The Myth of Hard Work

My eldest sister, in her infinite wisdom, pointed out the subtle difference between hard WORK and HARD work, while we were WhatsApp video-ing across continents.

We were discussing a book we both happened to have read recently, Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. 

Which, if you haven’t read it, I think you should. It’s an essential work for us in this century, helping us to understand what it means to be human, the extremities of human experience, and the boundlessness of our inner strength.

“Why is it that in those extreme circumstances [of a Nazi death camp] some people could have such a response of strength and courage, while others did not?”, I asked her.

“Hard work,” she replied.

And so I pressed her. What kind of hard work? What kind of work should we do to build up our courage?

“Doesn’t matter,” she replied, again, thoughtfully. She continued and explained the difference to me. It doesn’t matter what the work is, as long as it’s  challenging, and a struggle. To build our inner-strength and courage all that matters is that we do work that is hard.

If you’re like me - growing up in a well-to-do suburb, with educated parents - there is a myth you’ve probably been told. Everyone seems to be in on it.

If you work hard, you will make it, they tell us. You will be successful. You will have a good life. Perhaps you don’t even need to have grown up in a well-to-do suburb to have heard this myth. It’s pervasive in America.

Earlier in my twenties and thirties I thought this was a myth because hard work doesn’t necessarily lead to success, if you’re one of the people in this country who gets royally screwed because of your luck, the wealth you were born with, or one of many social identities.

What I got wrong, I think, is that there’s a bigger lie at play in the idea that hard work leads to a good life. The bigger lie, I think, is what hard work actually is.

When you’re told this myth, the hard work is presented like this:

Go to school, get good grades and get extra-curricular leadership credentials. That is hard. Get into a famous college, that is hard. Get good grades in an elite major at that famous college, that is hard. Then get a placement at an elite organization - could be an investment bank, could be a fellowship, could be a big tech firm, could even be an elite not-for-profit - that is hard. And do all this “hard” work and go forward and have a good, successful life.

What I realized  after talking with my sister is that all that stuff isn’t actually the hard stuff. We perceive it to be “hard” because it’s made so artificially, through scarcity. It’s only hard to get into a famous college or into a plum placement because there are a fixed number of seats. It’s difficult to be sure, and one has to be skilled, but it’s a well trodden path that is hard to fail out of once you’re in it, that happens to have more applicants than seats.

And everybody knows this. Everybody, I think, who plays this game knows that there’s not that much special about them that got them to this point. It’s luck, taking advantage of the opportunities that have been given, and plodding along a well trodden path. 

And I think most people, in their heart of hearts, knows that this game isn’t really hard because it’s not actually important. Degrees or lines on a resume don’t make a difference in the world. Getting a degree has no causal link to actually doing something of importance in the world. It’s an exercise to elevate our own status, without having to take any real risks or have any real skin in the game.

And I think this is why I have spent so much of my life having this fragile sense of accomplishment and confidence. I got good grades and was a “student leader” on paper and got into a good college. I did “well” there and got a placement at a prestigious firm where it was almost impossible to fail out. And so on.

Who cares? That didn’t create much value for anyone, save maybe for me. I was going down a well trodden path. I hadn’t actually done anything of any importance. And in my heart of hearts, I knew that. I felt like a fraud, because I was one. I hadn’t really done anything that hard or remarkable. I just played the game, didn’t fumble the ball I was handed, and was slightly luckier than the next person in line.

Of course I wouldn’t feel confident as a result of going down this well trodden path. Everything I had ever done was to build up a resume. That’s not hard.

So what’s hard?

Taking care of other people - whether it’s a child, a parent, a neighbor, or a sibling. It’s burying a loved one. It’s starting a company that actually makes other people’s lives better, even if it’s small. It’s taking that degree from a famous college and pushing from the bowels of a corporation, toward a new direction that actually solves a novel problem that everyone else thinks is ridiculous.

It’s marriage. It’s growing a garden from seeds. It’s baking a loaf of bread from scratch. It’s figuring out how to install a faucet because you don’t have the money to pay a plumber to do it. It’s making a sacrifice for others. It’s pulling a neighborhood kid out of trouble. It’s creating new knowledge and pioneering something nobody else has figured out. It’s telling the truth and being kind, consistently. This is the stuff that’s actually hard.

So yeah, one of the myths of hard work is that it leads to a good life - we know that isn’t fully true. But honestly, the bigger and more pernicious myth about hard work is that we’re lied to about what the truly important, hard work actually is.

The stuff we were told is “hard”, was all artificial and pursuing it left me fragile. It was only after getting chewed up by life in my late twenties, and going from fragile to broken, that I started to actually do the actually hard work of living.

And that’s when I actually started to feel inner-strength. 

When I wasn’t trying to chase a promotion, but was actually trying to work on a team that was trying to reduce gun violence, because our neighbors and fellow citizens were literally dying. That’s hard. When I lost my father suddenly and was picking up the pieces of the life I thought I would’ve had, and the father-son friendship we were finally developing. That’s hard. When I fell in love with my soon-to-be wife, we were married, adopted a dog, and had children; being a husband and father, that’s hard. Monitoring my diet and trying to exercise, not because I wanted to look jacked at the bar, but because I’m confronting and trying to delay my own mortality. That’s hard.

And I say all this, at the risk of sounding like a humble-bragging narcissistic, because I still doom-scroll on LinkedIn, all the time. 

I swaggle my thumb up and down the screen, seeing all the updates on promotions and new roles and elite grad school admissions. And I feel myself falling back into that hole of fragile pseudo-confidence, forgetting that I’ve learned all those accolades aren’t the hard work of real life. I forget the path of chasing status, money, and power is not the stuff that actually makes a difference in the world or what builds inner-strength and true courage.

I say all, out loud, this because I need help. I need help to not fall into that hole of that myth again. I need all of us in this collective - the collective that wants to live life differently than the myth we’ve been sold - to pull me back to the path of courage, goodness, and the hard and important work of real life. 

And finally, I write all this, as a reminder that if you are also in this collective of living differently, we are in this together, and I am here to pull you back, out of the hole of that myth, too.

Noticing good days

I am trying to remove the concept of bad days out of my mind. Meaning, I’m trying to fully understand that the way I want to think about it is that bad days don’t exist.

There are so many wonderful things about days after all.

The sun, the wind, and the rain, and the fog, and the snow, and the hot and cold. There is deep breaths. There is the chance to wiggle my toes or have a glass of water. Or I can put on a sock. I can blink, just for fun or skip if I want to.

There’s also noise and touch and light, but also silence and the gentle darkness of stars and moonlight. And there’s the feeling of having a body, and things like sweating or a grumbling stomach. Or wishing or hoping or praying for something. Or a funny joke. Or the sweet relief of weeping about something.

And for me when Robyn says “good morning” and gives me a kiss, just about makes my day right when it starts. Or a hug from one of my boys or talking to our parents. Or a quick “hey” from an old friend, too. And I get that we are lucky to be enveloped in love and our relationships are bound by life, they still exist and will have existed.

These are all examples of little joys that actually aren’t little at all.

I’ve been thinking about it like fine chocolates. Many moments in a day are simply exquisite, like a morsel of well made chocolate. But even the finest chocolate can’t be noticed as exquisite if we just put it in our mouths, hurriedly, and just crunch-crunch-crunch, swallow and move on. And these little-but-actually-big joys are the same, even the most remarkable moments aren’t remarkable if we don’t savor them when we have them.

I know that bad moments happen. Sometimes, those moments are really horrific and truly terrible. But I want to also know in my bones and muscle tissues that bad moments don’t imply bad days. Bad moments can imply hard days, sad days, angry days, or even days of hopelessness and despair. But that doesn’t have to be bad.

And all this said, I know my days could be orders of magnitude harder if we weren’t as healthy, wealthy, or loved as we are. With temporal distance, even the hardest days of my life so far, like when I’ve done things that hurt others or the day I had to let my father go ahead without me, weren’t bad. They were unbearably hard, but I don’t have to think of them as bad, as if I wanted them to be wiped from existence. 

