The blessing of a sturdy table

The center of a family is not its family room, the heart of a family lies in its dining room, at the table it gathers around.

Photo Credit: Unsplash @ddealmeida

I remember the table my parents had growing up. It was styled like the early nineties, a light looking piney wood with a glossy finish. Kind of like the wooden equivalent of acid washed jeans. Its legs were curved and ribbed, the type of texture that little hands love to run their fingers and nails over. I remember feeling such glee when my father would put in the table leaf, because it meant we were having a special amount of company over.

The wooden chairs we had were a similar, light, hue. They were the sort of kit chairs a young, modest, immigrant family could buy from Kmart or Service Merchandise to assemble and stain themselves to save a little money.

The table always scared me a bit, because it was built as if to be a little wobbly. I remember my father tightening the bolts, every so often, to ensure it wouldn’t shake too much. I never played under it, because I was always a little scared, in the way a four year old might be, that the time it would finally topple might be the precise moment I was underneath it. But beyond that, I never had a little sibling or a puppy to chase around, so I never really had any reason to scurry under that first wobbly table we had.

That table was were we had dinner, where as a young lad I would, invariably, beg for Kraft macaroni and cheese instead of bhindi and dal. It was where my parents would review the bills and make ends meet. It was the only place in America I ever ate and talked with my with my visiting grandparents. That table and those chairs are one of the only fixtures in my family home that we’ve had with us from Williamsville, New York to three different cities in Michigan: Grand Blanc, Rochester Hills, and Rochester.

Eventually, my parents were on the come up. And one of the first purchases they made was a new, sturdier, dinner table. It was darker wood, stained to a cherry-esque finish, and they bought a china cabinet, server, and eight upholstered chairs to match. More than anything else they ever bought, I think, this was the symbol that we had made it in America.

—

The first table Robyn and I had was a small one, an IKEA outfit, but one of the nicer ones that I had from the roommate era of my life. It was solid and flat, its surface resemblant of a butcher block, but thinner. Robyn and I first ate together around it before we started dating, when in the same building in Midtown Detroit, the one with the coat of arms in the lobby. Robyn came up when she was sick on her birthday, I made soup and played John Mayer’s Where the Light Is album.

Little did we know, it would be that table that we would first sit down for dinner at, in our first apartment together, after our marriage. It would be the table that we would dream about our family, and make bucket lists of all the fun things we wanted to do together in the upcoming season. It would be the table - the one by the window, nestled between the wall and the slightly-too-big-for the-room couch - that our 10 month old, nervous, rescue dog would vertically leap onto after sprinting around the room.

When Robyn and I bought our home in Detroit, we packed up that little IKEA table, along with the rest of our boxes and ends, and moved uptown to a friendly, tree-lined street on the north side of the City. After we unloaded the truck, Robyn stayed back while I I led the movers in a caravan up to my parents house in Rochester.

After my father passed, that sturdy cherry table they bought, along with the matching chairs, cabinet, and sever had been mostly idle. My mother was gifting the whole set to Robyn and I, as we started life in our new home and I went up to retrieve the whole set.

And so, on that overcast January afternoon, the movers packed everything up in blankets, with care, and brought it all to Detroit, into our cozy little dining room, with the french doors where Robyn would later hang up photos of our children in the glass panes, every year on their birthdays.

That sturdy table, I’ve realized, is where all my dreams are represented.

Robyn and I have our candle-lit mini-dates there. When our sons were born, we’d pull up a high chair right to the corner and give them mushed up bananas, peas, and sweet potatoes. It’s where we gather our family and friends around, with easy access to the pot in the kitchen filled with a meal that can feed us all. It’s where our sons and pup can confidently hide and chase each other, without fear of the walls crumbling around them.

It’s where we blow out the candles on birthday cakes or share what we learned or were grateful for after a school day, while eating leftover tacos. It’s where Robyn and I talk for a few minutes, after the kids have already moved onto to their next adventure, after breakfast on Saturday mornings, and we smile, and then whisper to each other, “This is the dream.”

That table, that sturdy table, is where the blessings we count in prayer first came to be.

And now, as I see my sons around that table, I understand why my parents were so particular about picking exactly the right one, after weeks of research, budgeting, serious discussion, and several trips to the Thomasville store. The chance to upgrade to a sturdy table, wasn’t only a symbol of securing their seat solidly in the middle class.

I know now, that my parents were thinking of the future when they bought that table. They wanted to pass that table - that sturdy table, onto me and Robyn, even though they would not know her until decades later.

That table reminds me of the blessing and the sacrifices of both our parents. My parents had no choice but to start off in this country with a wobbly table and chairs they glued together themselves. They wanted to help us start our lives together with something sturdier.

They dreamed for us, what we now dream for our own children: that we have a lifetime of love and memories around our table - a childhood our kids want to remember. And we dream of helping our children start their lives beyond us with a table of their own. Maybe not one that’s opulent or expensive, but one that is sturdy - sturdy enough to build their dreams and their own families around.

I don’t always know who reads these posts, or where in the world they are from. But if you’re reading this, I hope you are blessed with the gifts of a sturdy table, and a community that gathers around it, just as we are.

Salsa is the last stage of grief

To many of my oldest friends, my father was best known for one thing: his salsa.

It was objectively out of this world, and the craftsmanship he used was nothing short of incredible. I remember watching him, at the green granite island in my childhood home, taking tomatoes and looking at them like a championship athlete surveys a playing field.

Then he’d take these tomatoes and mince them into minuscule cubes, better than a machine could, even if he had a dull knife. Then he’d do the same with an onion and cilantro before adding spices, hand-squeezed lime juice, and one or two green chilies. His salsa was the stuff of childhood legend, and the way he made it, with such precision and pride, was legendary to me.

It is without exaggeration to say that one specific thing I grieved when he went ahead was that I was never able to have an afternoon with him - where he would pass on the recipe, yes, but also his wisdom, his blessing, and the torch. Even when I was young, long before I knew he would be taken from us so suddenly, I put it in my mind that the salsa was not just a recipe but an important rite of passage.

I haven’t been able to bring myself to try making it since he died. The thought of making it was sad, but also scary. The knife would’ve invoked the feelings of a haunted house, I thought, and how could I do it justice without him teaching me the secrets of his work? Anything less than perfection would’ve felt like an insult to his memory.

—

My family has more than its fair share of gardeners.

I’ve been hearing about Udai Mama’s green thumb - he’s one of my four maternal uncles - from my mom for decades. My Masi, who’s know by her nickname “Gudda” in our family, is the same way. She’s created an Eden in her backyard in Long Island, with everything from tomatoes, to Indian vegetables, to figs.

She sent us home with a bounty from her garden last weekend, when we were visiting our New York family. So here I was, with a deluge of perfectly ripe tomatoes I didn’t know what to do with, which would surely rot within a week without intervention. And how could I waste a basket of tomatoes from my aunt’s garden? I may not be perfect, but I’m not a savage.

As it happened, five days after our return from New York, our youngest son Emmett was to be baptized. Our plan was to have everyone over - our family, godparents, friends, kids, everyone - for an early dinner before Mass. Robyn created the menu and had us stocked up to make our crowd-favorite white bean chili, cornbread, and a frosted chocolate cake. I picked up a Sister Pie because I happened to be in the West Village for lunch with an old friend.

And there were those tomatoes in the orange, plastic colander - the one Robyn had in her apartment when we first started dating - that were just sitting there, catching sunshine, getting riper and riper by the day.

—

It was one of the proudest moments, Papa, I’ve ever had over something I’ve made - when person after person was raving about the salsa I made. Your salsa. I got to tell all our friends and family present for Emmett’s baptism - most of whom I met after I moved to college - the story of your salsa and say with so much joy, “I’m glad you liked it, it was my Dad’s recipe. I always thought he should market it, too.”

As I was making it, I was remembering you. I was remembering your life, how you left India and landed in Tehran to join the ship on which you were to be an engineer. I was remembering how intensely you insisted on doing the right thing, in the right way, down to how you impressed upon me, “You MUST cut the tomatoes by hand, a machine leaves the pieces too large and soft. The tomatoes must be firm, Neil, FIRM.”

When you died, in addition to tremendous sadness and grief, I was also under duress for practical reasons. I didn’t know how to do any grown up stuff.

How do I negotiate a salary? How do I buy a house or plant a garden? How do I feed a baby a bottle? How would you like your last rites to be conducted? How do I find a new dentist? How do I file my taxes? How do find my way in life? How do I make your salsa? These were the things I needed to ask you, that I never could.

And beyond those practical concerns, that was supposed to be our time. I was finally grown. We could finally be the friends we were always meant to be. Asking you for advice was how we were going to bond as grown men.

I was so sad that we never got that time. I still am, because I’m balling as I’m writing this part of the essay. But I suppose you probably see that.

But a funny thing happened as I was making that first bowl of salsa yesterday. In addition to remembering you. I was remembering all the stuff that’s been going on over the past few weeks. All the grown up stuff Robyn and I have had to do lately.

I took the lead for us and traded in Robyn’s car for a minivan that can fit our growing family. I cleared the garden we plotted in our backyard for the winter, and put away the drip irrigation system I installed. I found a masonry contractor and got our garage fixed. I found a high-interest cash account to take advantage of rising interest rates. I navigated a career decision. I, and Robyn too, figured out how to get help from a therapist-coach so we could be better parents to Bo - and we graduated, so to speak, after four months, earlier this week. I figured out that the secret ingredient I was missing in the salsa was ginger.

I realized when I was chopping those tomatoes and onions that you probably never had a salsa recipe. Of course you didn’t have a recipe. Indians didn’t invent salsa. You made it your own. You figured it out. Just like you figured out everything else in your whole adult life, when you were oceans away from your family, making it as a first-generation man in this country.

As I was squeezing the lime I remembered all the things I saw you figure out. How to make a shelf. How to deal with customer service agents who disrespected anyone with an accent. How to use credit card points toward the purchase of a car. How to build a house. How to deal with unemployment. How to raise a son. How to be an honest man. How to live a life.

You were the example of figuring it out, for my whole life, and that’s what I realized yesterday. Even though you went ahead, I should’ve never been worried about the things I didn’t know how to do. It was never about that. I finally realized that you never needed to teach me the salsa recipe or anything else fathers tend to teach their sons as adults. Because you taught me to figure it out. You left me prepared, long before you died, to figure it out - whether it was the salsa or anything else.

It was an unexpectedly big moment, Papa. I’m not scared anymore. I can figure it out. I know this now.

