by my own criteria - that I have acted in a way contrary to my goals. But I think the larger issue - and probably larger by far - is that I have misperceived what has occurred. The state I find myself in today is simply one where I am too eager to picture myself the victim of time and circumstance, to feel helpless when I am not. The evidence for the alternative - that there is no time to be had, nothing to be done for me - evaporates when I force myself to look upon my situation, and especially when I force myself to observe what other people have proven possible. There is nothing in my day that precludes me from having what I want except my own eagerness to jump to reductive and self-defeating conclusions of what I am capable of.

What kind of life will I live if I allow this to continue? I think this implies a tragedy that stoicism understands. When Seneca stated that we must live every moment to its fullest, it was with an almost mathematical formulation, that there is only one path to living our own best life, and that is to control our patterns of thought to see each day, and each moment, for what it is: opportunities we will never again possess.

For Signe - To Stay Young

Signe, you are almost five months old, and each day you are doing new things and becoming more aware of what is around you. I've already mourned so many times what of your babyhood has come and gone, as I watch you play or feel your size as I pick you up. I hold you against my chest and we look into the mirror, and the face whose eyes catch sight of me is not so tiny as it once was, and is more full of awareness, smiles more readily and carries more expression. I try to remember those moments when you smile at me because they are perfect - you are simple and your reactions are perfect in their simplicity. Nothing else I accomplish in my day is so pure as to see you smile at me.

I am scared for my dad, Signe - I know that your grandfather will pass away before I'm prepared, because I will never be prepared. It is the same with your grandmother - and yet there is something more with my father, because he is a man and I am supposed to be a man, and even now, at my age, when I am uncertain how to be strong, I find myself thinking of him and wondering what he would do, and when I am sad I think of him and I wish for him to know that I am suffering, and to tell me that everything will be okay. He has, my whole life, been sensitive and unafraid of his feelings as no other man I've known, yet he seems brave for it, and unafraid, the very antithesis of the doubt and fear that so often consume me, for the mortality of myself and everyone I love.

Signe, the other night I dreamt you grown, with a baby girl of your own that you brought to us, your parents, her grandparents. I had so many times tried and failed to imagine what your face would look like grown, and in my dream I saw you clearly, and your face was yours, yet different. Your same innocence was in your eyes and your smile. If you have a child, it is likely that he or she will never know their great-grandparents, but if they come to a world that I am still in, I will speak about them, because they gave me all the best characteristics of myself. It is the same as how I see my grandmother in my father, and in myself - and though my memories of her fade, my sense that she is a part of me only grows stronger with time. I'll tell your child about my grandmother, too, because with time she becomes mythical to me, transforming from a person that I knew into a facet of the world that is eternal. She has become all of nature to me, the sanctity we owe the natural world and the awe that we feel for it.

Life is so short, and passes so fast, and we are too soon old and too late wise. Each moment matters - I'll try to remind myself of that often, to become a better father and a better friend. Time will judge me in that effort - time, and your happiness. I wish you that happiness - of loved ones who humbly learn how to care for you, and raise you to be self-possessed, self-aware, and compassionate. I am so excited to be part of your life, and I wish for nothing to come between us, to keep us from teaching each other and sharing all the joys of being alive.

For Merry - To Assume Nothing

Merry, do you ever ask yourself how you got here - how unlikely it was, many years ago, that the characteristics of this one future - who you married, where you live, what our life is like - would come to be? The day that I met you at Lake Zorinsky, could you have guessed what we would one day have, could you have foreseen our life together, or our daughter?

How do you think of us, Merry? Are we a rock with a few cracks that we need to keep at work sealing, or are we two birds in a storm, flailing with all our might against the wind, that we not be separated? Maybe I am a fatalist, but for the mistakes I judge one or the other of us to make on any given day, when things are not perfect between us, I see only myself to blame in the grand scheme of things, and believe that only I have the opportunity to deliver us a better future, because you have proven yourself to understand, already, what we need. And before you can contest this, can we examine the evidence?