Because if those days were wiped from existence, it’s one less day with all the good moments a day can have - even if those good moments are hidden in plain sight, waiting for us to notice them. If even one of those days were wiped from existence, I couldn’t have lived them.

And one definition of injustice to me is when there are people on this earth that have so many bad things happen to them that all the little things that can make a day good, even for a moment, remain hidden in plain sight. That they have so many struggles, and so much unbearable pain and disappointment that they aren’t capable of noticing even one good moment that day, even something as simple as the goodness of waking up from sleep or breathing.

I want my mind, my body, and my heart to understand what my soul already does: that good days don’t have to do with the trappings of how “lucky”, “blessed”, or “privileged” I am. That the “good” in a good day in life comes just from living. I want all of me to understand what my soul already does, that every day is a good day and every single one of those days matters.

The One-way Door

It’s been five years since Papa went through the door.

In five years, a lot of life - our marriage, Riley, buying a home, changing jobs, a trip to India, a trip to Frankenmuth, family dinners and washed dishes, backyard barbecues and park walks, Bo’s whole life, Myles’s whole life, 5 Diwalis, 5 Thanksgivings, 5 Christmases, the Trump Presidency, a pandemic, two half marathons, knowing God again, a mostly written book, and many many moments of laughter and tears - has happened.

And for a long time, I knew he had already left. But, still, I thought he might come back through that door. Not in a real way, but in a fantasy sort of way. Like, in a waking up from a dream or being on candid camera sort of way. For a long time, a little part of me was holding onto the only-with-a-miracle possibility that he’d be back.

I don’t know exactly when, but sometime in the past five years I let go of that hope. I knew and thought he wouldn’t be coming back. Finally, I accepted that it was a one-way door.

And so what to do? It is true, the door is one way. And one day, I too, will head through it. That is certain. This is all certain.

Basically all of us have this predicament at some point in our lives. We have to accept that it’s a one way door, and choose what happens next. Do we sit and wait in a chair by the door, biding our time until our turn comes? And then, relief, because we have rejoined our loved ones who have already gone ahead?

Or, do we build a life on this side of the one-way door? Do we make memories and hang those pictures up beside it? Or cover the door in crayon drawings and finger paint? Do we build a table and cook and feast to celebrate life on this side of the door? Do we laugh and cry and yawp and run and play and blush and garden and read and mend things?

I feel guilty, often, for trying to build a life without him on this side of the door. Even though I know it’s not betrayal, I think it is. I know living life is what he would make me promise to do had he known he was going, but I still think something’s not right about it. I may never rid myself of this dissonance. I don’t know.

But the door no longer haunts me, on an hourly and daily basis like it used to. It’s pain that’s chronic and manageable, not acute and insufferable. But here I still am, five years later, torturing myself by reliving memories of his last days, while weeping tears of gratitude for the life we have now. And still, thinking of him, praying, and wondering how he is on the other side of the door.

Radical Questions, Radical Diversity

Over the holiday, my father-in-law asked me a very interesting question along these lines: after asking questions on facebook for so long, what have you learned?

Over these past five years or so of asking an almost-daily questions, I’ve tried not to ask gimmicky or empirical questions. I’ve tried to ask simple, specific questions that require reflection and emotional labor. This is not for any special reason, I just I think those sorts of questions are most interesting and yield the most wisdom on how to live a good life and be a good person.

What has been surprising is how often someone says something incredibly perceptive and relevant. Like, nearly every response I’ve ever received to any questions I’ve ever asked is something valuable. Individually, everyone has something profound to contribute.

At the same time, I’ve come to realize how deep but narrow of an understanding each of us have about the human experience. Nobody’s perspective fully explains or grasps the full truth on how to live a good life or be a good person. We all have a fragments of it. We all have a remarkably clear understanding on the little piece that’s been made clear to us by virtue of our most unique and compelling experiences.

If the truth of life were a large tree, we are not photographers standing from afar that can see the whole tree. Rather, we are each little birds that understand just the leaves and branches right around us.

Which leads me to two big takeaways - to understand the big truths of our human experience we need radical diversity and radical questions in our lives.

RADICAL DIVERSITY

The importance of diversity in teams trying to solve complex problems is not a new idea. Scott E. Page (Go Blue!) has done fascinating research in this area. I loved his book on the topic, The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies.

But what I would say, is that diversity isn’t just important for team problem solving. To understand the tree of human experience we need radical diversity in our live so that we can learn about the far reaching parts of the tree we’re all in, so to speak. Like, we don’t just need to learn from people who are different from us, they need to be radically different, from branches on the tree that are far, far away from us.

For example, there’s just some things that drug addicts understand better than others. Straight up. Or people who have lost parents early in life. Or people who have been bullied. Or people who have been insanely wealthy or dirt poor. Or people who have lived abroad. Or people who’ve had to execute massive projects. Or people who’ve studied the arts. Or people who have built things with their hands. Or people who have been abused. Or people who have raised children. Or people who have lied or have been lied to. Or people who have been to space. Or people who have served the most vulnerable. Or people who grew up in most typical suburbs. Or people who have been farmers. Or people who have committed heinous crimes and returned from prison.

Or whatever radical experience it is. There are just some things that folks who have had certain kinds of radical, intense experiences just understand better than I do. To really understand the human experience, I can’t settle for knowing people who are different than me - I have to learn from people who are radically different than me.

RADICAL QUESTIONS

At the same time, I will not learn much about the human experience, even if I have radical diversity in my life, if I only talk to those people about topics like the weather, sports, politics, or celebrity gossip.

To learn about human experience we have to talk about the radical things that have happened to us, which means we have to ask radical questions.

I don’t claim to be great at this yet, but I have learned a lot on how to ask good questions. And radical doesn’t mean sensational. It means questions that are reflective and require emotional labor.

And yes, I’d suggest that those sorts of questions are indeed radical. Because honestly, the bar on asking radical questions is really low. Even though the questions I tend to ask aren’t extremely radical most of the time, it’s easy to clear a very low bar.

Most questions that we’re ever asked in our day to day lives are boring and sanitized. Think about every customer feedback survey you’ve ever taken: boring. Think about every question asked during a panel discussion you’ve attend: boring or loaded with assumptions. Think about every question you’ve ever talked about chit chatting at a bar or waiting in line somewhere: boring or safe.

There are so few forums where we ask or are asked questions that require reflection or emotional labor. And so, all we ever learn about is our little twig on the tree of human experience, even if we’re surrounded by radical diversity.

And I’d also say that it’s not that scary to ask a radical question, though it may feel that way. If you haven’t, you should try it sometime.

We are so deprived of radical questions in our lives, I’ve found that many people seem to feel liberated when asked a radical question. We’re just waiting for the opportunity to share something radical, if we believe we are listened to, safe, and respected.

Radical listening and radical love in settings of radical diversity lead to radical answers to radical questions.

I think most people, at least my age, care about this wisdom of how to live a good life and be a good life. We can help each other do this. We really can.

Finding peace with the starved twenties

I noticed something odd this week.

Most of my dreams, which are unfortunately always stressful, take place in my early to mid twenties. I don’t think I’ve dreamt about my kids, maybe ever. I hadn’t noticed the pattern until a few days ago.

Why oh why would my twenties be hiding and lurking in my mind?

Upon reflection, my twenties were a lot like this year. I went days, sometimes weeks, without giving a hug because I traveled for work and rolled by myself most of the time. I had fun hanging out with friends at the bar every weekend, but that rarely led to conversations requiring emotional intimacy.

I always thought my twenties were lonely. And they were, but they were more than that. They were starved. Not of nourishment, but of emotion and spiritual depth. And love.

Upon reflection, my twenties were a lot like this year.

It struck me though that lots of people have to live like it’s 2020, but every year. Can you imagine?

I think it was enough to just see the past clearly and more honestly. The moment I connected the dots, and understood the difference between alone and starved I seriously felt it in my abdomen, right below my sternum; a tension released.

Two nights later I had a dream, and my sons were in it. Imagine that.

Dreams, from joy and the conviction of their own souls

Raking leaves is one of those chores I don’t want to do until I’m doing it.