I can figure out how to build a thriving marriage. I can figure out how to be a father to each of our very different sons. I can figure out how to be a man of good character, worthy of our family’s name. I can figure out how to make a contribution to this world, in my job and outside of it. I can figure out how to make your salsa, because you taught me to figure it out.

It’s a cliche to say, but is true - not a day goes by where I don’t think of you. I’m still so sad that you can’t be here with us for the big and little family moments we have. I still have so much gratitude and joy when I think of the happy stories we can tell about you. I know you would’ve wanted us to keep living life, and I swear to God I have. But the weight of grief has been heavy.

But yesterday was a big moment. Something feels different, lighter perhaps. When I think of you I will always have sadness, gratitude, joy, and laughter all mixed together. But now, after learning this lesson from the salsa, the grief part might now, finally, be over.

Photo Credit: Unsplash @yehoshuaas

They Need Me To Lead

I believe in the practice of walking the talk, especially as a father. Because even as cliche as it is to say, actions definitely speak louder than words.

I know it, because I act like my father. At the hospital, the day before he died, some of his colleagues came to see us and warmly recounted how passionately my father would present a data analysis and how he’d gesticulate, wildly sometimes, to make his point. I never knew that about him, I thought, but I do that too. And sure as shit, when I see my sons, already, intonate their words up or make up pretend games about spaceships, I know they’re acting like me.

As a general rule, I don’t want to be a morally lethargic parent, allergic to even the smallest personal transformation, that cranks on with tropes like, “do as I say, not as I do”. Like, if I want them to stop picking their noses or stop exhibiting the desperate signs of needing to please authority figures, I have to stop doing that myself, or at a minimum be silent on the issue.

And yet, I’ve found a specific uncomfortable, alien, circumstance where I cannot do what I tell them to do.

What I tell them is something along the lines of:

“Bo and Myles, if you want your brother to stop hitting you, you need to tell them to stop, clearly. And if they don’t listen you need to tell them why. I’m here to help you if you can’t figure it out on your own.”

But if it’s bedtime and Myles is going around in circles to the point of running face first into wall of their shared bedroom, while Bo is jumping on his bed and giggling and screaming about the potty, I cannot do what I told them to do.

I cannot tell them to stop running and yelling because that attention just eggs them on and because this behavior, though irritating, is not expressly unsafe. This part is a practical matter.

But I also cannot tell them why I want them to stop. I cannot tell them that I desperately want to spend 20 minutes with their mother talking about something other than our daily grind or syncing up on parenting tactics. I cannot tell them I am exhausted and they’re keeping me from doing the dishes, and the dishes are keeping me from working, and my work is keeping me from sleeping. I cannot tell them how selfish they are for waking up their baby brother who is sleeping in the nursery across the hall. Even though every ounce of flesh in me wants to offload all this frustration and anger onto them…

I cannot ask them for help either. Maybe there’s some exception here but doing so is dangerous territory. I can ask them for help cleaning up toys off the floor, or handing me an infant diaper when my hands are full. But in the middle of a bedtime circus, it’s different - I cannot ask them to carry my emotional burden.

I’m their father, their papa. They need me to be sturdy. They need me to lead and to lean on. They are the sailboats and I must be their safe harbor. They are the explorers and I must be their map and compass. As the temperature rises, I must be their thermostats, not a thermometer.

To make sense of this world, their not-even-school-aged world, they need me. To reassure them that no bad guys will come to get them and take them away under cover of darkness and dreams, they need me. To be the one who stays steady, instead of retaliating, when they hit or scream or kick or spit or piss in anger, they need me. It won’t be like this forever, but for now, they need me to lead.

I have wondered for a long time about childhood, or what it’s supposed to be I guess. I just don’t remember having one. I did, at some point, exist as a child and in childhood, but what was it like? I can’t recall it, save for photographs and loose threads.

I had my early years and it was full of the acceleration you would expect for a middle-class, suburban, child of scrappy South Asian immigrants. And as I kept racing and pacing, my adolescence passed. So did my father, shortly thereafter. And as he left us behind him, I was growing ahead of my time, once again.

It’s as if the passing of my childhood was something I’ve always grieved, without having the presence of mind to use that word as it was happening.

I cannot shatter the glass ceiling of their innocence so early. I just can’t. Not yet. Not until I have to. I can’t thrust them into my world of struggle and responsibility just yet. I can’t get them to help me with the distortions in my own mind. I just can’t. I want them, so badly, to stay in their not-even-school-aged world a little longer.

I feel so often that parenting is a paradox. It’s excruciating but it’s the best. It’s a never-ending slog but it goes by too quickly. It ages you gray or bald, but also keeps you young. So this, it seems, is just the latest paradox - I need to walk the talk because actions speak louder than words, but not on this one thing…I just can’t on this one thing.

Memories Are Only Shards

At around 2:30pm, when he emerges from the chamber of his midday nap, Myles is at “peak snuggle”. And this day he chose me. I was outlayed on a sofa, tucked into a corner at it’s “L”.

And then, in one single motion, he scooped on top of me, jigsawing in between my knees and sternum. This was a complete surprise, because this never happens. It’s mommy that invariable gets his peak snuggle, not me.

And I was excited-nervous like some get right before an opening kickoff and maybe even before a first date. I wanted to soak this one in, because in addition to this never happening, I’ve come to accept the difficult truth that our kids won’t be little forever.

We will only get 18 Christmases, Diwalis, and birthdays with each of them at home. We will only get 18 summers with them at home. Eventually, Myles’s sternum and knees will outgrow my own. It’s not just a thought of “oh my gawd, this never happens, I’ve gotta soak this in”, it’s a realization that there will be a time where they’re too big for this to ever happen again. Eventually, Myles, and all our children will outgrow the very idea of peak snuggle.

I know this is all fleeting, and so I was trying to just be there, so still, so as not to perturb Myles into realizing he could move on with his day. I tried to notice everything: the softness of his newly chestnut colored hair, which has lightened as the summer unfolded. I noticed the fuzzy nylon texture of his Michigan football jersey. I tried to cement the feel of his fingers as he tried to read my face like a map, as he reached up above his head, past my chin, and to my cheeks. I embraced the particular top-heavy way his two-and-a-half year old frame carried its weight at this specific moment of his life.

But hard as I tried, my efforts to remember were an exercise in grasping at straws. Memories have the shortest of all half lives.

Even 5 minutes later, as I desperately tried to encode my neurons with this moment, I couldn’t quite remember it as it actually happened. Even after just five minutes, I had only the fragments and feelings of something that now was fuzzy and choppy and bits and pieces. What remained was more like a dream than a memory.

All my memories, are this way. I’ve even experimented to test my mind’s resilience to remember, and everything still fades. Even for the most exhilarating moments of my life - like our marriage vows, the birth of our children, or my first time walking into Michigan Stadium - only the fragments remain. It’s excruciating but true that the only time the we ever experience reality is in the very moment we are in, and only if we’re fully there. After just seconds, the memory decays irreparably. All we are left with is a shard of what really happened.

This unfairly short half life of memory has softened my judgement about social media. After stripping away all the vanity, status signalining, and humble bragging, I think there is at least a sliver of desperation and humanity that’s left. At the end of the day, we just all want to remember. And because our minds are too feeble to remember unassisted, we take a photo and share it as a story.

In the past few weeks, as I’ve realized that I don’t truly have any clear, vivid, life-like memories. I’ve almost panicked about what to do. This is why we have to tell stories. Stories, just like photographs are a way to save a little shard of something beautiful. This is why I have to get sleep. The sleep keeps my eyes wide open and puts a leash on my mind so it doesn’t recklessly wander away from reality as it’s happening. And, most importantly, this is why I have to be with them.

We treasure our relationships and are so protective of them for a reason. If we find friends, family, or colleagues that we actually want to remember, we know intuitively that we ought to see them as much as we can. We know intuitively that if we see those treasured people often, maybe it’ll slow down the decay of our memories a little. Life is too short to throw away chances to be with the people we want, so desperately, to remember. This is why I have to be with them.

And just like that, Myles moved on with his day. He scooped off the sofa, just as quickly as he arrived. Peak snuggle was over. And my memory started to decay immediately, as I expected. But at least I do have this fragment of a feeling. And, thank God that even if I won’t be able to ever have full, real memories of this beautiful moment, I will at least have the shards of it.

“I Promise”

Succeeding in pursuit of a goal, I’ve learned, can be simple as long as you ask yourself the right questions. Graduate school - and everything I've read about management that's any good - taught me that the first question to ask yourself before starting any journey is "what result do I want to create?"[1] The idea is, once you clarify exactly what success looks like (and what it doesn't) you can spend all your time working at that result, instead of wasting time and effort toward anything else.

As a father, what result do I want to create? I've thought about that a lot as Robert’s birth approached and since then, as all of you have come into the world. The result I want to create is simple: I want you all to feel loved and become good people. Therefore, my duty as a father, as I see it, is two fold: 1) love you unconditionally, and, 2) help you become good people.

That's it. That’s the mission – to love you unconditionally and help you three become good people. Anything else that comes of my influence in your life is a bonus.

Let me be perfectly up front with you, too – my mission is not your happiness. Obviously, I hope you all live healthy, happy, and prosperous lives. But I'm not committing to or focusing on that. Goodness and happiness are not the same thing and I am focused on goodness, not happiness.

For one, each of you three are the only people who can make you healthy, happy, and prosperous. Guaranteeing your health, happiness, and prosperity is a promise I can’t keep. It’s difficult for me to admit that, but it’s true; health, happiness, and prosperity are only in your hands or the hands of God.

I can’t even truly promise that I will succeed in helping each of you to become good people. I am a mortal, imperfect, man just like you are, who is frustratingly fallible – and so are you. Only a God could veritably guarantee that they could help you become a good person, and a God is something I certainly am not. I may fail at my mission, even if I die trying.

But here’s what I do promise, right now, in writing. Our word is our bond, and these are quite literally my words. I promise two things, to you three, my sons.

First, I promise you that I will never give up on cultivating the goodness in you or in myself.

I will work to do that as long as I exist in body, mind, or spirit. How I approach that task will change as you grow older, but I will never give up on it. I will make mistakes, and I will learn from them. I am committed to the challenge because it is the most important thing I will ever do. I am in it for the long haul.

One of the books I will read to you one day is East of Eden[2] by John Steinbeck. It is one of my favorites and the most important novel I have ever read. I first read it in high school and I don't even remember most of the plot. What I do remember is what I consider to be it’s most important idea - timshel.