I didn't want to date you, because you didn't strike me as someone I would date; you were too easy to talk to, to good a friend, too kind and too genuine. You were Susie Derkins and I was Calvin. You were patient and found a way to convince me, and even then it didn't click for me until I realized just how many days you made me happy; how could I not want to be with you? I fell in love with your kindness, your patient affection, and your smile.

I didn't want a pet to take care of; I told you that if you got a cat, it would be yours, and not ours - what more insensitive thing could I have said? And yet you found Rocky, and acted quickly, and then welcomed me to be part of his life. And only once he had settled in as an equal part of our family was I spinelessly ready to call him "ours," right when I ceased to deserve to.

I didn't want to have a child; I endlessly hedged myself by saying that I thought I would want one "some day, just not yet." At least when you told me you were ready I had the sense to listen, and from understanding the episodes above, to trust that you might know better than me. You gave birth to Signe, and I have discovered one day at a time that I needed her to help me be whole, to give me a chance to be a better person, the same way you gave me that opportunity.

I may never know why you chose me for any of this. I'll never understand what you thought I could give you. You've admitted to being in some bad - or at least complicated - relationships before ours. Perhaps you are just bad at picking partners, of which I am one, and perhaps I was simply lucky enough to recognize and hold on to a good thing. You would probably dispute this claim, but I ask, are you so sure it is not the case? Are the virtues you see in me real, and if they are at least that, then are they at all rare?

I've thought a lot about the legacy of each of the decisions above, and what it will mean for us many years from now. Nothing is written in stone, yet certain implications of each seem clear. I will try my best - which has, by my own judgment, often been quite poor - to be a good partner and father. It is all I can do. It probably won't be smooth, but it will be a genuine attempt, I promise. I'll give you, Rocky, and Signe the best life I can, but you must know how little conception I have of what that means, or how to do it. Age seems to fill me not with wisdom, but with doubt - to make me more certain each day of how much I don't know, of how little I can control.

But I know I love you, and Rocky, and Signe. I know that somehow, we've made it here, and for that I am grateful. Of all the alternative lives I can imagine for myself, there is none that compares to this one. Though I can't understand what sort of luck it took to get here, I promise never to think that luck will bless our future - it will be our own decisions that will bend our lives towards meaning and joy. To remember so is all I can give you. I love you and the life you've made us, and I'll try to give us a future worthy of it.

Ten Years From Now

In a podcast with Tim Ferriss, Debbie Millman posed a method for directing self-progress structured as a writing exercise:

“It is Winter 2027. What does your life look like? What are you doing? Where are you living? Who are you living with? Do you have pets? What kind of house are you in? Is it an apartment are you in the city are you in the country? What does your furniture look like? What is your bed like? What are your sheets like? What kind of clothes do you wear? What kind of hair do you have? Tell me about your pets, tell me about your significant other, do you have children? do you have a car? Do you have a boat? Talk about your career? What do you want? What are you reading? What are you making? What excites you? What is your health like? Write this one day ten years from now. So one day in the winter of 2027, what does your whole day look like? Start from the minute you wake up, brush your teeth, have your coffee or tea, all the way through until minute you tuck yourself in at night. What is that day like for you? Dream big, dream without any fear. Write it all down. You don’t have to share it with anyone other than yourself. Put your whole heart into it. Write like there is no tomorrow; write like your life depends on it because it does. And then read it, once a year, and see what happens.”

This is an improvement over the typical "New Year's resolutions" in so many ways that I don't know where to start. Most importantly, she notes that there should be no holding back - the purpose of imagining an ideal future is to make sure we don't remain anchored to the present, and both this encouragement and the ten-year timeframe make it feel more possible to me, even now, before I have started writing.

To be the blue-sky optimist that assumes, all at once that this is basically a good idea, I immediately find myself considering how often I should read it, and how often I should revise it, but I guess those can be problems for later. For now, I'm simply going to attempt writing it.

