How to accept help during a family emergency (a tool for family resiliency)

Friends,

During a family emergency, one of the hardest things is knowing how to ask for and accept help. Often, if we’re fortunate to have loving friends and family around us, there’s a quiet army standing by, ready to support us as soon as they hear we’re struggling.

But here’s the tricky part: what do we ask them to do? How do we take them up on their offers? And what do we really need? These questions can feel impossible to answer in the middle of a crisis because we’re already overwhelmed by the situation itself.

I know this because Robyn and I just went through it.

When we welcomed our newborn home, we had to rush back to the hospital with him just a day later. It was the hardest week of our lives. By midweek, I was completely overwhelmed, even though we had so many loving offers of help and support.

That’s when I realized I needed to simplify things. I spent 30 minutes breaking down the problem into something I could actually manage. I created a worksheet to help me organize our needs and accept the help that was already being offered.

It made all the difference.

The worksheet helped me clarify what we needed, communicate it to others, and accept support in a way that felt natural and manageable. It worked so well that I plan to use it whenever we face a family emergency (though I hope that won’t be often).

Because this tool made such a big impact for us, I wanted to share it with you. I’ve attached two versions below:

• A blank template, ready for you to use.

• A version with notes that explain how it works.

This is for any family emergency—whether it’s a sick child, the death of a parent, emergency house repairs, or something else entirely. Please feel free to use it, adapt it, and share it with anyone who might need it.

I also plan to be more proactive by creating an emergency plan with close family and friends. That way, when life inevitably throws us a curveball, we’ll be ready.

Emergencies are going to happen. Let’s be prepared—not just to offer help, but to accept it when we need it most.

With Love from Detroit,
Neil

Why I'm a Part-Time Capitalist

I’ve come to the conclusion that I want to be a part-time capitalist.

What I mean by this is that I want to create enough material wealth for my family and society to live a good life, but I don’t want capitalism to dominate my identity or values. I want to earn a living, but my goal in life isn’t to be a good producer or consumer. I’ll engage with capitalism where it serves me—maybe the equivalent of two days a week—but I won’t live and breathe it as though it’s my religion.

This realization didn’t come to me overnight. It simmered for years, as I wrestled with the game society handed me: capitalism. From an early age, we’re taught to measure success by wealth, status, and accumulation. For a long time, I felt like I was failing at it—even though my family and I were doing just fine. Capitalism has a way of making you feel like nothing is ever enough. It whispers that you’re not climbing the ladder fast enough, not maximizing your earnings the way you could.

But at some point, I started to ask myself: Why am I even playing this game? What if I don’t want to “win” capitalism? What if I’d rather play a different game altogether?

That’s where my sons come in. They love soccer. They play with an abandon and joy that makes me envious. Watching them, I realized they’ve found a game that suits them—one they’ve chosen for themselves. Soccer has creativity, fluidity, and rhythm. It’s nothing like football, the sport I played for years growing up.

I chose football because that’s what my friends were doing. As a Michigander, it felt natural to play, and I enjoyed being part of a team. But looking back, I see that it didn’t suit me. I wasn’t built for it—physically or mentally. It was someone else’s game, and I just happened to be good enough at it to get by.

That’s how capitalism has felt for me as an adult: the default game I got pulled into. Like football, it has its virtues. It provides structure and can even be exhilarating at times. But it’s not the primary model for how I want to live.

I’m never going to “win” at capitalism, and I don’t want to. I’m not willing to make the sacrifices required to maximize my earnings or climb higher, because I value other things more. I love being a father. I’m drawn to public service. I care about relationships, creativity, and dignity far more than accumulation.

For years, though, I struggled under capitalism’s invisible grip. People told me I had talent and potential, which I heard as: You could be doing more. This latent anxiety followed me everywhere. Could I provide enough for my family? Could I live up to everyone’s expectations? That sense of “not enough” became like a chronic cold I couldn’t quite shake.

But then came my a-ha moment: I don’t have to play this game—not fully, anyway. I realized I could be a subscriber to capitalism part-time and play my own game for the rest of my life.

For me, this shift has been about aligning my life with my values. It’s why I’ve embraced a nonlinear career, oscillating between government and corporate roles to find balance. It’s why Robyn and I have crafted a marriage that works for us, breaking free from traditional gender roles. She works a flexible schedule, and I’ve leaned into an unconventional path as a husband and father. We’ve structured our lives around fairness and teamwork rather than default societal expectations.