Lee, one of the characters in the book, tells the story of a Biblical passage discussing man's conquering of sin – “the sixteen verses of the fourth chapter of Genesis”. Something interesting that Lee finds is that different translations of the Bible have different understanding of what God says about man’s ability to conquer sin.

One translation – from the King James version –  says that thou shall conquer sin, implying that a man overcoming his sinning ways is an inevitability. Man shall conquer sin, it’s a done deal. The other translation – the American Standard version – says “do thou”, that thou must conquer sin, implying that God commands man to overcome his sin. In this version it’s not an inevitability, it’s an imperative.  

These two translations are obviously radically different, which leaves Lee flummoxed. What he does to remedy this confusion is go back to the original Hebrew (with the help of a few sage old men), to see the exact words used in the original scripture. His hope is that by going back to the original Hebrew, he will be able to decipher a more accurate understanding of the verse’s intent.

In the original Hebrew, Lee finds the word timshel in the verse. This “timshel” word, Steinbeck reveals, translates to “thou mayest” conquer sin. So, conquering our sins is not an inevitability and it's not an imperative - it's a choice. A choice! It is up to us whether we conquer our sins and become good men. What Steinbeck conveys is that the Biblical God says timshel - that we may conquer our sins, if that is the choice we make.

That’s what I have chosen. I choose to try, to try to conquer sin. I choose to try to be a better man, and to try to help you three, my three sons, to become better men, too. I will never give up on you, boys, I swear to you that.

What Steinbeck reminds us, is that conquering our sin is in our hands. Becoming good is our choice. And my first promise to you – my three sons - is to never give up on goodness, and never give up on you, even though I may fail.

But no matter what happens from here forward, this is my second promise to you, no matter what happens. No matter how good or wicked each of you are. No matter how tall or short you are. No matter how wealthy or poor you become, no matter what you look or act like, no matter what - I will always love you, unconditionally, and so will your mother. Always. Always. Always. 

I promise.
—

[1] From Lift: Becoming a Positive Force in Any Situation, Ryan W. Quinn and Robert E. Quinn

[2] From East of Eden, John Steinbeck

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This passage is from a book I’ve drafted and am currently editing. To learn more and sign up to receive updates / excerpts click here.

If true, am I really a “leader”?

If I choose to…

…say “just give it to me” instead of teach,

…set a low standard so I don’t have to teach,

…blame them for not “being better”,

…blame them for my anger instead of owning it,

…let the outcome we’re trying to achieve remain unclear,

…keep the important reason for what we’re doing a secret,

…leave my own behavior unmeasured and unmanaged,

…set a high standard without being willing to teach,

…proceed without listening to what’s really going on,

…proceed without understanding their superpowers and motivations,

…withhold my true feelings about a problem,

…avoid difficult conversations,

…believe doing gopher work to help the team is “beneath me”,

…steal loyalty by threatening shame or embarrassment,

…move around 1 on 1 time when I get better plans,

…be absent in a time of need (or a time of quiet celebration),

…waffle on a decision,

…or let a known problem fester,

Am I really a “manager” or a “leader”? Can I really call myself a “parent”?

If I’ve shirked all the parts requiring responsibility, what am I?

To me all “leadership” really is, is taking responsibility. It’s the necessary and sufficient condition of it. The listed items I’ve prepared are just some examples of the responsibilities we can choose (or not) to take.

And, definitely, there are about 5 of those that I fail at, regularly. My hope is that by making these moments transparent, it will be more possible to make different choices.

The Great Choice

In the spring of 2012, my life was a mess - even though it didn't appear that way to almost everyone, even me. But a few people did realize I was struggling, and that literally changed the trajectory of my life. It was just a little act, noticing, that mattered. And from noticing, care. Those seemingly small acts were a nudge, I suppose, that put me back on the long path I was walking down, before I was able to drift indefinitely in the direction of a man I didn’t want to become.

Those small acts of noticing and care were acts of gracious love, that probably prevented me from squandering years of my life. Without a nudge, it might have been years before I had realized that I lost myself. Because in the spring of 2012, I was making the worst kind of bad choices – the ones I didn’t even know were bad.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

Trying to become a good person is like taking a long walk in the woods. It’s winding. It’s strenuous. It’s not always well marked and there are a lot of diversions. There’s also, as it turns out, not a clear destination. Being a good person is not really a place at which we arrive, and then just declare we’re a good person. It’s just a long walk in the woods that we just keep doing – one foot in front of the other.

It is not something we do because it is fun. A long walk in the woods can be chilly, rainy, uncomfortable – not every day is sunny.

Righteousness is a word that I learned at an oddly young age. I must have been 10 or younger, I think. It was a world I heard lots of Indian Aunty’s and Uncles say during Swadhyaya, which is Sanskrit for “self-study” and what my Sunday school for Indian kids was called that I went to as a boy. And when those Auntys and Uncles would teach us prayers and commandments and the like – righteousness was a word that was often translated.

My father also used that word, righteous. I can hear him, still, with his particular pronunciation of the word talking to me about the rite-chus path. This idea of taking a long walk in the woods, you see boys, is an old idea in our culture. To me, talking about being a good person, going on a long walk in the woods, taking the righteous path – whatever you want to call it – are not just words and metaphors. It’s a dharma – a spiritual duty. It’s a long walk down an often difficult, but righteous, path.

But it is still a choice. Will we take the long walk?

This is a choice to you, like it was to me, my father before me, and his father before he. All of your aunts and uncles, grandparents, had this choice. In our family, this is a choice we have had to make – will we walk the righteous path or not? Will we do the right thing, or not? Will we take the long walk, day after day, or will we not? Will we try to be good people, or will we not?

This is the great choice of our lives. We have to choose.

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This passage is from a book I’ve drafted and am currently editing. To learn more and sign up to receive updates / excerpts click here.

“Papa? Will you never die?”

“Papa? If you take good care of your body, will you never die?”

This was the last tension, that once revealed, unwound the bedtime tantrums a few nights ago. As it turns out, it wasn’t the imminent end of our annual extended family vacation in northern Michigan that had Bo’s feelings and stomach in knots.

It was death.

Unasked and unanswered questions about death. Doubts about death. Anxiety about death, so insidious that I have not a single clue how the questions were seeded in his mind and why they sprouted so soon.

“I want to be with you for a hundred million infinity years, Papa. A hundred million INFINITY.”

Such earnest, piercing, and deeply empathetic honesty is the fingerprint of our eldest son’s soul.

When he tells me this, my excuses all evaporate. How could I ever not eat right from this day forward? How could I ever get to drunkenness ever again? How can I not be disciplined about, exercise, sleep, and going to the doctor? How could I ever contemplate texting and driving, ever again? How could I let myself stress about something as artificial as a career? For Bo, for Robyn, and our two younger sons, how could I do anything else?

I needed to hear this, this week, because I have been losing focus on what really matters.

I have been moping about how I feel like many of my dreams are fading. My need to return to public service. My need to challenge the power structures that tax my talent everyday at work. The book I need to finish, or the businesses I need to start. Ego stuff.

In my head, at his bedside, my better angels turned the tide in the ongoing battle with my ambition. Those are not needs. Those are wants. To believe they are needs is a delusion. Dreams are important, yes, but they are wants, not needs.

All I really need, desperately, is to be here. To show up. To wake up with sound-enough mind and body. To not lose anyone before the next sunset. To have who and what I am intertwined with to stay intertwined. This is what I need.

What I vowed to Bo is that I would take care of my body, because I wanted to be here for a long, long, long, long, long, long time.

“I will be here for as long as I can. I want to be here, with you and our family, for as long as I can.”

And as he drifted to sleep, I stayed a moment, kneeling, and thought - loudly enough, only, perhaps, for his soul to overhear,

“Please, God, help us all be here for as long as we can.”

“How do I become a good father?”

Let me be honest with you.

I don't know whether I'm a good man, whether I will be a good father, or even whether I'll ever have the capacity to know - in the moment, at least - whether I'm either of those things. I, nor anyone, will truly be able to judge whether I was a good father or a good man until decades after I pass on from this earth.

I do know, however, that is what I want and intend to be. I want to be a good father and the father you all need me to be.

Wanting to be a good father was my central objective in writing this book. The sentiment I had in the Spring of 2017, a few months before Bo was born, is the same sentiment I feel now – I want to be a good father, but I need to figure it out. I am not nervous to be a father, but I’m not sure I know how just yet. I am excited to be a father, but what would it mean to be a good one? What do I need to do? How do I actually do it? How do I actually walk the walk?

This book is my answer to this simple, fundamental, difficult question: how do I become a good father? In this letter and the letters that follow, my goal is to answer that question in the greatest rigor and with the most thoughtfulness I can. As you’ll see in the pages that follow, the answer to the question quickly becomes an inquiry on how I become a good person myself, because I need to walk the walk if I want you three to grow to become good people. As it turns out, the best way (and perhaps only way) I could adequately answer this question with the intensity and emotional labor it required was by talking with you all – my three sons – and writing to you directly. You boys are the intended audience of this volume of letters.

When I first started writing in 2017, your mother and I only knew of Robert’s pending birth, though we dreamed of you both, Myles, and Emmett. And by the grace of God, all three of you are here now as I begin rewrites of this manuscript in the spring of 2022, about three weeks after Emmett was born. Now that you three are here, I have edited this volume to address you all in these letters collectively, even though that wasn’t the case in my original draft.

At the beginning of this project, I wasn’t sure if I would share it with anyone but our family. But as I went, I started to believe that the ideas were relevant and worth sharing beyond our roof. This book become something I’ve always wanted from philosophers, but I felt was always missing. As comprehensive as moral philosophy and theology are with the question of “what” – what is good, what is the right choice, etc. – what I found lacking was the question of “how”. How do we actually become the sort of people that can actually do what is good? How do we actually become the sort of people that make the tough choices to live out and goodness in our thoughts and our actions? How do we actually learn to walk the walk?

This question of “how” is unglamorous, laborious, and pedantic to answer. It takes a special kind of zealotry to stick with, especially because it requires a tremendous amount of context setting and when you’re done all the work you’ve done seems so obvious, cliché even. And yet, the question of how – how we become good people is so essential.

Perhaps that’s why philosophers don’t seem to emphasize it, but parents and coaches do. Coming up with the “what” is sexy, cool, flashy, and novel and once you lay down the what, it’s easy to walk away and leave the details to the “lesser minds” in the room. On the contrary, you have to care deeply about a person to get into the muck of details to help them figure out “how” to do anything. Figuring out the how is a much longer, arduous, and entangled journey.

---

This passage is from a book I’ve drafted and am currently editing. To learn more and sign up to receive updates / excerpts click here.