Until I’m with rake in hand, I’ve forgotten the crispness and soft chill of the air, and the sound of the brushing leaves. It’s sweatshirt weather. But I also forget that sweatshirt weather is also “thinking weather.”

As I raked yesterday, I escaped to thinking about dreams. And my subconscious drew me not to thinking about what my dreams are, but rather, “what influenced me to have the particular dreams that I do?” And for me, so much of my dreams are wrapped up into my parents’ dreams for me.

To be a “big man” or a man of great community respect. And I wondered why they had those dreams for me, and I think it must have been, at least in part, because of how they were treated when they arrived in this country. As immigrants, I don’t imagine they ever felt accepted or welcomed, at least for the first few decades of their arrival.

And when you’re an “outsider” respect and wealth protects you from harm - whether that is rude service or dirty looks in public, or more unfortunately, a brick through your window. I imagine my parents’ pain is something that influenced me to want the dreams that I wanted early in life. Pain is a powerful influence.

But my dreams were also influenced by the broader culture whose collective opinion skews toward a hedonistic, lowest common denominator and accepted malaise . Let’s call those the dreams of “the herd”.

The herd wants me to hold its dreams as my own, because it’s a mechanism of justification. It’s harder to criticize the herds hedonistic aspirations if they convince me (and others) to be part of it. The more people the herd co-opts, the more their dreams - however dishonorable they may be - become normal. Just like pain, the herd is a powerful influence.

So early in life my dreams were influenced by two things, avoiding pain and succumbing to the herd’s mentality. That’s where “I want to be a Senator” or a “social entrepreneur” came from - those were two dreams that pain and the herd led me, specifically, to.

And I’ve let go of those dreams, not because I grew out of those dreams, but because I grew out of pain and the herd’s mentality. Mostly through luck and blessing, some very special friends and family helped me to discover joy and my own soul. It’s a journey less like climbing a mountain, and more like a long, lonely walk.

It’s a journey I am still on, but my dreams are now about a growing family, goodness, the honor of public service, and sacrifice for a community bigger than myself. I still fall into the traps laid before me by pain and the herd, I am after all a mortal man. But these dreams - borne of joy and what lies within the core of me - are a far cry from the version of myself that was nakedly ambitious, longing to be on the Crain’s 20 in their 20’s list.

Honestly though, the point isn’t about me, nor should it be.

The point is this: I can only hope - for our children, and the children of our friends, family, and neighbors - that the generation up next spends less of their life having their dreams influenced by pain and the herd than I did. I hope, deeply, that more of their dreams, and really their lives, are instead influenced by joy and the convictions of their own soul.

Here’s how I’ve been thinking about how we do that.

Every culture is misunderstood

Most people don’t understand the depth of Indian culture. For example…

Most people don't understand that there’s much more to Diwali than lighting pretty candles. Most people don't understand that there's more to yoga than it being a good "work out" with an emphasis on breathing and stretching. Most people don't understand that there are a LOT of Indians (and Indian-Americans) who don't work in medicine, IT, or engineering.

Most people don't know about the rich tradition of art, music, poetry, philosophy, theology, and governance on the Indian sub-continent. Most people don't understand that the range of our cuisine is so diverse and wide, that saying "I like Indian food" is similar to saying "I like ancestrally-white people food".

Our culture goes much deeper than the caricature that most other people believe it to be.

I assume that virtually any group feels similarly sometimes. The sentiment of "our culture and people aren't stupid, you just don't understand their depth" is not unique to people of any descent - Indian or otherwise.

But I've learned two things about this:

One, if I believe any culture or community is dumb, antiquated, or backwards - i probably don't understand that culture's depth.

And two, nobody is going to understand the depth of my culture - whether it's the culture of India, America, Michigan, Detroit, or even our family - unless I welcome them with open arms and share something beyond the caricature they already have in their mind.

Your Dada's American Dream

It is time I told you boys the story of how we came to America.

Your Dada was the first of our Indian family to arrive here, by way of Ottawa and Chicago. But similar to the histories of many immigrants, his story doesn't begin in North America, it begins on the shores of a distant land, halfway across the world.

Bombay is a city on the sea. I have never been there, but I have heard of its vista many times. Your Dada loved the sea, although I'm not sure whether he's always loved the water or if he began to love it because he moved to Bombay. Which is not where our family is from, by the way - we are not Mumbaikars, ancestrally - but it is where the tale of our family coming to America begins.

Your Dada was at university for engineering there. He was in a hallway, probably on his way to some class, and a forgotten piece of paper was strewn across the floor ahead of him. This paper, at least from the way he told me the story, made quite an impression on him. As it turns out, the paper was a list, of colleges and universities in the United States and Canada that offered scholarships for foreign students.

And the idea to leave India in search of a better life, was probably a seed in his head before this moment. But this forgotten piece of paper is what caused that seed to take root, strongly, in his mind.

Your Anil Dada was a longtime friend of my Papa. They went to school and college together. And Anil Dada once told me that Papa's nickname among his school friends was Ghoda. It's the hindi word for horse. And that's what your Dada was, a work horse. Once that paper came across his path, and that idea of a scholarship rooted in his mind, it was only a matter of time before he got here.

And despite your Dada facing extraordinarily difficult circumstances, here we are.

If you could ask him yourself about why he came here, as I have tried to, he'd tell you that he came here "for a better life." I've thought many years about what he meant. It's a haunting thing to wonder - about what drives your father - because it is after all, an inevitable part of what drives his sons.

When he said a better life, I think he meant prosperity. And part of that means wealth. But prosperity - in the way I think your Dada meant it, and the way I mean it here in this letter - is not only wealth. It is much more than that.

Prosperity is thriving. It is reaching the height of our potential as human beings. Prosperity is creating surplus, and then having the honor of spreading it humbly and generously to others. Prosperity is what’s beyond the essentials needed to have our physical bodies survive - it is the jewels of knowledge, culture, art, virtue, and the audacity to dream of a better life. For ourselves, yes, but more importantly for ourselves and others.

In America, prosperity is intervening to end a world war. It is vaccines and splicing the gene. It is going to the moon and brokering peace on earth. It is bringing children out of hunger and into love. It is the freedom to think beyond our daily bread and our tired and our poor. It is seeking to understand the mysteries of our universe.

American prosperity, I believe, is so much bigger than riches and spoils. American prosperity is the idea of creating the surplus we need so that we can then set our sights higher: on challenging the injustices of the present and enriching the future we may never ourselves benefit from, but others might. This unique notion of American prosperity - a prosperity that is for ourselves and others is what I think your Dada thought of when he contemplated a better life. A dream he ventured across the ocean and into an unknown land to be part of.

Because in America we are not just handed a brush and asked to paint something, we as a people, are driven to create the canvas on which others, namely our children, can paint. In America, we are called not just to be the consumers of prosperity, but to also be its producers.

Prosperity for ourselves and others.

I tell you all this because yesterday was an interesting day.

Yesterday, Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris became the President and Vice President-elect of the United States, our country.

This is what your Dadi said to me in a text message last night:

Me: Did you watch Biden’s speech?
Dadi: Yes. Biden & Harris both speech was outstanding. I am happy. First time in my life I enjoyed president results.
Me: It’s crazy how much of a difference it feels because our VP is half Indian. It feels like we belong here now.
Dadi: Yes beta. You, Bo & Myles will touch the sky in this country. I see that. Papa’s dream will come true.

This week, 74 Million Americans asked someone who looks like you, and who looks like me, and who looks like mommy to serve the nation. 74 Million.

But why I tell you both this is not because I want to emphasize that some barrier has been broken and a glass ceiling has been shattered, though it has. I want to tell you what that ceiling shattering means.

It would be easy for us to feel today that this ceiling shattering is an opportunity for us individually to grow and thrive and become more prosperous, because an invisible barrier is now gone. That the broken ceiling is for us.

That is not the lesson of today.

The lesson of the day is that there is no more doubt that we belong here, and that does provide us more opportunity. But there are no more excuses to be made out of not belonging, either. We can no longer claim to feel that we don't belong and let it be a reason we don't contribute.

The lesson of today - with the shattered glass of broken ceilings - is that we have an invitation and obligation to live out the broad, ever expanding notion of American prosperity - a dream your Dada risked everything for - not just for ourselves, but for ourselves and others.