It’s also why we’ve chosen to raise our family in the city instead of a suburb. The city challenges us, inspires us, and aligns with the cultural and inter-religious values we’re navigating as a couple. Every one of these decisions reflects a conscious choice to reject the "default game" and build something that works for us.

This path isn’t easy. Freedom is exhilarating, but it’s also daunting. Choosing your own game requires courage. It means setting boundaries, risking judgment, and often swimming upstream. That means being willing to be a little weird or out on a ledge, at least some of the time.

But it’s worth it. Recently, I’ve started to feel the effects of this mindset as I’ve entered a new job. Do I have to be the best at work and think about it constantly? No. Do we need an excess of money to complete every home renovation we want this year? No. Do I need to loudly reject capitalism or evangelize my alternative path? No. I’ve chosen my line in the sand, and I’m okay with where it puts me.

While I wish I’d started sooner, I’m grateful to be starting now. Better late than never.

So here’s my question for you: What’s the game you’ve been playing? Is it one you chose, or was it handed to you? What would it look like to redefine the rules and build a life that fits you?

The process isn’t easy. It’s challenging, peculiar, and sometimes lonely. But it’s also liberating. It’s your life, after all—why not make the rules yourself?

We're in the era of falling in love again

I Have Fallen in Love, Again

On quiet weekend mornings, I stand at the stove, often with a spatula in hand, flipping pancakes. Robyn comes downstairs in her pajamas, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. She smiles, tilts her head, and walks over to me with her arms outstretched. Without saying a word, we hug right there in the kitchen.

It’s not one of those young, giddy embraces. It’s a hug worn in by years—familiar, steadfast, with the kind of patina that only time and shared struggles can create.

This is what love looks like now.

And I’m falling in love with her again.

It’s a love I’ve rediscovered, not just because of who she is, but because of who we’ve both become. In this new era of our lives, she is still Robyn—but also someone new.

The Beauty of Changing Eras

I started to understand why I’ve been feeling this way over the Thanksgiving weekend. Something has shifted—not just in our relationship, but in our entire world.

We’ve entered a new era.

In our home, the signs are everywhere. We’re going to be parents to a newborn for the last time, and the weight of that reality feels both solemn and profound. Our sons have transitioned into school-aged kids, with piano lessons, soccer games, and social lives. Even our house itself has transformed—we’ve remodeled and repaired, shaping it into the place we’ll live for decades to come.

As individuals, we’ve changed too. Robyn and I are no longer just contributors at work; we’ve both shifted toward leading others. I hear it in her voice when she’s on a conference call—steady, calm, full of gravity that she’s earned over years of experience. Her team leans on her not just for answers but for her wisdom, and it shows in the way she carries herself.

And me? I finally got my book, Character by Choice, out into the world after seven years of working on it. It feels surreal to see it finished. That process stretched me in ways I didn’t expect, but it also revealed a new grittiness for sticking with something for years at a time with no guarantee of success that I didn’t know I had in me.

The changes of this era haven’t always been easy, but they’ve revealed so much beauty. Like the quiet strength Robyn shows every day. The way she hugs our sons or me—not just as a gesture, but as a statement of presence and love, even when she’s exhausted. Or the way she listens to friends who are newer parents with such intense warmth that it lifts them up without them even noticing. These things were always part of her, but this new stage of life has brought them to the surface.

But it’s not just us.

Our close-knit family and friends are evolving, too. Our siblings are becoming parents, which will soon add to the gaggle of kids running through our lives. With each new arrival, our family grows—cousins, nieces, and nephews weaving together a new web of connection and joy.

At the same time, our parents are navigating their own shifts. Robyn’s parents are caring for aging loved ones while preparing to move into homes that fit the lives they need now. My mom is still grappling with life after my father. Despite her health and strength, she’s navigating the reality of aging—for her and her siblings. Even things she’s done her whole life, like traveling back and forth between India and the U.S., aren’t as simple as they used to be.

It feels like everyone we know is moving into a new chapter at once.

And it doesn’t stop there.

Society is shifting all around us. Politically, both the Trump and Duggan eras are coming to an end within the next four years, making way for what’s next in the country and Detroit. Technologically, we’re stepping boldly into the age of AI and the wonder of tools like the James Webb Space Telescope, showing us the universe in ways we never imagined.

Change is everywhere, and it’s compelling all of us to grow in response.