We are reimagining what it means to be a man

In the age we live in, what it means to be a man is being completely reimagined. And as a result, what we are trying to do as men - particularly as husbands, fathers, and citizens - is nothing short of remarkable. We are actively reinventing, for the first time, the role of men in society.

I struggle a lot with this.

On the one hand, I am a man. Being a man is a salient part of who I am and how I view the world. This may indicate, to some at least, that I’m less evolved and not as “woke”, if that’s the right word, than others among us. I’m not able to hold a world view that gender is entirely a social construction or that we should create a world that ignores the very concept of “men”. I’m not entirely sure what being a feminist or male ally entails, but I’m pretty sure I’m not that, exactly, either.

At the same time, I reject what being a man means today. And I’m not comfortable with the grotesque baggage that being a man is inseparable from. The criticisms of men and masculinity are legitimate, and that’s an understatement.

Men have controlled and abused women, for most of known history it seems - whether it was politically or through sexual violence. Marriages between men and women, generally speaking, have not be fair or equitable, ever. The glass ceiling is real - I see my women and my female colleague hindered and treated outright badly, in ways that men aren’t. I don’t want to be that kind of man.

But it seems to me, that for the first time, at least some men are trying to take on this tension - identifying with being a man, but rejecting its harmful externalities - and act differently. I don’t know if it’s a majority of men or even that a lot that are trying to reimagine what it means to be a man, but I’m certainly struggling through this tension. So are a lot of my friends and colleagues and it’s something we talk about. So it can’t be an immaterial amount of men who are trying to figure this out, right?

I love the mental model of using an OKR (Objective and Key Results) to set clear goals (you can get a nice crash course on OKRs, here). And so I tried applying it to “being a good man” - this is what being a “good man” means to me:

When I was done, I had a “whoa” moment. The OKR I created, I realized, is quite different than what I would assume the stereotypical man of the 20th century would create if he were doing the same exercise. Hell, it’s quite different than what my own father would probably create. Like, can you imagine the men of 1950s sitcoms (or even 1990s sitcoms) talking about fair distribution of domestic responsibilities or parenting without fear tactics?

I can’t. Most of the protagonists in those shows had wives who didn’t work outside the homes - the contexts in which those characters were cast is wildly different than our own.

And that’s what makes what we’re doing remarkable. We’re trying to envision a different future - and live it ourselves - without having any sort of role model on what this reconception of what it means to be a man can look like. It’s even more remarkable and complex because it’s not just heterosexual men in same-race relationships that are figuring this out. Gay men and men in interracial or interfaith relationships are also figuring out how to be husbands, fathers, and citizens in this time of cultural flux around what it means to be a man.

I couldn’t talk to my own father about this anyway (God rest his soul), but even if he was around he couldn’t be my role model for this journey. Despite my father being the most honest and perhaps the kindest man I’ve ever met, he was still swimming in a culture with remarkably rigid gender roles. All our male role models were, because that was the culture of the times.

But beyond our own uncles, fathers, and grandparents, we don’t have stories in our culture to draw from for role models, either. There aren’t novels with strong, male protagonists that are trying to redefine manhood in the 21st century, that I’ve found at least. On the contrary, every novel I’ve heard my friends talk about with male protagonists were from detective novels, historical fiction, thrillers, or from science fiction - hardly relatable to men trying to recast their male identities.

There are great male role models from the canon of 20th century literature and culture - Atticus Finch of To Kill a Mockingbird, Aragorn from Lord of the Rings, Reverend John Ames from Gilead, or even Master Yoda from Star Wars are favorites of mine - but those characters are in the wrong context to really help us navigate the process of reimagine manhood as well. Atticus and Yoda are not really dealing with contemporary circumstances, obviously, as much as I really am inspired by their example.

Honestly, it seems like the Marvel Cinematic Universe and its superheroes going through real struggles and making real sacrifices are the closest role models we can look to as men trying to be better men. Maybe that’s why I like those films so much. But it’s hard and probably ego-inflating for me to relate to comic book superheroes. We need, and have to have something better than Marvel movies, right?

My wife loves the titles from Reese Witherspoon’s book club, and I honestly love hearing the stories of the novels she’s reading. All the titles are written by women and have strong female protagonists. I would love to have a similar book club, but with strong male protagonists trying to reimagine what it means to be a man. But what novels do we even have to choose from?

So fellas, what we are trying to do is remarkable. We’re not trying to navigate to a new place, as much as we’re trying to make a map to a place that’s never been visited.

We need to talk about it, blog about it, and podcast about it. Some of us have to write novels about it, or make music and movies about it. We have to leave a body of work for the next generation of men to draw upon. We have to leave our sons, nephews, students, players, and grandsons a place to start as they continue this remarkable journey of reimagining manhood that we’ve started.

Dealing With it When Our Kids Act Ungratefully

My most guttural resentment comes when sacrifices are insulted. These moments, when an unrestrained, vindictive, anger emerges from my otherwise even temperament are also when I’m most ashamed as a father.

This weekend, I have been angry so many times I have a lingering headache as I’m penning this entry. I’m lost my temper, so many times this weekend, despite it being the first beautiful weekend of the season and we haven’t had any adversity or hardship.

It goes like this.

One of our big kids will just do something mean, either to me, Robyn, or his brother. And then, I feel such acidic resentment.

I did not skip my shower today so you could pour soap onto the carpet during your nap. I did not go out of my way to buy a coconut at the grocery at your request so you could spit on the floor or on me. I did not quit a job I liked, was proud of, and found meaning in so you could throw magnet tiles at me or punch me in the privates…I actually did it so I could be a more present father to YOU.

Your mother did not work diligently to create a part time work schedule so you could intentionally pull your brother off a balance bike on our family walk. Three off your grandparents did not leave their home countries in search of a better life so you two could terrorize each other or deliberately destroy books in front of my face because you know it makes me angry. Are you not grateful? Do you know how good you have it?

It’s damning. It hurts so badly and makes me so angry when my sons - or anyone really - takes the sacrifices I’ve made, the sacrifices that I’m trying to make quietly and keep quiet, and throws them back in my face. It’s insulting, infuriating, and maddeningly saddening.

My sons don’t realize any of this, of course. They don’t realize the gravity of the sacrifices that their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents have made so they could live the life they have. Hell, I didn’t get it at their age and probably don’t fully comprehend the degree of my ancestors’ sacrifices, even now.

Most of the time, I don’t want to tell them either. I, nor my parents and grandparents, made sacrifices in our lives to be able to tell great stories about ourselves and seek the applause of others. 

I wouldn’t want my sons to feel some deep shame about their fortunate circumstances, either. After all, it’s not their fault they were born into a loving and prosperous family. And, I don’t want them to have to know what it feels like to be broke and wondering whether our family will lose our house. So yes, I don’t want to throw the sacrifices I’ve made in their face - spiking the football is not what we do, so to speak.

At the same time, hearing stories of my parents sacrifice - especially from others - gave me a halo of sorts. I felt so loved and so compelled to honor their sacrifice by working hard and not taking it for granted. It’s part of being the children of immigrants - when we hear about the sacrifices of our parents and ancestors it is a unique kind of affirming love, that motivates us to try to be better and to not let their sacrifice be squandered. Honoring their sacrifice, builds confidence and inner strength.

I often worry about this at a societal level. 

Every person knows, deep down, I think that the most celebrated people on earth; the people who are loved, respected, and admired are not really exalted because of their accomplishments. They are lauded because of their sacrifices. This is as true for common people as it is for celebrities.

Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like our species has this radar and fascination with people who make sacrifices for something larger than themselves. We don’t, after all, tend to celebrate people who are born rich or with some sort of advantage from genetics or birthright.  We celebrate people who work hard and make huge sacrifices to contributed whatever it is that they’ve contributed. We may fixate and envy the successes of others, but we don’t revere the successes themselves. We revere those individuals’ capability for sacrifice.

Making sacrifices builds character and confidence. If I can make a sacrifice for something bigger than myself, if I can endure suffering. If I can persist for the greater good, if can do deed cut from this cloth of sacrifice, I have proven my inner strength. Nobody else has to know it, so long as I know it.

Unfortunately, the opposite is also true. If I haven’t made sacrifices, I also know that. I know that I am untested. I know my inner strength is unproven. I know that I might be weak. And that’s a devastating,  absolute lead balloon for building confidence. And I would imagine that lack of confidence and inner strength has to be compensated for somehow. If I know I am weak on the inside, I have to make up for it with my outward presentation to the world.

At a societal level, I think this has huge consequences.

Imagine if one generation of parents made big sacrifices during their lifetime and prepared them to make sacrifices during their own lifetime. Imagine if another generation tried to build the most comfortable life possible for their children, protecting them from ever having to make sacrifices for others. Those two generations, I think, would leave monumentally different marks on the world.

It’s such a paradox, I think. I don’t want to make noise about the sacrifices I’ve made, but I don’t want my sacrifices to be insulted by ungrateful children. I don’t want my children feel deep shame or know intense suffering, but I also want them to have opportunities to build inner strength. In some ways I need to tell stories about sacrifice, but in other ways that’s counterproductive. What’s a parent to do?

The only solution I can think of is to tell stories about the sacrifices of others. Instead of talking about my own sacrifices, I can tell my sons the sacrifices that their mother and grandparents made. I can let others tell my story, or let my sons ask me about my story and tell them the truth when they do. This is at least one way out of the paradox.

I hope, too, that elevating and honoring the sacrifices of others helps me to relieve myself of this searing resentment I have when our kids are so unintentionally insulting of the sacrifices we’ve made for them.

Radha, My Sister

Her hair would’ve been actually black, I think, two shades darker than mine. My hair being dark-dark brown, but which most people think is black from afar. Though a different shade and sheen, her hair would’ve had equivalent thickness and vigor. And, for some reason I know that she would’ve worn that black, thick, hair of hers just above the shoulders.

Until recently I had only been able to visualize the back of her head - I don’t know why - and get a single breath, though a full one, of her essence only from time to time.

I am an only child; I literally have no siblings, but yet she is my sister. My younger sister, I should specify. She was never born, never conceived. And yet, for years now I’ve had a strong intuition that she existed, even if only as a spirit in the spectral realm. I have not even seen her in a dream, but I still knew of her in a dream, and I knew she was my little sister.

Over the years I’ve discerned more and more about her. Sometimes memories of our relationship come to me in a daydream, or I might feel her presence, usually manifested in the intermittent, but often forceful, breeze of early springtime.

