Just Try To Rip My Legs From This Ground

The gremlin — my dark alter ego who always wants more and believes I’m never enough — is lingering outside my front door. I sense him knocking, demanding to come inside, and I can’t let him in. I can’t go back to when he lived, rent free, as my captor.

“More!” he used to say, brooding. “There are people younger than you who have advanced further. Be afraid of how your savings will be wiped out in a crisis. Your colleagues think you’re weak. Your friends are going to lap you — I heard them talking.”

“Robyn and the kids deserve better than what you’re giving them. Your parents sacrificed everything they knew to come to this country, and you only have this?” he whispered, with disgust.

“You’re not even close to where you need to be. More, more, MORE!!!”

The gremlin doesn’t just want me to keep up with the Joneses — he wants the Joneses to have to keep up with me. As if the only way to stay safe in this world is to be “superior” to others, whatever that means.

How do I stop him? How can I banish him again?

To send him away the first time, it took a decade’s worth of reflection, study, and writing. My book, Character by Choice, is the fruit of that labor. But it won’t work to banish him again through contemplation. I can’t write letters to send him away this time, I tried that already and he’s back.

I need an anchor that lets the gremlin know I’m standing firm — that I’m committed to the life I’m living and content enough to grow at my own, sustainable pace. I need roots that keep me grounded, that help me close doors, and that keep me from falling back into the trap of “more, more, more” because I haven’t articulated what “enough” is. If he sees that I’m anchored and can’t be kidnapped…he will leave disappointed and empty-handed.

Robyn is an anchor. The moment I proposed to her in Campus Martius Park was the moment I committed to a family-centered life — when she said “yes,” I said no to a career of chasing titles, moving across the country, and even running for office. Our home is an anchor. It’s small, and even if we had the money for a flashy renovation or fancier cars, it wouldn’t be valued by the culture of our relationship-oriented neighborhood.

Faith and our church community is an anchor. Our parish emphasizes being welcoming, and actively rejects a culture where piety is compared based on appearances or social status. My sons are an anchor. They constantly prove to me — when they ask to play a game, or ask me to stop working — that my undivided attention is what they’re desperate for, not my money or social status.

These anchors are not words. They are not cheap talk. They are expansive actions. They show the gremlin that he should take a hike — that I’m not giving up these things, not trading them for more. If the gremlin wants to take me on a different path, he will have to rip my legs from the ground and carry me there.

It’s hard to find examples of this among people my age, so I looked to the natural world instead. The ability to be rooted is why I am so in awe of trees. They stay put, and branch outward above and below the ground. They can withstand wind and storms. They stay steady, committed to where they are, enhancing the ecosystem around them with their shade, the air they purify, and their ability to stabilize the ground. You have to rip a tree out of the ground to take it away. Trees are the epitome of rooted.

And I can remember this, and feel this rooting in my body every day. When I embrace my wife in the kitchen, afraid of the failure I’ll be reminded of at work, I’ll feel my feet planting firmly into the tile floor. When I sit with my kids on the couch in the few minutes we have before bedtime, worried about whether we’ll have enough money for Catholic schooling or Griffin’s long-term care, I will feel my back rooting into the cushion and my arm intertwining with their shoulder. When I am in the pews of the church, praying that the Lord lets me lay the pressure I feel to be more, and the heaviness of my responsibilities, at his feet for a little while, I will feel my knees burrow into the ground below me.

In these moments, I will let this feeling in my body remind me that I am anchored, like the trees are. The gremlin will not walk through my door and take me captive, as he once did — because I will be rooted.