Entering a new era doesn’t demand growth from us in an adversarial way. Instead, it calls to us gently but insistently, urging us to uncover new parts of ourselves. As the world around us changes, it doesn’t obligate us to change—that’s a choice we make—but the influence of a shifting context is undeniable.

Robyn’s quiet strength, her firm tenderness—it was always there, but this moment in time has brought it to the surface. And in seeing her anew, I’ve found myself falling in love with her all over again.

This is the beauty of changing eras. When everything shifts, we have the chance to become something new and to notice the people we love in new ways. The struggle of change—the hard work, the sacrifice, the heartbreak—gives us a rare gift: the chance to see life, and each other, with fresh eyes.

Marking the Era

My father used to say there’s no free lunch, and he was right. Change doesn’t come easily. To move into a new era, we have to let go of the old one. We have to embrace the challenges and celebrate the rhythms as they shift around us.

But here’s what I’ve learned: the struggle is worth it.

There’s a brilliance in how Taylor Swift brought this lesson to life through her Eras Tour. From all I’ve read and heard from friends, her concert marks eras, celebrates them, and embraces the growth that comes from moving forward. She so beautifully illustrates how the struggle of moving through eras is worth it.

When we mark the era—when we take the time to notice the passing of one chapter and the beginning of another—we honor the transformation. We honor what we’ve lost and what we’ve gained.

And in doing so, we give ourselves the chance to fall in love again.

So, my friends, don’t fear the reset. Lean into it. Notice the beauty it reveals in our lives and the lives of those we love. And when you look back on this new era we are all in, I hope you find yourself saying: It was worth it.

We are hybrid dads, and we GOT THIS

If you’re a dad like me, juggling work, home life, and your role as a partner, let me tell you—you’re not alone. We’re the first generation of dads stepping into this new space, trying to figure out what it means to be fully present as fathers and equal partners in our relationships. It’s not easy, but it’s ours to own.

We’re hybrid dads. We’re building something new, something better—and it’s time we talked about how to get there together.

A hybrid dad isn’t defined by tradition or rebellion—it’s about creating a role that works for your family. It’s part breadwinner, part partner, part parent—and 100% intentional.

Why Men Should Read Fair Play

If you’re a millennial husband or father, I think you should read Fair Play by Eve Rodsky. Or, if you know a millennial husband or father—especially one who’s quietly trying to balance home life, work life, and being a good, equitable partner—gift them this book. Even if it doesn’t seem like it’s “for them,” it just might be what they need.

It was a game changer for me personally, and also for our marriage.

The book offers both a mental model for what a fair balance of domestic responsibility can look like in a partnership and a practical system to manage those responsibilities with clarity and efficiency. It’s dramatically reduced the friction Robyn and I used to experience while running our household and managing our family system.

For example, cooking and meal planning used to be a source of endless improvisation and frustration. We’d either figure everything out together or constantly reset our schedules on the fly. It wasn’t working. Now, we’ve set roles: I’m the weekend chef, and Robyn’s the weekday chef. I used to handle groceries, but it made more sense for her to take over, and we adjusted intentionally. Knowing exactly what ingredients she needs and when has made the process seamless, thanks to concepts we learned in Fair Play like the “minimum standard of care.” These ideas helped us have conversations about fairness and efficiency without resentment.

This shift gave us more than just better logistics—it gave us peace.

And that’s what we need in this reset—peace of mind, clarity, and confidence. Because this isn’t just about household chores; it’s about redefining what it means to show up as dads and partners in a way that works for us.

A Reset for Men

There’s been a lot of talk about how men are struggling. The data is there, and the anecdotes are everywhere. To me, all of this is true—but I see it more as a practical and personal phenomenon than an abstract crisis.

As a man, I think of it as a reset.

Here’s why I hate the “crisis” framing: It feels emasculating. When people talk about us as a lost generation of men, it’s hard to engage with that narrative—it feels like a judgment, like we’re failing somehow just by existing in this moment of change.

That’s not helpful, and frankly, it’s a turn-off. It makes me want to disengage.

I don’t see us as victims, and I’m not interested in crisis rhetoric. What I see is an opportunity to reset and redefine what it means to be a husband and father.

A generation ago, gender roles were simpler—though not necessarily better. The man worked outside the home, often as the breadwinner, and there were plenty of examples (good and bad) of what that looked like. Today, it’s different. Many men aren’t the sole earners anymore, and many of us are leaning into home life and parenting in ways our fathers didn’t.