She would’ve been two and a half inches shorter than me, and built with a broader, sturdier frame, more like our father’s than our mother’s. An athletic build, you could say, though she was not athlete. For some reason, I knew she was quietly enamored with art and art history. She was able to sketch and draw, and was a handy seamstress, like our mother. She is the one who inherited the wanderlust of our father, and would’ve moved to a place like New York or San Francisco so she could be close to museums, culture, and cuisine.

For some reason, I know her name is Radha, and that Radha is serene. Stoic and of remarkably even temperament. But every now and again, I know, her charm would shine through unrestrained. Flashing a smile, and patting my back after listening patiently to me vent about something irrelevant - softly but sheepishly interjecting, “That’s how it goes sometimes, big brother” before sashaying off to the kitchen to get us both a glass of water.

Radha and Robyn would’ve had a wonderful relationship. Radha probably becoming an ally and collaborator of Robyn in her pursuits to make work more supportive of caregivers and mothers. Robyn probably becoming a role model and an informal mentor to her for navigating marriage and family life. I think they would’ve been close, confidants even.

And to the boys, she would’ve been a doting Aunt, taking them to the latest exhibit at the Detroit Institute of Arts whenever she was in town. And she would tell them stories about her and I growing up together, and stoke their interest in our Indian heritage. For some reason, I know she is more assured in her identity than me. And, I also know, for some reason, that she would find safety in the fact that I was her biggest cheerleader and loudest supporter.

I have been thinking about Radha lately because the past few weeks have been a magical time in our family. Our sons are forming a bond of brotherhood. Bo and Myles have taken Emmett into their pack, wordlessly and without initiation. They, even though they have now been brothers for five weeks, still spontaneously erupt into a chant of, “WELCOME HOME EMMETT! WELCOME HOME EMMETT! WELCOME HOME EMMETT!” Without prompting or notice.

And as I’ve seen our three sons become a cohesive unit, images of Radha have come to me - because I’ve finally been capable of it. I see their sibling bond, up close. I see and realize, in them, the relationship Radha and I would’ve had. It is like Bo, Myles, and Emmett are a portal into a sort of semi-real-semi-dreamworld - the past I could’ve had, with my sister who was never born.

For my whole life, I’ve had moments where I’ve so desperately missed Radha. But I am lucky to have had brothers and sisters who were not my siblings. Robyn’s siblings treat me more like a brother than a brother-in-law, even though we have no shared memories of childhood. And it sounds corny, but some of my fraternity brothers, really have become brothers to me.

I, too, have a deep bond with many brothers and sisters - which most other Americans would call cousins - despite geography and age. In Indian culture, we call our elder brothers “Bhaiya” or “Bhaisahib”and our elder sisters “Didi” or “Jiji” - it’s a sign of respect. It is one of my great gratitudes and joys in life to have people that I can call those things and really mean it, rather than just “cousin”.

And yet, I still think longingly about the time with Radha I never had and the memories that could’ve been. She would’ve kindly but firmly reminded me who I was when I was floundering in my early twenties. And I would’ve been her rock when our father died and her stoic personality succumbed to her broken heart.

I do feel more than a few shreds of ridiculousness talking about what to many might seem like an imaginary sister. And yet, there’s something of Radha I know exists. She is not a ghost. There’s a little speck of her soul I feel I am always carrying with me, as if my spirt had a charm bracelet with a link to her on it. My words here are merely animating and coloring her into a quasi-corporeal form that she will never take. But, still, she is real.

What a wonderful thing it must be to have siblings, in the real world, I mean. It truly injures me when our sons get into childish arguments. If they only knew what it was like to be the without-a-sibling-will-be-an-orphan-someday type of alone. I know in my head they will grow out of their intermittent terrorizing of each other, but I hope they someday go beyond that and sincerely appreciate the beautiful gift - a brotherhood - that they’ve inherited.

It is a bizarre thing to have a bond with someone who doesn’t exist, but it’s remarkably affirming and comforting. For Radha and me, it was not meant to be in this life. All I can do is hope that she’s listening or reading my blog, I suppose. And that whatever part of her spirt that is able to be carried is something I possess.

And someday, maybe just maybe, I will meet her once I pass from this world onto the next. I will meet her and she will be as I’ve imagined her. Waiting, with my father, at the front door of a bungalow atop a hill. The hill is grassy, like that of a mountainous, western state. And as I climb the hill, up the cobblestone walkway, she will be there with two glasses of water. And she will flash her unrestrainable charm, and say, softly but sheepishly, as I’ve always known her to: “Welcome home big brother, It’s so like you to be exactly five minutes late.” 

A Prayer Over Our Sons (on Emmett’s Birth Day)

February 28, 2022

Today, I prayed in the early morning instead of the evening. And it was a silent prayer, just with myself, instead of out loud with our whole family before tucking in the kids. When I first had the chance to hold Emmett about an hour after he was born today, a prayer just came over me.

It started as it usually does, with “Thank you God for this day, and for the good life we have…”

But today, the day-to-day blessings of family dinner, good friends and neighbors, our family, and the fresh air outside which I usually share in prayer were supplanted by prayers for our son, still weary from his 9 month journey into our arms.

Thank you God for today, and for the good life we have. Thank you God for bringing us Emmett. Thank you for he and Robyn both being healthy and safe. Thank you for the doctors and nurses who cared for them. The opening overture of this prayer was one might expect. But then, something deeper and purer started to emerge, involuntarily in my whispering thoughts.

I pray that he has a long and healthy life. I pray that he is able to learn and grow. I pray that he is able to contribute something in his life. I pray that he has a loving relationship with his brothers. I pray that we have many days and years with him, and as an entire family. I pray that he knows love and knows joy. I pray that he is able to experience both the simple and majestic beauties of nature and our world. I pray that his heart finds his way back to you, God. I pray that we can help him grow who he is to become, teach him right from wrong, and help him see life as the blessing that it is. I pray, God, for you to help us be the parents he needs us to be. And I pray for the chance to be good tomorrow.

Though not verbatim, this was my prayer over our son Emmett, on his birth day.

Sometime around lunch time, I began realize what I didn’t pray for earlier this morning. I didn’t pray that he’d become rich. I didn’t pray that he’d get into Harvard. I didn’t pray that he’d become famous. I didn’t pray for him to become a U.S. Senator or the President of the United States. I didn’t pray that he’d become a CEO of a publicly traded company. 

I didn’t pray that he would drive a Cadillac or a Porsche. I didn’t pray that he’d live in a house 2x-3x larger than our home in Detroit. I didn’t pray that he’d be the most popular kid in his high school. I didn’t pray that he’d find his what onto a who’s who list of his profession or his metro. I didn’t pray that he’d be the first person to set foot on Mars or find his way into the scrolls of human history.

Of course I didn’t pray for all that. When we are holding our children, literally, for the first time, power, status, and riches are among the things furthest from our mind. We pray over newborn children for something deeper and purer, because we know that the truest blessings in life - the ones we ask God or whatever we believe in for help to deliver - are deeper, and purer than power, status, and riches.

But, that’s surprising in a way. Emmett, today, is literally at the point in his life where his possibilities are most limitless. He was born, today. Anything is still possible, today. His choices are most unconstrained, today. Which in some senses makes it the perfect to contemplate large, aspirational dreams and pray for them, for him. If I wanted to pray for him to have power, status, and riches, today would be the day to do it.

Because starting tomorrow, the choices we make as parents and the slices of life he begins to experience will shape, ever so slightly, his future choices and possibilities. Even after a single day, path dependency starts. Today, the possibility set of his life is at its widest and wildest.

Emmett, Bo, and Myles, I’m now speaking to you directly here. I hope someday you stumble upon this post, after you’ve grown and started to make your way in this world. Because what I’m about to say is more than just an opinion, it’s a deeply-held conviction.

When I was growing up, adults around me - my parents, my family, my teachers, my parents’ friends, everyone - asked me the question “what do you want to be when you grow up?” And answering that question, month after month and year after year started to shape my worldview without me evening realizing it consciously.

All those years of responding to adults about what I wanted to be when I grew up, I started to think being something and all that is related to what we be was most important. Without even realizing it, I started to believe that accomplishments were most important. That money and status, and ultimately the power that comes from being something was most important. Because, if these adults I loved and respected were asking me this all the damn time, how could what I become when I grow up not be important?

And it will be tempting for me to keep asking this question of what you three want to be when you grow up, instead of the more benign question of “what do you want your life to be like as an adult?” It will be tempting for me, because what you become reflects on me as your father. If you three become wealthy, respected, or powerful it will elevate how our community and our culture see me. 

Even though I try, sometimes desperately, to strip myself of this ego, I am a mortal man, and I haven’t reached that level of enlightenment yet. The chance to elevate how the world sees me is still a temptation.

I don’t have the data to back this up quite yet, but I have a strong intuition that’s a substantial reason why adults ask this question - our selfish desires to be praised for the accomplishments of our youth emerge. We’re only human I suppose.

Boys, listen carefully and remember this: you do not have to achieve money, status, and power for me. You do not need to live your life to prove something to me. You do not need to become successful by conventional measures of success to validate me. It is not your responsibility to help me become a respected man because I took a role in raising impressive sons.You three are not here to justify your mother and I as parents. 

You three, beautiful, honest, intelligent, kind-hearted boys - you need no justification. You owe nothing to me, directly. Your mother and I didn’t choose to be parents because we wanted something from you.

What you owe is what we all owe through our inter-temporal bonds. These are the bonds that bind us to the generations that came before us and the generations, God-willing, to come after us. We all owe something to those that came ahead and those that will come behind our time living on earth.

We owe it to those people who came before us to honor and cherish the sacrifices they made for us. We owe it to those that will come after us, even many centuries in the future, to make sacrifices so their lives may be better. That is what we owe. You do not owe that to me, we all owe it to all of them.

And the way I see it, the best way to honor our inter-temporal bonds are to live long, healthy, lives. Or to make a contribution to our communities and broader societies. It’s to experience joy, love, and nature. It’s to devote our lives to others - our families, friends, communities, and for some, 

There is a reason your mother and I pray for your health, and for time together, and for you to know love , joy, beauty, and God. Achieving riches, status, and power do not honor our inter-temporal bonds, those things are too impermanent. The way we honor these sacred bonds is to live fully, with goodness, honesty, gratefulness and grace. 

What I’ve found in my almost 35 years, too, is that life is sweetest when we live in a way which honors our inter-temporal bonds. Our culture doesn’t seem to always understand this, and maybe I’m wrong that a life of sacrifice is actually sweetest, but I’ve found it to be true in my own life.