We get to watch things grow

How do I live?

How do I live without you?

Will I ever?

—

These are the three questions. Making sense of these is the challenge of our lives. I know you know this, but I wanted to say them anyway. Out loud, so that they’re more real. So that we can confront them. Maybe together we can figure them out, enough at least.

How do I live?

What kind of man do I want to be? Should I be? What does it mean to be a husband, father, citizen, and strategist? What is my calling? What is my purpose? Why am I here? Now that I am here, what do I do? How do I act? What is my duty, my dharma? I want to be good, but what does that mean?

How do I live without you?

There were days that I thought I would never meet you. So many nights out at the bar, wondering where you were. And then you were, and we were. I knew you were somewhere, but for those hard years - where were you? And now that you’re here, and we’re married, and have sons, and a home together…I can’t even imagine…how do I live without you? I don’t know if I ever could. If I had to, how would I even start?

Will I ever?

At some point, I will die. I don’t know when it will be. Will it be before you? After you? Before or after the boys? Will I ever have to live without you?

—

It is worth trying to make sense of these questions, even though I’m not sure that we ever will, fully. We’ll just do the best we can. We’ll be able to make peace with them, I think. And we will hopefully have many days and nights together to talk about them; think about them.

—

Scene 1, Brotherly Love

I want you boys to know what you both were like together this year. Bo, you’re about to turn three years old. Myles, you just started crawling. And it is one of the joys of my life to see you two together, in brotherly love.

Yesterday, you both were playing together on the floor in the family room. Side by side. Brother next to brother. And someone said something, and you both started hugging each other. It was just what you did, even though Myles was barely able to hold himself up, he just hugged himself into his brother’s arms.

it was not planned, or prompted, or staged. It was an involuntary response. Bo, you love to help your brother to laugh. And Myles, nobody makes you laugh like your brother does.

I think by seeing it up close, I finally understand a little bit of what it meant by the phrase brotherly love. It gives me a deep peace to know that you both have this love, as it is one I always wished for. I have it now, through you both.

It is one of the loves that is pure. It is special. I am deeply grateful to have it residing in our home, in your two boys.

—

Scene 2, Stolen Moments

These days we have to steal away moments together. We haven’t been on a date, maybe in 10 months until this week. We went to your company’s drive-in movie event. We stole away for just a few hours. And it was lovely (even though you thought Ghostbusters was weird).

One of my favorites is when we steal away a little dance in the kitchen, usually after the kids are in bed - between when I wash dishes and you fold laundry. A little song, a little dance, a little kiss, and an “I love you”…that’s what we steal away and keep safe to remind us of different times, and to make new memories with old songs.

And yesterday, we stole away a special few hours. It was a special occasion (it being Saturday night will always be enough) so we opened up that cask ale bottle we’ve been saving for a few weeks. We snuck into the loveseat on the other side of the room that doesn’t face the TV, and we just talked. We stole away a few hours. Talked about our boys, our lives, our hopes, and what we’ve been feeling lately.

And we’ll not remember exactly what we said past tomorrow, probably. But we’ll remember how it felt. Because it felt like together. We stole that feeling from just being part of our forgotten history. And it was lovely.

—

I write all these scenes from our week to make a broader point, so let me make it before I lose your attention, even though I’m lucky that you still listen to me even when you ought to be bored instead.

Those three questions, the really deep ones: how do I live, how do I live without you, and will I ever, are ones that frighten me. They make me want to stop time, so that we can just stay in these blessed moments forever, and we never have to think about them again.

But these scenes from our week also put me at peace, because they reminded me we get to watch things grow. We get to watch our boys learn, get bigger, figure out their mistakes, make jokes, fall in all different kinds of love. And we get to watch our marriage grow old, and become distinguished and deeper as the years pass.

We get to watch things grow, and I say all this to say, I think that’s a fair trade for having to struggle with the hardest questions. Because even though we can’t stop time, we will eventually die, and we don’t know when - we get to watch things grow.

Terran address to the 3rd Symposium of Intragalactic Cooperation

Address to the 3rd Symposium of Intragalactic Cooperation, Earth Date: October 11, 3020.

Friends, it is a great honor to be addressing this esteemed body on the occasion of the 3rd Symposium of Intragalactic Cooperation. Prior to the beginning of my remarks, your interstellar translators were to set to English, which is one of the classic languages of Earth - the home planet of my species, located in the Terran system.

It thought it fitting to address you in this way, because I will be sharing with you the last 1000 Earth-years of my species’ history. Why? Because the trajectory of my species in this time is a fitting metaphor for the important decisions we are about to make as we sign the accords which outline the principles all our species have agreed to as we engage in trans-galactic exploration for the first time.

1000 years ago was the beginning of our 21st century of demarcated history. My species did not realize it at the time, but we had been deteriorating as a civilization for nearly one thousand years. The 21st century was was when my species finally starting bearing the costs of that millennia, which we now call the age of subjugation.

That millennium of subjugation was when my species came of age. We grew the population of our home planet into the Billions. We made pathbreaking progress in science, physics, philosophy, and art. To terrains living in those times, it seemed like that our species had reached a pinnacle point of thriving.

But it was not necessarily an era of thriving. There were religious wars. And then wars for power, wealth, and planetary domination. Later, we began to subjugate our living environment - our atmospheric gases, our liquids, and our solid naturally occurring elements. We harnessed the power of atoms and made explosive weapons, which are primitive by today’s standards but were capable of destroying our home world when stockpiled.

And then in the late 21st century, the millennium of subjugation pushed our species to the brink of extinction. Our environment, our politics, and our morals were pushing every person on our home planet to the brink of violence, starvation, or both.

But what also started occurring in the middle of the 21st human century was rapid progression in our understanding of information computing. We started to see the beginnings of what our species called “artificial intelligence".

And what saved our species from the brink of extinction was not the computational power we harnessed, but the cultural understanding.

Terrans, as you know, are some of the most emotional and irrational beings in the galaxy. We are messy, volatile, and downright nutty. We do not possess the physical strength, intellect, logic, or discipline of any of the species represented in this chamber today. And I say that as a proud terran myself.

What we are, however, is imaginative. We have tremendous capability to envision what does not yet exist - however illogical it is. In fact, our imaginations are at their best when we are.

Which brings me back to artificial intelligence. It gave us a quantum leap in information computing power, yes, but it’s most transformative effect on our species was to make us understand what made us unique and special in the galaxy. We could not out-reason the computers we built. We could not out-compute it.

But when contrasting ourselves with information computers, we realized what our souls and emotions were capable of. Advancing information computing technology, surprisingly made us understand what it meant to be terran (or “human” as it was said in those days) more than any other development in the history of our species.

When pushed to the brink of extinction in the late 21st century, my species finally realized that we were never good at subjugating, or even built for it - we were made to imagine.

And all across our planet, we started imagining. Our planetary government stopped every new activity for 10 Earth years and spent a decade imagining what the next millennium could look like for our species, so that we would not repeat the mistakes of our history.

And what a millennium it has been, it has exceeded our wildest dreams. In the past millennium we have established peaceful worlds across our stellar system, we have made contact with all of your species, some of which that have been space-faring civilizations for tens of thousands of Earth years.

And now, all our species, together, have explored the galaxy, peacefully for the past five hundred years. We are discovering the origins of the universe itself. We are doing something my species could have never even contemplated 1000 years ago.

And here we are, today, on the eve of the signing of the accords which will govern how we - for the first time - venture outside our galaxy. Even though we now know that those galaxies could be wildly different than our own - down to the very physics that have prevailed as truth in our galaxy for billions of Earth years.

And on the eve of this most remarkable occasion, I share the history of my species with you to illustrate that audacious goals are irrational by their very definition. They are laughable. They are unbelievably scary. But in these times of extraordinary circumstance, the lesson my species has learned - when we were on the brink of inevitable extinction, when we felt most pressured to be practical and modest - is that what we must do, even though it is foolish, irrational, and scary is to imagine.