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In ten years, my enduring joys come from the people I love. Each day I try to elevate my own life as a means to elevate theirs. I am patient and kind because I have practiced being so, and because neither will ever cease to be important. Comfort and pleasure are lesser virtues, whose existence I only consider when I have first done what I can for my loved ones.

My thoughts are clear because I am healthy. I am healthy because I eat well and am physically active. I eat well because it tastes good, and because I listen to my body. I am physically active because I like to have fun, and because the world is worth exploring. Neither "diet" nor "exercise" are obligations I monitor or goals I set.

I work because it challenges me and I enjoy it. I am good at what I do - if for no other reason than that I could never enjoy doing something I was poor at - and my colleagues know that I can be trusted at my word, and trusted to excel at my duties. To be good at what I do is to better those around me. The amount of work I do is in natural balance with my life.

I am seldom in a hurry - I enjoy being in one place for long periods of time. I read to learn and I write to better know myself and the world. I travel, by myself and with my family, to see the world, to understand it better, and to have new experiences. People know they can trust me, ask me anything, confide in me. I enjoy routine but am never beholden to habit. I give my things away because there is almost nothing I want. I am prudent in the things I do - I avoid unnecessary risk - but I do not fear what the world may bring us.

Gratitude for what life has given me protects me from despair. My constant wish is for time - I will always want more time.

Trying To Write As A Busy Person

It is hard to write as a busy person. But, to describe why, exactly, I have to admit that I don't fully agree with a certain prominent quote on writing:

"Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working."
- Pablo Picasso

I have to admit, I do find writing inspiration while writing. But, I also find it when I am neck deep in busywork at my day job, or stuck in traffic, or on a walk. I have, actually, never found a way to prevent it from coming to me, at any hour of the day or night.

Perhaps I am "working" in the sense that my mind is simply turning all the time. I do, after all, drink quite a bit of coffee.

If others find themselves in the same boat as me - which is that you may wish to write at any time, day or night - and if they are a busy person, than the proposition of writing as a productive enterprise probably often feels like a certain narrow form of torture to the self-actualizing impulse that some of us are fortunate to find ourselves experiencing on our Maslow-ian stairway. But, maybe any perceived inconvenience - the feeling that time and inspiration actively oppose each other - is more than bad luck.

I spent a couple weeks writing what I guess you could call a first draft of a short story, then spent a month or more staring at it, repeatedly, trying to dissect what was wrong with it that made it limp, and formless, and searching for how to shape it around a more compelling narrative arc. This week, a number of things have come together in a perfect storm to make it essentially impossible to write productively, but the frequency and strength of inspiration I have felt has simultaneously exploded.

But first, to make one small aside - it's not just quantitative time that is the raw material of productive writing - it's also the presence of mental clarity, focus, and energy, and the absence of stress and distraction, and especially distractions that are mentally taxing. Well, the world we inhabit is not random. It is exceedingly complex, but there ARE correlations between all these things. So what is the correlation between inspiration - those nuggets welling up from the void that give us something worth saying - and those tranquil periods of free time that, at least on paper, would seem so ripe for use in writing?

It would be bad enough for it to be neutral (perfectly random), but my guess is that it's negative, which is to say that periods of turmoil are probably MORE likely to correspond to inspiration. It's terrible for the modern writer who sees the world analytically (as I have laid out above) but has visions of engineering their life to optimize writing. But, it makes a certain amount of sense. Turmoil breeds new experiences, new feelings, and lots of introspection. Sitting in a dark closet for a month might represent a virtual explosion in free time, but would it really produce more inspiration, and thus more writing?

For now, pre-scheduled time for writing remains a canard that does not correspond to inspiration. Perhaps I am looking at it wrong, or looking at it right but missing something in my analysis. For now, this is a problem I'll punt. Writing will happen when it happens!