So please, please remember boys, the wide and wild possibilities present on your birth days. Remember that you do not need to justify or validate me with riches, status, or power. Remember to really live, during your time on this Earth. And if you feel like you’ve lost your way - if you can’t remember how to really live - remember my prayers for you.

When we are finally comfortable is when we need to dream bigger

We are in the waning days of Robyn’s third pregnancy. Our third son is so close to being here. As I write this on a Sunday, he’s due to meet us tomorrow. 

Strangely, I’ve awaited his arrival more anxiously than our previous two children, which I feel guilty about.

Looking back on when Robert was born, I suppose I was in a state of shock. I was grieving my father, still. And in addition to my struggle to grasp what it would mean to be a newly minted father, I was also working a demanding job with high stakes and high stress. And so when Robert came along, even though I wanted to devote myself fully to my new responsibilities, I was incapable of it. My head was two jumbled up.

And with Myles two years later, his arrival snuck up on me. I was 3 months into a new job and it was the middle of the Christmas season. We were planning my brother in law’s bachelor party. We already had one toddler who had just turned two. I was exhausted, physically, and mentally before Myles even arrived. I probably would’ve anticipated his arrival more, had my mental energy not been so depleted.

But this time it’s different. I have greater stability at work and have been sleeping, eating, and exercising like a responsible person instead of a young man holding onto his bachelor days. And the deep introspection brought on by the past two years of Covid-related anxiety, determination, and solitude have left me feeling an unexpected clarity about my life’s purpose.

What I feel guilty about is that I’ve had feelings of anxiety and longing for our third son’s arrival, an emotion I didn’t afford to Bo and Myles. For the first time, I feel that ache, desperate for or son to arrive. Why do I feel it this time, for the first time?

A few months ago, I wondered whether I had any dreams left. Life has been so good, even amidst the crisis of Covid-19. I met and married Robyn. We have a family. We have a home. We live comfortably and without fear of missing a meal. We are stable and healthy. We get to see our extended family, and learn through travel. Granted I don’t have expensive or far-reaching desires, but everything I’ve ever really wanted, I now have. Everything else good in my life was a bonus to be grateful for, I thought.

And yet, I’m not in a place of patience waiting for his due date. On the contrary, our third son has got my heart all flustered fluttering. He’s got me feeling unsatisfied again, which I thought I had gotten over. I thought I had gotten closer to the ever elusive mindset of joyful non attachment.

But it turns out, that’s absolutely false. I’m attached. I want him to get here. He needs to be here. Our family needs him to be complete. I have been awaiting him impatiently, asking Robyn about her contractions with sincere but anxious curiosity after every deep breath she takes.

Just 6 months ago, I was ready to call it and say that I didn’t really have any dreams left. But our unborn, unnamed, little boy has reminded me how dangerous it is to feel finished and past the phase in our life where we dream. He’s reminded me that we’re never done dreaming, nor should we ever be.

Because even if I am comfortable and happy, that’s not the same as being “done”. The big world around me, or even my little world under our roof is complete. There is more work to do. There is so much left to finish. We have so much left to dream.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a jarring reminder of that this week.

I was just starting to think that everything was settling into place in the big world around us. With the waning of the Omicron variant, Covid-19 seemed to be in its last overture. Joblessness was starting to fall, wages and inflation starting to rise. Robyn and I have been growing steadily in our careers. Our children are healthy and growing into fine young men. The worst of winter, literally and figuratively, seemed to be over.

I thought that I could lay off the accelerator and coast a little, after the difficult season I thought we were coming out of. Things were going well. My garden was planted and the world was chilling the efff out, I thought, and now all I had to do was tend to my garden. I had 80% or more of my life’s dreams - I could focus on the remaining proportion leisurely. I could let it ride with the dreams I’ve already made real.

And then, Robyn’s due date crept closer. And I realized, the picture in our little world isn’t complete. There is more to plant in our garden. I want our son to get here, I thought. We have more dreams to realize. We’re not done yet, we have work to do in our own backyard. 

And with Russia invading Ukraine, it was a slap in the face reminding me there was a world outside our backyard that needed more and bigger dreams. 

And yes, not all of us need to flock to the realm of foreign politics. There is more dreaming and work to do in so many domains. In our neighborhood. For advancing literacy. For improving health. For creating art and music. For decarbonization. For restoring trust to our institutions. For ending gun violence. And yes, sadly, for preventing world wars.

This aching anxiety for our third son - just when I thought I could slow down on dreaming - has taught me something important. Even when we think we’ve achieved our dreams, there is so much left to dream for. When things are good and we are comfortable, is precisely when our world - whether our little world or the big world around us - needs us to keep dreaming the most.

---

Parenting is Truly Bittersweet

I rarely take naps on the weekend. But I happened to today because I’ve been getting over a cold, though I somehow managed to avoid catching Covid-19 from my sons.

This is the exact view I woke up to when I opened my eyes from this rare occasion of a nap:

It has four examples of the complex experience of “bittersweet”:

First, the item in the foreground is exactly what it appears to be: a monkey sitting on a Paw Patrol slipper. That’s so hilarious and creative, but it’s so frustrating to be jolted from a nap by a monkey bean bag riding in a slipper. That’s must be the light thud I half-asleep-remember feeling on my stomach.

Second, you an see a facial tissue on the coffee table: It’s disgusting that Bo left a tissue on the table, but it is a relief that he uses tissues instead of his sleeve like I did for most of my life.

Third, next to the facial tissue, is a construction Bo described as, “it’s something you make that has super powers. It’s called a power-punch.” It is kind of cool that he’s making his own sort of art with household objects. Kind of looks like a caterpillar. But damn kid, why you makin’ me do even more dishes?

Finally, you’ll notice a lightsaber all the way to the right. That’s right…Bo brought his lightsaber over and was cuddled up next to me as I fell asleep, which rarely happens anymore. I was so happy to have him right beside me, but now he’s somewhere else in the house. Bittersweet.

I hadn’t thought about how complex the experience of “bittersweet” was until I started reading Atlas of the Heart. In it, Brené Brown describes the science and theory behind several dozen of the most impactful human emotions and experiences. 

Her premise for writing the book is that we can’t emote or process our life properly if we don’t have emotional granularity. Not everything is happy, sad, angry, or tired and we need to have a grasp of the right words and concepts to describe what’re we’re feeling.

Apparently “bittersweet” is a cognitively complex phenomenon that develops gradually. Children don’t report simultaneously feeling happiness and sadness until they reach age seven or eight.

And damn, so many moments of parenting are bittersweet. Now that I better understand what bittersweet means, I feel it and see it everywhere. So many things happen where I’m so proud or so in awe of how my sons have grown, acted with courage or shown maturation. But in those moments, I also feel this remorse. Because with every demonstration of growth, they are closer to being grown.

So when I say something like, “wow, they just grow up so fast” I realized that what I’m actually feeling is bittersweet.

As I’ve thought about it more, there’s so much complexity to the statement, “they just grow up so fast” beneath the surface. I want so badly for my kids to be mine and belong to me, but I’ve come to accept that they don’t and they never have.

Yes, on the one hand I can pretend that my kids are mine and they belong to Robyn and me. We love them so dearly. We pour so much time into them. We have sacrificed so much for them. We are their parents. They are our responsibility. They are our children. They have to belong to us.

What makes this so bittersweet is even though we think it so, they do not actually belong to us. These sons of ours are growing and they’re going to keep growing. And as they grow, they’re going to affect the world around them. There are friends they’re going to help out of tough times. There are strangers they might touch the lives of without even knowing it. There are neighborhoods they’ll live in, companies they’ll work for, and causes bigger themselves they will progress forward. There are other children out there, somewhere in this world that they will marry and god-willing start families with someday. 

And if I’m being really honest with myself, if all goes to plan, our sons will outlive us and spend a significant amount of time on this earth while we’re not here. They’ll end up belonging to who they chose to spend their lives with and who they choose to devote their lives to. Not us.

So even though we raise our kids and it’s true that we’re their parents, they’re not ours. Our role is to help them grow so they can give themselves to others. Our role is to give them the gift of being good parents, and all the nourishment that good parents bring to a child. We’re merely stewards of this part of their journey on the earth. They don’t belong to us and they never really did.

What I pray for though, is that if we do right by them, and give them the gift of a good, strong, character-based upbringing they’ll want us to stick around. I pray that we do this right so that after they’re grown, they’ll choose to have us be part of their lives, even though don’t have to. They might choose us among the people they belong to. That would be a gift to Robyn and I.

Part of the unresolved grief of losing my father is rooted in this gift. When he died, I was fully grown, but just barely. I was getting to the point in life where I could choose, freely, to spend time with my parents. I realize now, that’s a gift children can give to their parents, not an obligation. I become sad when I realize that it’s a gift I always wanted to give back to my father, but I’ll never get a chance to.

There is, however, a silver lining that I try to remember. As I shared earlier, every moment where I think or say “wow, they just grow up so fast” it’s because there’s an example in front of me that our sons are growing. But even though I feel such joy to see them grow, I feel sadness that because I remember time is passing.

Those moments where they’re “growing up so fast” are also moments that show how much Robyn and I have grown.

Because along the way, our sons are helping us grow. By being parents to them, we are becoming more patient, more caring, and more selfless. By letting us parent them, they are pushing our hearts to open wider and to be more grateful for the lessons that come from suffering. They, too, are strengthening Robyn and I’s marriage by giving us a common purpose to work together on.

I feel an almost divine gratitude for the gifts our sons are giving us and the lessons they are teaching us. Even though every moment I notice their growth I feel a deflating sadness for the fleeting sands of time, I also feel so grateful that they are teaching my soul to be purer and more virtuous. It’s truly bittersweet.

Mentors are momentary fathers

I met Phelps Connell in 2005, during my fraternity pledge term in my freshman year at Michigan. Flip, as everyone called him, was an alumnus of my fraternity, Phi Gamma Delta, and moved back to Ann Arbor after retirement. He was always around the house for alumni matters, and our fraternity was one of the organizations he devoted himself to. 

He was 80 when I met him, but I would’ve never realized that from his demeanor. He was as vibrant and active as the collegians who lived in the fraternity house he now was overseeing as part of our alumni board. I found this excerpt of his obituary to be a perfect representation of the man he was:

Phelps was first and foremost a gentleman, adored and respected by many for his kindness, loyalty, personal integrity, and concern for others.

I distinctly remember one day I was talking to Flip, in the Fraternity’s kitchen, because I was on dishwashing duty that week. I was a Junior at the time, living in the house, and serving on the Chapter’s executive board. I had gotten to know Flip well during my time as a collegian. He had always taken an interest in me and checked-in on me often.