And I speaking as the representative of of 35 Billion terrans across this galaxy, suggest to you that if we let our imaginations reach far and wide, when it feels most ludicrous, we can explore the next galaxies, together, and discover unimaginable beauty, prosperity, fellowship, and peace with all those we encounter.

As we sign the accords tomorrow, let it be a sign for all of galactic history that it was a day of extraordinary imagination.

Keeping Up With the Joneses or Answering Hard Questions?

The cycle of how life is supposed to work has always been presented to me like this, since I was a kid:

How we keep up with the Joneses

• Get the best grades and build the best resume you can in high school

• Get into best college you can

• Get the best grades, network, and internships you can in college

• Get the best, most prestigious job you can in your twenties

• Get into the best graduate or professional school you can

• Get the best placement you can and rise the ranks to the highest-paid and prestigious post you can

• Have kids and move into the best neighborhood with the best school system you can

• Repeat this process again and help your kids be the “best” they can be, so they too can keep up with the Joneses

I used to think this cycle kept on going because humans had some need for domination and power, status, or both. As in, we had this evolutionary need to be “the best”.

But after having a very insightful conversation this week, I wonder if using the tried and true MO of keeping up with the Joneses is attractive because it’s simple.

One of my best friends has been thinking about meaning and shared a remarkable insight with me. My friend said it better, but here’s the essence:

Life is messy and there are these difficult but inescapable questions we’re confronted with - about life, death, meaning, and purpose. These questions are exceptionally hard and scary to answer. And it’s not fair that the only people who seem to really have consistent help with these ineluctable questions are the religious and the pious. What about everyone else?

It had never occurred to me that so many of us may get stuck in a cycle of keeping up with the Joneses, not because we’re nakedly ambitious or because of social pressure. Maybe it’s just the easiest, most obvious way to feel like we’re not wasting our lives or doing what we’re supposed to.

Confronting life’s ineluctable questions (my friend used this word in her essay, I had to look it up, but I’m using it here because it’s a perfect word for this context) is so hard and intimidating to do.

Keeping up with the Joneses has its own drawbacks, but it’s less risky than confronting ineluctable questions.

How we keep up with the Joneses is clearly defined and relatively unambiguous. Society doesn’t flog anyone who tows the line and just keeps up with the Joneses. Our institutions (colleges, schools, corporations) all reinforce these norms too. Keeping up with the Joneses is not exalted but it’s rarely rejected. In the realm of figuring out how to live, it’s the path of least resistance.

But I worry that there’s an intergenerational debt accumulating here. If we repeat this cycle of keeping up with the Joneses - generation after generation - will we eventually forget how to tackle life’s ineluctable questions? If we do forget, is that really the type of culture we want to leave to our grandchildren’s grandchildren?

For me, the answer to that question is absolutely not.

I am determined - 2020 will not become a hashtag | Hurricane-proof Purpose

I am determined not to let this year, 2020, become a hashtag. Every time I hear the punchline of a joke or a meme end in something like, “well that’s 2020 for you” I cringe. To me it’s defeat. It’s a resignation that we do not have agency over our own fate, or at least our reaction to our fate. I am determined not to let 2020 become a hashtag, even if it’s just in my own head.

In most instances, this is where I’d insert an “easier said than done”, but I don’t think so. It’s actually very easy to bounce back from a “that’s 2020” mindset. All it takes is focus on a higher purpose.

If a higher purpose for my life is clear, then all I have to do is focus on that purpose. And just consistently think about that north star purpose and work on that. Focusing on that pre-established higher purpose pushes all of 2020’s qualms - both the legitimate trauma this year has brought, and the whining too - out of my mind.

The key is that purpose can’t be petty, shallow, or ego-driven. It has to be deep. It has to stir to the core. A higher purpose is only higher if it can withstand the hurricane times, like the ones we are living in. 2020 is not the hard part, building a hurricane-proof purpose is the hard part.

For me, that purpose falls into two parts - one related to my private life and the other related to my public life. I have been thinking about this for years, I think, and it’s starting to become clear. But my personal purpose is a bit beside the point right now. What really matters is, “how?”

Three friends of mine, Alison, Glenn, and Nydia, were among a handful that sent me some transformative comments to an early draft of a book I’m writing. Their particular comments pushed me on this point: the difficulty in living a purposeful life is not just living it consistently. That is hard, but how do we even figure it out? What’s the mental scaffolding we can lean on?

I have much more thinking and writing to do on this, but where it starts, for me at least, is being really good at noticing things. And luckily our mind, body, emotions, and perhaps even our soul are very sensitive instruments for finding these purpose-fulfilling moments if we calibrate them properly. Just listening to our mind, body, and gets us pretty far. But for that to work, we have to know how to listen and what we’re listening for.

Step one, I think, is calibration. Perhaps a good exercise is thinking of 5 or 10 instances where you had very strong emotions or were deeply immersed in thought. Maybe there are a couple of moments that you think about obsessively, even though they were seemingly small.

And when I think about my 5 or 10, some of them are self-indulgent feelings. They are times when I had a strong emotional reaction because of external affirmations, power, recognition, and ego. Throw those times out of your sample, they are false positives. Those aren’t the moments that lead to a discovery of higher purpose, in my experience. Rather, those are the moments that have taken me in the precisely wrong direction.

And then, remember those remaining moments vividly in your mind. Really feel them. How would you describe those feelings? Let your guard down, and let the deep feelings of peace, joy, or courage flow through your body. Try to amplify the feeling until you feel it in your torso or your limbs. Get to cloud nine. Go higher. Get to the place where you know in your bones that something about this memory is related to a hurricane-proof purpose. This feeling is your filter to exclude the memories and experiences that are false positives.

Step two, I think, is adding data to your dataset. Think of all the times where you feel similar feelings of deep emotional courage, peace, and joy. Think of all the times where there was something that stirred in you nobly. Think of all the times you felt flow or a state of pure play. As you go through your day, take a pause if you feel the beginnings of those feelings.

Organize these moments in your mind, write them down if you have to. Get as many data points as you can, being careful to separate out the moments that are simply ego-boosters and not examples of the deep, purposeful stirrings we’re looking for. Try to filter out the false positives.

I find zen meditation techniques to be helpful practice for getting better at this type of noticing.

Then explore the data and find the patterns. Talk about it, journal about it, do whatever you have to do. Slowly, the right words to describe purpose emerges. And then it changes as you get more data. And as you get more data, your filter gets better too. It’s very bayesian in a way.

This post became something much different than I originally intended. Whoops.

But the point is, I am personally determined not to let 2020 become a hashtag. The best antidote I can think of is focusing on a higher purpose. It’s easy to say go do it, so these reflections are the best advice I have to offer, so far, as to what that higher purpose may be for you.

I don’t know what help I can be, but please let me know if you think there’s something I can do to support you if you’re on this type of journey. It’s kind of like applying an algorithm to ourselves and what we feel.

The blessing of lightness

Boys,

For your whole lives, my objective as a father is only one: to help you become good people.

Yes, you will need to learn to clothe and feed yourselves, because if you do not live you cannot become more good, so I will teach you that stuff too. But the full force of my fatherhood, my whole purpose behind being your father is one thing: goodness.

But I can’t force you to take the long, arduous walk of becoming good. You need to want to. Here are a few reasons, in their most concise form:

• To please your parents (to be sure, this is a very bad reason, but it is a reason).

• Because other people will shame you for being bad (this reason works, but it comes with great cost. And I don’t think it’s sustainable or reliable, especially if you keep poor company).

• Achieving Moksha (or reaching heaven, avoiding hell, or achieving enlightenment - insert whatever equivalent concept you want. But this reason is only for the faithful, and therefore inadequate).

• Because it’s very difficult to live in a free society if people are wicked, so we have to do our part (but this reason has such a long payoff, and is so dependent on others it feels futile).

These are all reasons, and as you can see they are all problematic for one reason or another. But there is one more thing to understand on this matter.

Lightness.

I have felt lightness three times, in my entire life. I remember each moment like it happened no more than an hour ago, so deep was the feeling of lightness. It was something that appealed directly to my soul and held it warmly for a fleeting moment.

