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.

Everyday Angels

It has happened over and over again.

The harder life gets, the more I weep, yes. The less I sleep, yes. I know I’m in a bad way when I am as stark awake as a pig is naked and the watch at my bedside says 3:30. These things come in waves for me and for everyone. The brutal days come for all of us.

And yet, the angels keep coming. This past year and a half since Griffin was born has been relentless with some combination of illness, grief, utterly dogged and pressure-cooking work, or some sort of issue with our home or car. The brutal days can’t stop and won’t stop coming.

And yet, the angels keep coming. Someone calls me out of the blue. Or maybe someone at work or our sons’ soccer team pulls me aside to share comfort and encouragement. Or someone at the grocery store or at the park will just beam because they see something in our family that reminds them of theirs, which brightens their day and mine. Someone will come up to us at church and say, “I have been praying for you.” Or someone in my family or an old friend will just show up somehow, appearing as if through apparition.

How do they know? These people, these wonderful souls, how do they know I need them? How do they know I’m out of strength, many times before I even know I’m out of strength? How do they keep finding me?

I don’t know who keeps sending them. Or why.

But thank God.

—

I feel like an old man now.

Not in the sense of my body or mind — I feel sharp and limber, though I can’t run it back like I used to. It’s that I can’t not wear my heart out in the open anymore. I can’t live as a persona instead of a person anymore. I can’t hold back the laughter or tears or joy anymore.

I can’t hide. From the mirror, from God, from my demons, from love, from anyone. It is only old men who have learned not to hide, and to have learned this from hardship and death, from marriage, friendship, and from four remarkable sons is yet another way I feel I’ve grown up too soon.

But maybe that’s part of why these angels keep showing up. Maybe angels find us precisely when we stop hiding — when our darkness and our light is unhidden. Seeing that tension and dance of darkness and light emanating from another soul is perhaps what draws them near, as if our aura puts out a bat signal if we let it, and the everyday angels all around us see it.

That is perhaps a lesson in being an angel just as it is a lesson in calling one. I have been the recipient of so much love — I hope I can mirror back even a fraction of what’s been poured into me. I hope I can be an everyday angel to someone every once in a while. It seems so selfish and wasteful to just take and take without sharing it back.

It seems to me the key is simpler than I thought. Maybe it doesn’t take a relentless regimen of character development to be a good person. Maybe I don’t have to journal religiously and collect constructive criticism from everyone I can to shape myself into the man of honesty, sacrifice, and devotion my father was.

I think being an everyday angel is much simpler. We open our eyes and ears and hearts. Look for the light and look for the dark, and then just drift toward it. Let our hearts and souls be called. Maybe being a good man, an everyday angel, is really that simple.

As Our Stakes Rise

As we age, our stakes rise.

We have more people and communities we are responsible for. We have more influence over the people who look to us for leadership and care. We have more players to coach and develop. We have more mouths to feed.

Then comes a breaking point—we all have one. The point at which we feel we can’t carry any more. And yet, if we reach this point, it’s often because we’ve proven ourselves trustworthy enough to carry heavy responsibilities. So more come.

As we pass this breaking point, the temptation is to become more transactional in our affairs. To close our hearts. We try to conserve and retreat. We try to be more efficient in our interactions so we can save what we have left.

It’s like Bilbo Baggins says—we feel like too little butter scraped over too much bread. And so we lock ourselves down and keep as much as we can at arm’s length.

But this is precisely the temptation we can’t succumb to. People need more from us as our stakes rise, not less.

They need us to open our hearts more, not less. Our patience, our courage, our care are needed in fuller measure. Those we serve—our family, our friends, our neighbors, even kind strangers—need our spirit more deeply, not less.

As we age, our stakes rise. And so the demands on our spirit increase.

As I’ve aged, I’ve needed a spiritual practice more, because the demands on my spirit have felt enormous. The choice, at times, has been to shrink—or to meet the moment by leaning into faith to nourish and strengthen my spirit.

I wrote Character by Choice: Letters on Goodness, Fatherhood, and Becoming Better on Purpose in a deliberately secular way. For my sons, I wanted to argue for choosing goodness over power without simply saying, “this is what God’s word teaches.” If faith didn’t call them, I wanted the argument to stand on its own.

But the more I wrote, the more I felt called to the divine, and to communities of faith and spirituality. The deeper I went, the more I realized I couldn’t strengthen my spirit alone.

If you’re someone who takes responsibility for the needs of others, my point here isn’t to proselytize or pull you toward the traditions that have shaped me—Hinduism and Christianity.

My point is this: we need strength of spirit.

As our stakes rise, we don’t just need better leadership or managerial skills. We don’t just need better tools or mental models. We need strong, durable spirits—strong enough for others to lean on, and strong enough to keep our hearts and arms open even when the temptation is to become transactional.

How we do that—whether through God and religious traditions or through secular means—does not matter as much as the fact that we do it, that we strengthen our spirit.

Leadership books do not talk about the soul. Spirit isn’t in most lists of critical leadership and managerial skills. But if we choose to take responsibility and lead, we need a spiritual practice too.

As our stakes rise, and we pass our breaking point, the people depending on us need our spirit to meet the moment.