Flip and I were chatting, but then he asked me - quite directly - if I was going to run in the election for the Interfraternity Council’s executive board, which was the governing body for many of the fraternities at Michigan. In campus life, the IFC as it’s called is one of the more influential extra-curricular organizations for undergrads because it oversees a huge part of the greek system, which at Michigan is a major part of campus life.

I gave him a hemming and hawing answer, and basically shared some lame him excuses for why I didn’t think it was a good idea to run. To be sure, deep down I wanted to run for an office, but didn’t believe in myself enough to try.

Flip was having none of this, of course. He encouraged me to run for a post. He told me that I was a capable leader and that I would represent our chapter well. He saw that I was intimidated at the responsibility and scrutiny that would be part of a campus-wide office and convinced me I could handle it.

He saw something in me and cultivated it. He was probably the first person to do this that wasn’t a teacher or related to me.

And this mentor ship didn’t stop once I graduated college. As a young alumnus I lived in Ann Arbor and served on my fraternity’s alumni board with him for a few years. I got to know his wonderful wife, Jean, over the years I knew home. They invited me and my close friend Jenny - my roommate at the time - over for dinner. It learned the important lesson of what adult friendships are supposed to look like.

I only knew Flip for eight years, from 2005 until he passed in 2013. But in that time he had an outsized influence on my life. He wasn’t just a mentor he was a father to me for a narrowly scoped, temporally limited part of my life.

I realized only recently that the concept of a mentor comes from Homer’s Odyssey (a new translation came out recently, it’s terrific). 

In the epic, Mentor is a friend of Odysseus and counsels Odysseus’s son Telemachus to rise up against the suitors wasting his father’s wealth and courting his mother. Mentor, who is inhabited by the goddess Athena during this scene, is a critical figure guiding Telemachus, who has been without a father his entire life, while away at war.

My own father, Girish, was deeply influenced by Hindu philosophy and lived by a code: take care of yourself and then take care of your family. Only then should you help others. He always questioned my community pursuits because in his view, one should get his own house in order first, so that he doesn’t burden others in the community.

As a young man, I thought his view was selfish and narrow minded. But over the years, I’ve come to find great wisdom in my father’s approach. Getting my own house in order does come first, because he was right - we need the community to help with our burdens. But he was also right in that our own stability must quickly be followed by serving others. We cannot enrich our own households indefinitely.

This has become very real to me lately. If I’m being honest, our house is almost in order - at least once we’re out of the newborn phase with all our kids. I am much better off than my parents were at my age, mostly due to their financial sacrifices, their insistence that I get an education, and their upbringing of me. 

This is actually a scary, slightly unnerving thought, because the burden of serving others is heavy and consequential. 

In our culture today, I think we use the term mentor a bit too lightly. At their best, mentors are not just advisors, they are momentary fathers. Flip was not just a mentor, he was a momentary father to me. Moses and Roger, are not just my neighbors - they have been momentary fathers to me when they taught me how to change my car battery or offer advice on how to go on a camping trip with young kids. 

Two Police Commanders were not just my colleagues, they were momentary fathers to me when they reminded me to take a leave of absence when Bo was born or rushed me out of a situation at a community event when a dude who beat double murder was asking me a ton of personal questions. 

The father of a friend from business school, who happens to also be a writer, has been a momentary father to me when we have chatted on the telephone about finding purpose in life and work.

I think if we’re honest, those of us who feel like we’ve had some success at living life have been blessed with many momentary mothers and fathers along the way.

There is a time that comes where we must expand our sphere. When that time comes, we cannot walk away from being momentary fathers to others. I - and many of us, I think - am closer to that time than I expected.

To move us forward, faith must come from somewhere

There’s a old, simple, adage I’ve always liked: Say what you do, do what you say.

It’s essentially my moral upbringing in one sentence. The western version of what my parents instilled in me: Satyam Vada, Dharmam Chara - tell the truth, do your duty. These ideas, whether espoused from an Eastern or Western perspective have been a recurring lesson in my life - truth cannot solely be a theoretical concept, it must have a symbiotic relationship with action.

Which is to say, I really avoid making promises I can’t keep. Even little ones. If my family asks me to get grapes from the grocery store, I don’t simply say “sure”. I always respond to a simple request like this with something like, “Sure, I’ll check if they have any and get them if they’re there.”

Mind you, in the hundreds of times I’ve gone grocery shopping in my life, I cannot think of one time when the store was out of grapes. They’re grapes after all, the store always has grapes. But the thought always remains - don’t make promises you can’t keep.

But this week, I broke my rule. I made a promise, to my son, that I’m not positive I can keep.

Our older son, Bo, has been having a rough week. With Covid exposures in his classroom and the holidays coming, he’s been in and out of school. We’ve been stuck at home. His routine and support network of his friends and teachers is something he just doesn’t have now. We think this has been affecting his anxiety levels at bedtime.

The other night, after probably two hours of shenanigans I tried a different tack. Rather than barking at him to go to sleep - which I’d already tried and failed at, twice - I went up and just gave him a hug. I asked him how he was feeling, and if he was scared. 

I never got a clear answer out of him, but he did melt into my arms and lap. Clearly, he felt unsafe and anxious. We don’t know exactly what it was, but presumably his fears came from some combination of “dragons”, the dark, Covid, and “bad guys.”

Then, suddenly, he sat straight up and looked at me intensely. Eyes wide, he said nothing, but I innately understood that he needed comfort, reassurance. He needed to feel like there was nothing to be scared of, that his mommy and papa were there to protect him from whatever monster was lurking.

And so I said it.

“Don’t worry bud, you are safe here. I promise.”

And even as the words came out of my mouth I felt uneasy. Because I cannot, with certainty, 100% guarantee his safety. I can control a lot of the factors affecting his safety, but not everything. There is uncertainty at play here, this is life after all and things happen that we can’t control.

But I had no choice. I had to make that promise. This is what children need their parents for; what sons need their fathers for. And even though there was uncertainty, it’s a promise I could mostly make. I maybe felt 90% confident in that promise, maybe 95%. 

But that remainder…it doesn’t sit well, because I know it’s wrong to make promises I can’t keep. And this one was not a small promise, the stakes are about as high as it gets.

—

“Faith” is something I’ve never fully understood. It’s a foreign concept to me, a construct that’s rooted in western ideas and Christianity. There are similar concepts to faith in Hinduism, but it’s much more broadly contemplated, rather than being rooted specifically in something like Jesus Christ or salvation. From my vantage point, In hinduism “faith” is a secondary idea among many others, whereas in Christianity faith seemed more like the whole point.

This promise, made on the floor of our sons’ bedroom, was a real-life lesson in faith for me.

I made a promise I don’t know if I can or can’t keep, but had to make. I took a leap of faith when I made this promise that Bo would be safe here, in this house. And even though I made this promise, upon reflection, I didn’t make this leap of faith blindly. This faith came from somewhere. Faith comes from somewhere.

For me this faith came from the careful decisions Robyn and I made to move into this neighborhood, where neighbors look out for and know each other. It came from the prayers we do nightly, not as a free pass for a divinely intervened halo of safety, but because prayers and the belief that God is listening helps me to reflect on and improve how I think and act. 

It came from me knowing Bo is a good kid with a good heart, that will probably make generally good decisions. It came from knowing he has a younger brother who will look out for him and watch his six.

It came from the marriage Robyn and I have, I know together we are more likely to succeed at having our home be a safe place for our kids. It came from all the preparation and practice and debriefing Robyn and I do individually and together to learn from our mistakes. It came from our friends, family, and neighbors who pour love and comfort into our lives. It came from the unconditional love I have for my son and my dogged determination to honor the promise I made.

My faith comes from somewhere.

And yet, days later, I still questioned whether I should’ve made that promise. Because even with faith that comes from somewhere and isn’t blind, I just don’t know. But as I thought about it, what a sad, dull, stale way it would be to live without acts of faith. 

A friend of mine said something that was perfectly timed for this week and has been reverberating in my mind for four days straight:

“If I feel ready then it’s a sign I waited too long.” 

There are so many “acts of faith” that aren’t remotely religious. Starting a company is an act of faith. Marrying someone is an act of faith. Playing sports is an act of faith. Leading a new project is an act of faith. Standing up to a bully is an act of faith. Planting a garden is an act of faith. Reading a book is an act of faith. Ordering a cheeseburger is an act of faith.

Maybe not in the religious sense, but our lives are an acts of faith, strung together from moment to moment.

And in retrospect, I’m grateful for this. Because even though I don’t understand faith in the Christian sense, I do have a appreciation now that acts of faith are essential for human life to flourish. They help us grow. Acts of faith make us lean on each other and deepen our trust. They alleviate suffering and bond us to others. Acts of faith put us on the hook to figure out difficult but important challenges.

And that’s exactly what I’m feeling. I made a promise I wasn’t sure I could keep, to my son. And now I’ve gotta own it. I’ve got to figure out how to keep the promise that he will always be safe at our home, no matter what. And I’ll be damned if I break that promise to him.

—

I know as I write this that for many, faith is a loaded term. It reeks to them of religious institutions that are untrustworthy, and that have actually inflicted great, irreparable harm to thousands of people.

Because I was raised Hindu, with Eastern philosophy and theology baked into day to day life with my parents, I luckily have some distance from deliberately specific, Western notions of faith.

And it seems to me that, yeah, we shouldn’t make promises we can’t keep. That’s still true. But maybe I shouldn’t be so doctrinally rigid with that belief, either.

Acts of faith move us forward, when they’re not made blindly. And yes, God is one source of faith. But there are many other sources of faith that we all can and do draw from when we leap, with good intent, toward something better. What seems to matter more than where our faith comes from, is that it doesn’t come blindly from nowhere. It matters more that it comes from somewhere.

Faith must come from somewhere.

Every person has a remarkable story, and something special to contribute

One of my most perplexing parenting moments is when something like this happens:

“I can’t do it! I can’t do it!”

Or:

“It’s not working Papa! Can you help me?!”

Or, the most comedic version:

“I can’t do it! Can you carry me? I forgot HOW TO WALK!”

I originally thought, I don’t know where Bo learned this, it must’ve been at school. I don’t remember pouting and screaming “I can’t do it!”, in front of him at least.

Then, I got real with myself. I accepted that I wasn’t so perfect. I have complained, been wounded, or just been flat out pissed about the world around me before:

“I’m sick of people talking over me at work. I don’t see this happening to my white, male colleagues”

“I can’t believe someone put a brick through the window of my Ma’s shop. Why do we have to keep dealing with this?”