The first time was when I was little. We were on a trip to Gwalior - where your Dada and Dadi grew up. I was with them and after 2 days of travel, we were finally coming down the street to my Nani’s house. Almost our entire family (on the Bhansali side) was there, waiting for us, to see us because in those days we couldn’t afford to visit except for every few years. They all welcomed us, yelling, singing, all of us crying because the family was together again, finally. It was as if many generations of love were put straight into my heart all at once. And in that moment, I felt lightness.

The second time was on the day your mother and I were married. I was waiting at the altar for your mother to be escorted by your Granddad down the aisle. The organist started playing, and the back doors of the church swung open. And there was your mother in her wedding dress, wearing Grandma Lou’s necklace. And she smiled at me. And it was as if my soul lifted out of my body for a moment to dance with hers, and in that moment I felt lightness.

The third was with you, Bo. It was mid-June of this year. We had been under stay-at-home orders for the Coronavirus Pandemic for several months by this point. We just had a rough few days - you were anxious and I had been losing my temper a lot. But it was a beautiful day and your brother was napping upstairs so we had a few minutes to ourselves. We were listening to The Lion King soundtrack in the backyard, dancing together. And as the Circle of Life started to crescendo, I lifted you up and spun you around. The sky was so blue, the sun was so warm, and we were smiling. And in that moment I felt so completely connected to you it was as if we had all space and time to ourselves for a few seconds. And in that moment I felt lightness.

And Myles, for some reason when I first see you in the morning you light up. As your mother said the other day, it’s like “he’s been waiting his whole life just to see you.” And I don’t know if that feeling you seem to be having is lightness, but it might be. But just the beautiful, precious possibility of being a brief and small part of creating lightness in you is one of my life’s most sacred joys.

And I tell you both this, not because I think the reward of trying to become good is lightness. Lightness is not a reason to be good. It is not a means or an end. I do not think we could conjure it up, even if we tried.

It is a blessing of the long walk, born of the ardor, sacrifice, and suffering that is inevitable if we try to become good. And oh what a blessing it is.

Love,
Your Papa

"Even if I don't like you, I will carry you."

There isn’t much about our lives that isn’t affected by how wealthy we are. Wealth is insidious, it creeps into every corner of our lives. Our health, our mental state, our life spans, our relationships, our vocations. It’s everywhere; every damn place.

I am very grateful when friends comment on questions I ask on facebook. And there were many thoughtful responses folks shared to, “what’s something that has little to do with how wealthy we are?”

One friend commented with, “the earth’s rotation.” Which is true, the natural world and the laws of physics have little to do with how wealthy we are. But, knowing her that answer was sincere but probably also a little tongue-in-cheek. Because if an answer is the earth’s rotation - that implies that basically nothing else on earth has little to do with wealth.

Even inner peace and integrity, which some people shared, seems to be affected at least somewhat. Yes, money can’t buy peace or integrity, but chronic poverty probably makes it so that peace and acting with integrity are orders of magnitude harder to achieve for some.

But especially after several friends talked about how they thought hard about the question and literally couldn’t think of anything, I was unsatisfied. I agreed with them, but I was unsatisfied because it’s really sad if no aspect of human life is untouched by wealth.

So I thought about it some more, and I don’t even know if this is correct, but it’s the best I’ve got.

—

Suppose you go to an ice cream shop and order a scoop of chocolate ice cream. Instead of providing the ice cream, however, the clerk becomes very angry and indiscriminately hits you with a wooden rod. No warning, no apparent cause - just blow after blow from the business end of a broomstick.

This, by all reasonable accounts would be a completely unacceptable behavior. There is no circumstance I can think of where some story like this would be acceptable. It is illegal, yes. But more than that, it violates a norm we have when living in a free and peaceful society. It doesn’t matter who you are - it’s not okay to beat someone with a broomstick indiscriminately and without provocation. It doesn’t matter how wealthy you are or how poor you are, that is NOT acceptable.

To be sure, things like this still happen, but to reasonable people it is not acceptable that they happen. Reasonable people do not think it’s acceptable to be on the giving or receiving end of a broomstick in this way. That’s just now how we live.

And, because this sort of thing happens in ways that are somewhat predictable based on race and class, I concede that lots of people perhaps aren’t reasonable by the parameters laid out in this thought experiment. But let’s just continue because that’s not the problem I’m focusing on here.

What this thought experiment illustrates, however, is that norms about what’s right and wrong exist. Norms we owe it to each other to follow, and that moral obligation has little to do with how wealthy we are. There is moral obligation that exists, that has little to do with wealth.

Now, we may disagree on exactly what those moral obligations are, but this preposterous example, hopefully articulates that there is some moral compact among reasonable people - in this case, not bashing someone’s head in with a stick without provocation or warning - that has little to do with wealth.

The most common discussion that advances from this fertile soil is the question of - what are our moral obligations to each other? And, that’s literally and endless, and important, but also a stupid, impractical debate. Not in the sense that we shouldn’t have this discussion, but stupid in the sense that we facilitate this discussion stupidly.

Because we often exclude people with inconvenient opinions from this sort of discussion and often go into discussions to discern moral obligation where at least one party is unwilling to admit they are wrong. So it’s stupid - because we start discussions without the possibility of reaching a thoughtful conclusion.

But I think there’s another path this conversation can take. Instead of asking what our moral obligations are to others, we can ask something more hopeful. What if we asked: if we imagine the community we wished we lived in, what would that community believe they owed to each other?

And this thought experiment took me back to thinking about wealth.

Because I believe at the time we are conceived we all have equal potential. But then as the clock starts ticking, that starts changing. Because from what I’ve read, the wealth of our mother (or even if our grandmother underwent a period of famine) starts to affect us in the womb, before we are born. So from the moment we are conceived - the context in which we live, which is so strongly affected by our wealth - starts to influence our lives.

But I also believe potential is different than worth. And even though our potential as humans may be different (and unfairly influenced by wealth) our worth is equivalent. We all have equal worth. But more importantly, we all have immeasurably large worth. A life is not just worth something, and worth something equal - it is worth more than we can count or comprehend.

And that’s all fine and aspirational and mushy gushy, blah blah. Here’s what that means for me on the question of the moral standards of the community I wish I lived in.

Let’s ignore what moral obligations we have to the people we love and even the people we like. I’ve found, at least, that it’s much easier to treat people well if you love or like them. What really reveals the character of a person or group is how they treat people they don’t love or like.

I am not this man today, I know I’m not, but the man I want to be would live a creed like this:

I will treat you - whoever you are, whether I love you or not, whether I like you or not, whether I fear you or not - in the way that you would like to be treated. Even if it is difficult, I will treat you with respect. I will try to learn to love you or to like you. But even if I don’t like you, I will carry you. I will carry you without expecting your gratitude or the recognition of others. And if I falter, and need you to carry me, I will let you and be gracious for your kindness.

And ideas like this inevitably attract pessimism. “That’ll never happen. It’s not scalable. It’s not in people’s nature. That’s a waste of time. Let’s focus on something achievable.” I’ve heard phrases like these, over and over.

I think we should try, and try courageously to create a community that believes it has this stringent of a moral obligation to others.

The hope of a community like this is worth failing for. Because even if we only advance one inch in this effort which is equivalent to a journey of many miles, we will have moved an inch. And that inch creates the permission for others to try for two inches. And then for the generation after them to try for four. And maybe someday, even if it’s many decades after our own deaths, the long walk will be over and we will have arrived.

And this whole argument rests on the assumption that we have some defensible moral obligation to others we live in community with. And maybe that’s presumptuous. But I think that assumption is worth having faith in, even if it’s not decidedly proven. It is worth taking a leap for.

In this election, no touchdown dances from me

I want to say this now, to my friends, before election day. This is what you can expect from me:

• I am voting on election day.

• I will not be voting for the incumbent President, President Trump.

• If the incumbent President is reelected in a free and fair election, I will not complain or bellyache or make excuses. I will not act like a sore loser.

• If the incumbent President is not reelected in a free and fair election, I will not rub anyone’s nose in it. No “I told you so”, no taunting, no finger wagging, no touchdown dances. I will not act like a sore winner.

Why? Because I don’t think that’s what it’s about.

For me, the real victory is holding a free and fair election, with a peaceful transition of power. And, the whole point of a free and fair election is for all of us to vote freely and fairly. The tactic of potentially casting you as a shameful outsider because you don’t vote the same way as I do is a tactic, I think, that’s inconsistent with the spirit of a free and fair election. I won’t do it.

Moreover, an election is not the end of a journey to celebrate (save for the people who worked hard on the campaign, in private, perhaps). The election is the beginning of a new season, where someone has earned privilege and responsibility to govern for four years. I don’t celebrate at the beginning of a long hike up a mountain, I rejoice after our crew has safely returned home. I can’t think of a reason why elections would be any different.

Which brings me to a final point in conclusion. I’m not the sort of person who relishes competition, or is motivated by winning. So, this attitude of no touchdown dances is not something that’s unique to this election. It’s how I operate in all aspects of my life. So why bother writing this post?

Because I’m not really writing this with my Republican friends in mind. I’m intending to speak most directly to my friends who are also not planning to reelect the incumbent President.

And to you, my Democratic friends - no matter how you act during this election, I’m not going to judge you (and the same goes for friends who are not Democratic supporters).

But I ask that you don’t act like a sore winner or a sore loser. And it will be easy for us to fall into doing both.

Because at the end of the day, I think we all have to think of ourselves as being on the same team. We’re trying to create a country where we can live free lives. A country where people don’t die senseless deaths. And perhaps even a country that contributes to an international community that cooperates to defend our species and planet against existential threats. None of these are guarantees, as we’ve seen during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The universe is a dangerous and lonely place, as far as we know. Our republic, our planet, and our species are fragile. We have to work hard to have a chance of any of the three surviving in perpetuity.

The challenges ahead of us are really quite difficult. We have to play as one team to increase the long-run chances that our still nascent, free republic and we as a species, survive. No team I’ve ever been on plays its best when there’s infighting about the starting lineup.

I don’t want to start the next four years with infighting.

Of course, I know that I can’t control anybody’s actions but my own, nor do I want to. My hope here is that by laying out my intentions in advance and explaining my rationale it may lead others to carefully set intentions for their own conduct.

A high five and bat signal to my working dad brethren

I was furloughed from my job on Monday, March 30.

As a result my wife upped her hours and I luckily fell into some part-time contract work. In normal circumstances this would be a monumental life change. But alas, in these times it’s only a contextual footnote.

We hit day 100 of staying at home with the kids, all day, this past Tuesday. It has been an awakening, particularly in how I think about being a father. The highlights of this awakening are probably not terribly different for you, if you’re also a young father.

First and foremost, it’s really damn hard to be lead parent, especially because we’re both working. I realized during this quarantine exactly how my wife puts our family on her back and carries us, day after day. It’s nothing short of astounding, and that’s not even emphasizing the economic value of that unpaid care-giving work.

But every day, I find myself thinking of this bizarre situation as a blessing. I get to be a stay-at-home dad. This was the paternity leave I never had the chance to have.

Being a working dad is frustratingly hard, and most days someone in our house has a meltdown, despite my best efforts. But being a full-time dad is the best “job” ever, most of the time. It has far exceeded my already high expectations. I would have never been able to understand what I was losing had this pandemic never happened. To boot, consistently getting the really hard reps of solo-parenting has made me a much better father. It’s embarrassing how clueless I was three months ago. What a blessing this has been.

It’s remarkable that so many dads are experiencing this role-reversal at the exact same time. I think it’s an inflection point because a curious thing seems to be happening culturally.

If you’re a parent to young children, I wonder if you’ve noticed this too: being a “working dad” feels a lot more normal. It’s like being a “working mom” was a thing before and being a working dad is finally a thing now too. By that I mean working dads seem to have become a real constituency with a common set of experiences, preferences, and at least some awareness of its existence as a group.

Before the pandemic that mold we were forced into as working dads - and men generally, to some degree - was much more rigid. To be a working dad was to grind at work, not talk about your kids much unless asked or unless you were complaining a bit. You talked about sports, business, alcohol, or politics with your buddies. You help out your partner but you’re still the primary breadwinner and they’re the primary caregiver, and those roles have specific expectations. And maybe you have one relatively masculine and socially expected hobby like working out, brewing beer, playing fantasy football, trying new restaurants, woodworking, a side hustle, or something like that.

And I could go on describing this persona, and I admit that I’m painting in broad strokes - but if you’re a parent of young children you hopefully intrinsically understand the motif I’m outlining. And candidly, the mold of what I feel like I am supposed to be as a young father is frustrating on a good day and sometimes becomes suffocating.

But something feels different now.

Most nice days over the past three months the boys (Bo, Myles, and our pup Riley) and I would go for a walk in our neighborhood before lunch time. Along the way we met a lot of neighbors. That was fun and expected.

I did not expect to meet a lot of other young fathers who were walking with their kids just like I was. Some were also furloughed, and everyone I met actually talked about it openly. Others were still working but were also splitting parenting duties with their partners. I even saw one of my neighbors outside this past week with his baby daughter on his lap, taking a conference call.

And, these neighborhood dads and I, we actually had conversations about what we’re thinking and feeling about as fathers right now, even if briefly. And these conversations with my neighbors about fatherhood had the same kind of easy, open feel as the conversations I hear my wife having with other moms. These were conversations that rebelled against the rigid, masculine, mold I’ve felt restrained by.

This is the first time I ever felt a culture of working dad-hood growing into my day-to-day life. Prior to this pandemic, I only ever talked openly about being a working dad quietly and with my closest friends. Now it’s something that feels more acceptable, probably because this pandemic has given young fathers a shared and significant life experience.

And now that many of us working dads are starting to go back to work and more “normal” activity is happening, I see this change more clearly. And I think it’s for the better. But my call to you, my working dad brethren, is that we cannot put up with some of this BS around being a parent any longer. We have to be done with this foolishness.

When we go back to work, we can’t put up with:

• Feeling awkward about taking our kids to the doctor or cutting out of work early to care for our families

• Hiding the stresses of being a working dad

• Ridiculous policies that don’t provide men (or women) enough paid leave after birth or adoption

• Poorly managed teams that have meetings that always run over or go back to back. Our time is too valuable to waste on nonsense

• Workforces that don’t have gender diversity, and therefore skew toward a culture of being an old-school boys club

• Working all the time and being expected to work during family and leisure time

• Work cultures that emphasize useless face time at an office. I’m not even convinced that most companies are managed well enough to see a measurable difference between co-located teams and remote teams

There’s so much more we shouldn’t put up with; these are only a handful. Especially now that we understand being working fathers so much more intimately than we did three months ago, we should hold ourselves and our companies to a higher standard.

And the best part is, refusing to tolerate this foolishness is not just the right thing to do or a timely topic, I think it’s very possible that if we hold ourselves and our teams to a higher standard it’ll lead to higher profits, happier customers, and thriving teams.

Working moms have been pushing this agenda for some time, and I think it’s time for us join them in a big way.

Imagining a world with less shouting

Robyn forwarded me a three-day “no-shout challenge” that she heard about through a speaker at conference she attended. I made it two and a half days, and every hour was hard. I didn’t realize how much I shouted at my son until I tried to stop.

The challenge helped me to understand why I shouted and think of an alternative pattern of behavior.

Upon reflection, I realized that I shout because my most foundational belief about parenting is that what I owe my sons - above all else - is to help them become good people. So when my son deliberately screams to wake up his big brother, or bites me, or doesn’t follow what I believe to be a high-standard of conduct, that moves me from zero to ten in a second. That’s my baggage, not his.

I decided that my replacement behavior would be to say, “neither of us are perfect, but we are going to figure this out” when my temper was rising, instead of shouting.

But the point here is not that I am cured of shouting (I’m not even close). The point is to share what happened after I started shouting less.

We have been struggling a lot as a family during this pandemic. In many ways, this period of our lives has been a blessing, but it has been a trying time. Our elder son, now, is very aware of the virus and he misses our family, his friends, and his teachers at school. He’s confused about why he has to give far-away hugs and why he can do certain things but not others.