“Everyone keeps telling me I’m too verbose during presentations, and then they turn around and tell me to explain my thinking more when I try to be direct. I can’t win with these guys and I don’t see anyone else getting dressed down in front of the whole team”

“I just have to put in my dues. Once I get a bit stronger, confident, and more respected I can really share my opinion with authority.”

”I’m the most inconvenient kind of minority, I get all the prejudice without any of the political clout and social protection that comes from being part of a larger constituency.”

Sadly, I could go on. Upon reflection, these statements - which are selections of my inner monologue, nearly verbatim - are just adult versions of “I can’t do it! I forgot how to walk!”

For much of my teens and twenties, I dealt with this by maintaining an attitude of hidden arrogance which I fooled myself into calling “swag” Even if I wasn’t outwardly a jerk, “Eff these guys”, is more or less what I would think. The cool part was, that attitude actually worked.

Arrogance did serve me well, which I honestly wish wasn’t true. But arrogance comes with a social cost - it requires putting others down, whether it’s directly or indirectly. Actions borne of arrogance make the water we’re swimming in dirtier for everyone else, our culture worsens because of it. In my personal experience, I’ve found, for example, that the more assholes are around, the less a group trusts each other.

There came a point where I couldn’t justify my so-called “swag” anymore. It was wrong, and I didn’t like who I was becoming on the inside. The problem was, when I cut the act of swag, I didn’t feel confidence, or agency, anymore.

The longer I’m alive, the more I believe that humility is a fundamental virtue that keeps our society and culture healthy - it’s an essential nutrient for benevolence, collective action, and ultimately prosperity and peace.

Humility leads to openness and listening. Listening leads to love and understanding. Understanding and love leads to commitment for a shared vision toward a better future between people. Commitment leads to shared sacrifice. And shared sacrifice leads to a better world.

So how do we be humble and confident at the same time? How do we believe we have worth without veering darkly into arrogance? How do have inner strength without having to exert outward dominance?

This is where I’ve been wandering for my late twenties and early thirties. It’s become a bit of an obsession to figure this out since I became a father. Humility is so important, and I know it in my heart, but I want to be able to explain how to my sons, beyond saying “just be humble.”

Humans of New York is one of my favorite communities. I’ve followed their instagram page and have read it regularly for many years. Humans is one of our coffee table books and is excellent.

Basically, HONY is a photo-journalism project, where the founder, Brandon Stanton, tells the stories of everyday people, with photos, one New Yorker at a time.

Every single story is a powerful example of the human condition’s beauty and strength. No joke, every single story of every single person, is extraordinary. I’ve read hundreds of these stories on HONY. And I began to realize, every single person in the world has incredible capabilities, has unique gifts, and has endured significant personal struggle. It’s there, in everyone. If we don’t see them or can’t find them, that’s on us - because they’re there.

As I’ve moved through life as an adult, I’ve somehow figured out how to connect with people about their core stories, sometimes within minutes - even waiting in line at a store’s checkout counter. Or maybe it’s my neighbors or colleagues. Or the person waiting our table at a restaurant. Everyone has these capabilities, gifts, and triumphs over struggle.

I’ve got glimpses of people’s love for their parents and children. Or, their dedication to their work, their church. Some have overcome addiction, or grief, or the grueling journey of finding their voice. It doesn’t matter their station - it could clearly be a wealthy professional, or a house cleaner. I’ve found that every single person has something special to contribute. Every single person has gifts and a compelling story.

To me, that’s a strong reason to be humble. Every single person has gifts. Every single person has something to contribute. Every single person has something special to contribute that I don’t.

That merits my respect to every person on this earth. It doesn’t have to be earned, nobody has to earn my respect. If I haven’t figured out what that special gift or unique capability is, it’s on me. If some arrogance creeps into my heart, I’d best remember that and humble my ass down.

The real eureka moment in this idea came some years later.

Yup - everyone else clearly has gifts. That’s why I should be humble. It’s to respect the unique light in everyone and the special contribution that’s within them to make.

But, if I see this light, this special atman and soul in everyone - literally everyone else - it also means a version of that light lives in me too. It would be audacious to think otherwise; I have no good reason to think that I don’t have something special to contribute, or some unique capability to share. If everyone else does, I must too.

That’s the secret. The elusive third-option truth I’ve struggled to find for the better part of three decades. It does not have to be a choice between arrogance and humility. I can be humble and confident if I recognize that the light in everyone else lives in me too.

The bar is too low for men as parents. Enough is enough.

After four years of being a father, I’ve noticed several ways that other people treat me differently as a parent than Robyn. Here are some examples:

In the past three months, Robyn and I each took 2-3 day trips away from home. When I left Robyn alone with the kids, it wasn’t much more than a blip on the radar. Nobody we knew stressed too much about it or honestly thought much of it. 

When Robyn left me alone to solo parent for a few days, so many people offered to help in one way or another. It was a topic of some note, rather than just a passing mention. People, kindly, asked if I was scared to be home with the kids “all by myself. That was all very generous, but noticeably different than how Robyn was treated.

Robyn and I are also complimented differently as parents. Which is to say I actually receive compliments and Robyn, again, doesn’t get more than a passing mention. Robyn is an outstanding parent to our sons. I’m no slouch either, and we both love being parents so we share the load. Somehow, that leads me to get noted as an “involved dad” or “doing a great job” and Robyn gets that sort of affirmation much less, if at all.

Which, is all very kind. But it makes me feel like the often discussed example of a person of color being complimented as “articulate.” I usually feel like our culture must expect me to be some degree of uninvolved and incompetent to pay me a compliment just for being a father who isn’t a total moron.

At the same time, whether it’s school, the doctor, or even waiters at restaurants - if any person engaging in an arms length transaction needs any information about the kids’ wants and needs they almost invariably ask Robyn. Like, almost literally never am I asked about them, sometimes even by close friends and family.

It’s like the same dynamic of waiters automatically giving the man at the table the check at the end of the meal. I often feel like people assume that I’m off the hook for having any information or an opinion about our childrens’ affairs.

Finally, when in establishments that aren’t run by large corporates (like Disney World or McDonalds), it always seem like that the women’s bathroom is more likely to have a changing table than the men’s. To be sure, I don’t have hard data to back up this perception. But it’s happened enough times where the women’s restroom has a table and the men’s doesn’t that we believe it.

Net-net, in four years as a father, my experience strongly suggests that Robyn and I have different expectations as parents and are held to different standards.

To be real blunt: as a father, I have a chip on my shoulder.

Because from my vantage point, our culture is sending signals, 24/7, implying that men are beer-drinking, butt-scratching, sports-watching oafs that don’t have a clue on how to be caregivers to their own children. I feel like I’m constantly having to prove that I can be held to a higher standard than the abysmally low bar our culture sets for men as parents.

This is definitely a hyperbolic, stereotype-rooted, perhaps even ridiculous claim to make. But I feel it. Like all the damn time. It makes me bonkers that the bar is set so low.

I am not trying to get a pat on the back, or suggest that I’m some all-star father. Because honestly, I don’t deserve one. I decidedly am not.

I screw up with my kids and/or need Robyn to help me clean up a mistake I’ve made, literally daily. By all accounts, I’m a solid (but average) father, at best, with a solid performance thrown in about once every ten days. 

What I am trying to do is bring light to the fact that our culture has self-perpetuating, low expectations around men as fathers. We treat men as if they’re incompetent fathers, make fun of them when they screw up, and then lower the expectations we have. And then, we give them less responsibility, which all but assures that those men will become even less competent and confident than they already are.

This cycle is infuriating to me because a lot of men I know (myself and many friends from all parts of my life) are trying really hard to be present, competent parents. I hope that by bringing light to this cultural phenomenon it will cause at least a few people to act differently. Because I don’t think most people mean to belittle men or imply low expectations for them - it just happens because it’s the culture.

That said, I get that there’s probably an equal number of men who aren’t trying to be competent parents. But conservatively, even if only 20% of men are actually trying, we shouldn’t be setting the standard based on the 80% who aren’t. No more low expectations. The bar is too low.

And for all you fellas out there, who know exactly what I’m talking about because you’re frustrated by the same pressures I am, let’s keep on plugging away.

Maybe you disagree, but I don’t think we want or need to be celebrated as “super dads” by our friends or family, just for being a competent parent. I don’t think we need to start a social movement or get matching t-shirts with some sarcastic tag line about how we’ve been stereotyped. I don’t think we need institutional relief or recognition. I’m probably being petty even just ranting about this.

Let’s just keep doing what we’re doing, until the bar of expectations rises and this beer-drinking, butt-scratching, sports-watching oaf that’s clueless persona is a thing of the past.

Test Track

My childhood memories are sparse.

I have childhood memories, strictly speaking, but they feel so feathery and breezy, light and passing rather than vivid and concrete. I remember my childhood the same way I remember dreams, in vignettes rather than as a movie. I don’t know why that is.

One of the few vivid memories I have is when my father took me to the Test Track ride at Disney’s EPCOT Center. Because he worked for GM at the time, we got to go “backstage” into the employee lounge overlooking the ride, and had an express pass to the front of the line.

I still remember how we were escorted to a secret side door, the view of the tall-windowed overlook, and the trappings of the ride itself. I remember, too, that I had a Cherry Coke in a red paper cup. I remember my father taking out his employee badge, out of his massive leather wallet. For me, fleshy memories like these are mythical creatures, rare and special.

I remember feeling so intrigued by the whole affair, it was a glimpse into my father’s life outside our family. And I remember the rare occurrence of my father at play, relishing the speed of the ride and the freeness of the wind around us, perhaps even glowing in the humble pride that comes from getting your family a VIP treatment.

And I remember too, how the ride was a bit fast and jerky for me at that age, and that I was comforted just by my father being in the vehicle next to me, his laughter and enjoyment signaling that there was nothing to be scared of.

I wish so badly I had more memories like this - visceral and detailed - of my childhood generally, but especially with my father. I want to remember more, and more of him. I can’t understand why I don’t.

With my own sons, I want to remember so many things of our time together, too. The big stuff, yes, but also the mundane.

Like afternoons in the garden, or cleaning our house, or just having an ice cream cone on Friday nights. And I think I will. Thanks to Robyn, we are blessed to have lots of photos and lots of moments where we tell old stories - it’s like she innately knows how to preserve memories, and she does it lovingly and skillfully.

I want to remember every moment of time I can with my sons and my wife. But I too hope that our relationship is loving, strong, and cherished enough for them to want to remember time with me.