He’s also a toddler, so we have had power struggles over really small things as is the case with most families.

But when Robyn and I started this challenge and began shouting less, something changed for the better in our house. In a word, everything deescalated.

We still all have tantrums, but they are less intense. We still have power struggles, but we’re able to take a breath more quickly that before. Bo says “excuse me” to get our attention more, instead of screaming indiscriminately. Sometimes, instead of shouting we find a way to talk about his sadness and confusion, even though he barely has grasp of the words and concepts needed to express what he’s feeling.

Again, there is still shouting in our house, and I’m not proud of how I act on many days. But even just shouting less has created more space to listen, love, and resolve the very real problems we have. We have not reached the promised-land of a fully peaceful house, but we are on a different trajectory than we were.

While this was all happening, Robyn and I have been observing, listening, and talking intensely every night about the problems of race in our country. It its something that we are deeply stirred by, personally and professionally.

Because we saw a reduction in shouting bring about real and almost immediate change in our own household, I can’t help but wonder what might happen if we shouted less when trying to resolve community issues.

Say if we all just decided we would stop shouting for a week or a month, what would happen? In my wildest dreams, I wonder if that could be the very humble beginning of a transformation that eventually got us to a moment where we could live in a community where shouting was no longer needed.

The skeptic in me feels that this type of scaling is difficult and perhaps impossible. After all, Robyn happened to attend a conference, where she heard a speaker, who shared a no-shout challenge, and we happened to try it out. Getting to the point of trying to intentionally shout less resulted from a lucky mix of circumstance, humbling work, and serendipity.

In our household - whether it is us as parents or our children - someone had to take the first step. And luckily, it is clear that the first step to a no-shout home was our responsibility as parents.

But with complex disagreements that are compounded by hundreds of years of pain and violence - like race, poverty, and others - it’s less clear whose responsibility it is to take the first step. Moreover, that first step of not shouting takes incredible courage, humility, and grace.

I pray that I can summon that courage, humility, and grace whenever I need to take that first step. Being ready to take that first step is something worth preparing for, even if my number never is called to lead in that way. It is for all of us.

Racism, Reform, and the Second Commandment

In these very dark times, I am struggling to make sense of what is happening in the aftermath of George Floyd’s unfathomably cruel murder by a Minneapolis Police Officer. For a lot of reasons.

We live in a predominately black city. I have worked as a Manger in our Police Department for the better part of the last five years, so I’ve seen law enforcement from the inside. I am, technically speaking, a person of color with mixed-race children. We live in a mixed-race neighborhood.

And of course, there’s the 400+ years of institutionalized racism in the United States that I have begun to understand (at least a little) by reading about it and hearing first-hand accounts from friends who have felt the harms of it personally.

And as I’ve stewed with this, I keep asking myself - what are we hoping happens here? What do we want our communities to be like on the other end of this?

Because something is palpably different this time. George Floyd’s murder feels like it will be the injustice that (finally) sparks a transformation.

What I keep coming back to in contemplation, reflection, and prayer is the second greatest commandment - “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thy self.”

What I hope for is to live in a place where I can have good neighbors and be a good neighbor. The second greatest commandment is the most elegant representation of what I hope for in communities that I have ever found.

I interpret this commandment as a call to love. We must give others love and respect, even our adversaries. If loving our neighbor requires us to do the deep work of growing out of the fear, disrespect, and hate in our hearts then we must do it. Rather, we are commanded by God to do it.

But in the world we live in today, we can avoid the deep work of personal transformation if we choose to. If we don’t love our neighbors, we can just move somewhere with neighbors we already like. More insidiously, we can also put up barriers so that the people we fear, disrespect, or hate, can’t live in our neighborhood even if they wanted to.

This seems exactly to be what institutionalized racism was and is intended to do. I don’t have to learn to love someone if I keep them out of my neighborhood through, redlining, allowing crummy schools elsewhere, practicing hiring discrimination, racial covenants, brutal policing, and on and on.

If we choose neighbors we already love as ourselves, we’re off the hook for removing the hate from our hearts and replacing it with love for them.

In this, I am complicit. Part of why we live in a city is because I didn’t want to raise mixed-race children in a white, affluent suburb. I didn’t want to deal with it, straight up.

I say this even though I acknowledge that places like where I grew up are probably much more welcoming than they were 15 years ago. Similarly, there are times that I’ve chosen to ignore, block, and unfollow people who I fear, disrespect, or disagree with. I have been an accomplice creating my own bubble to live in.

Adhereing to the idea presented in the second greatest commandment is really quite hard.

The problem is, I and any others who want to live in a truly cohesive, peaceful community probably don’t have a choice but to do the deep work that the second greatest commandment asks of us.

My intuition is that even if we dismantled institutionalized racism completely, that wouldn’t necessarily lead to love thy neighbor communities. They’d be more fair and just, perhaps, but maybe not loving.

And, I’m not even convinced we can completely dismantle racist institutions without more and more people individually choosing to do the deep work of replacing the fear, disrespect, and hate in their hearts with love.

Which leaves me in such a quandary - I truly do believe there are pervasively racist institutions in our society, still. And those institutions need to be reformed - specifically to alleviate the particularly brutal circumstances Black Americans have to live with.

But at the same time, I know I am a hypocrite by saying all this because I too have to do the deep work of personal transformation.

I did the Hate Vaccine exercise last week and realized how fearful and disrespectful I can be toward people from rural and suburban communities because of my race, job, and where I went to college. When I really took a moment to reflect, what I saw in myself was uglier than I thought it would be.

In community policing circles a common adage is that “we can’t arrest our way out of [high crime rates].” I have been wondering if something similar could be said for where we are today - can we reform our way out of racism?

Maybe we can. I honestly don’t have the data to share any firm conclusion. But my lived experience says no: the only way out of this - if we want to live in a love thy neighbor society - is a mix of transforming institutions and transforming all our own hearts.

Thank you to my friend Nick for pointing out the difference between the second commandment and second greatest commandment. It is updated now..

Part of me doesn't want this to end so fast

Part of me doesn’t want this to end so fast.

Okay, now that I’ve said that I can say how ridiculous that is, and selfish.

I want people to stop needing ventilators. I want first responders to be able to sleep in their own beds and eat dinners with their families. I want doctors and nurses to come home. I want grocery store workers and every other essential worker to not have to wear masks and fear for their lives.

I want us to stop losing or almost losing friends, family, and neighbors. I want to stop washing bananas. I want everyone to have their jobs back. I really do.

It makes me feel so guilty to say this, but this might be the happiest time of my life. Despite being in isolation. Despite being furloughed from my job and picking up part-time work. Despite slashing our family’s budgets. Despite not seeing our family and friends for weeks. Despite Robyn and I trying to work remotely with two little boys at home. Despite this all being such a cluster and a nightmare. It’s still happy.

When will I ever get so much time with Robyn and our boys? When will things be so slow and quiet, ever again? When again will the air ever be so clean? When will instagram and facebook ever have less people flaunting their wealth and status? When will Riley ever get so many walks in the neighborhood? When will I ever talk to my college and high school friends so regularly? When will Bo be 2 again, and when will Myles be a newborn again, and I actually get to be here for it?

I know that all things considered, this month has been very easy for us, relative to what other people are going through. I sure get that we’re lucky that we’re all healthy (so far) and we can ride this out at home.

But even though I feel guilty saying this, part of me doesn’t want this to end so fast. And again, I can’t believe i’m saying this, but outside the very real and significant strain, stress, and sacrifice of this global, deadly pandemic, this has been a happy time for us.

I do want this pandemic to end. But I hope we can keep some of the happy parts when this is over.

What I do vs. how I do it

What do I want to be known for? What I do, or how I do it?

Put another way, will I do anything to achieve what I want? Or, will I act in accordance with a set of standards no matter what?

Put another way, what am I uncompromising about, results or integrity?

Put another way, what do I want my sons to learn from, what I accomplish or how I act?

Put another way, what’s my deathbed prize, knowing I was successful or knowing I was consistently a good person?

What we do and how we do it aren’t always in tension. But it happens often enough. And when they are in tension, the choice defines me, defines us.