The problem? Most of us don’t have a blueprint.

Few of us had dads who split domestic responsibilities equitably. Fewer still had dads who volunteered at the PTA or took paternity leave. We’re making this up as we go because we’re the first generation actively navigating pluralistic gender roles.

And that’s the beauty of it: There’s no one way to be a good husband or father anymore. Traditional roles can work, but so can new hybrids. What matters is that we’re intentional about creating a family system that works for us.

We are hybrid dads—we’ve got each other’s backs, and we GOT THIS.

How Fair Play Helps

Fair Play gave Robyn and me a language to talk about our family system and decide how we wanted it to work. By breaking responsibilities into categories—from chores to self-care to parenting—we could set standards for our household and adjust as life changed.

For us, this meant defining who “owned” which tasks. For example, when my work schedule changed, we switched roles for groceries.

In addition to the book, we also bought Rodsky’s flashcards and found it helpful to “redeal” physical cards every few months.

I also created a PDF template to keep track of all this and reset my focus weekly on my Remarkable.

You can download my PDF template here.

The results? Less tension at home. Less self-doubt about whether I’m doing the right thing as a husband or father. And something even more meaningful: more joy.

By being more involved at home, I’ve gained something many men in previous generations didn’t have—deep, priceless time with my kids and my wife. The joy that comes from being fully present, from knowing I’m not just managing but thriving as a dad and partner, is worth every effort.

Why Men Should Read This Book

If you’re a man in this “reset” generation, Fair Play is a godsend. It’s not just about managing tasks; it’s about finding confidence in the type of husband and father you want to be.

We may not have role models for this new way of being a man, but we don’t need to feel lost. Fair Play gives us a framework to build our own hybrid roles—ones that work for our families, bring us closer to our partners, and let us embrace the joy of being present.

I recommend this book to any man navigating this shift. Read it. Try the system and the cards. Download the template. See how it changes your home life.

It sure as hell changed mine.

How Long We’ve Been Doing This

One day, we’ll be talkin’ about how long we’ve been doing this.

It’ll be in the quiet moments, like me cooking a lazy Sunday dinner while you’re working on a jigsaw puzzle nearby.

Or in the loud ones, like cheering on the sidelines at a soccer tournament, because it’s one of ours out there.

There’ll be days we’re just listening to country radio, holding hands as we drive to the coffee shop.

One day, we’ll be talkin’ about how long we’ve been doing this.

We’ll reminisce about getting a night out with old friends at Mario’s—the cozy restaurant we went to once, and it became ours.

And I’ll think of how you always bring the Fage Greek yogurt recipe we love for biscuits and gravy to brunch, in that cast iron pan that’s turned into “that old cast iron pan.”

There’ll be the quiet, spontaneous moments too, like you wrapping me in a hug while I’m sitting at the table writing a blog post (just like you did today).

Some things will stay the same, like family dinner at a crowded table with bumpy cake for a birthday—or pineapple, if it’s June.

There’ll be walks with the dog who still insists on taking us out at lunchtime.

And, of course, our family meetings that always seem to end with a cleaner house—or our temperature checks that always end with a kiss goodnight.

I know the years ahead will bring big changes—retirement, new adventures, and more gray hair than we have today.

But I hope that through it all, some things stay just as they are now. I hope, God willing, we’ll still be talking about how long we’ve been doing this, and how long we’ve been building this life together—one little tradition at a time.

I’ve fallen in love, again and again.

The years in my mid-twenties, when Robyn and I fell in love, were some of the best of my life. Looking back, that whole time felt like a smile.

Eight years ago this week, Robyn and I were wed at an old Jesuit church in downtown Detroit. This was the Gospel reading we chose, Matthew 7:24-25:

"Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock."

We chose this reading deliberately. Fresh off the sudden passing of my father three months before our wedding day, we had already been through the gales and floods of a big storm. The notion of “in good times and bad” wasn’t just an abstract concept to us—our young relationship had already lived through both.

We had at least some notion of the good and bad days ahead. We knew that there would be more death and grief ahead. We didn’t know exactly what parenting would be like, but we did have some idea of the intense joy and struggle it would entail.

We knew that jobs would come and go with varying levels of stress and accomplishment. We knew that we’d have fun passing time around Detroit with friends and neighbors. And, perhaps most importantly, we knew that “family first” would be a guiding principle for our life together, and with that commitment would come love and sacrifice.

We chose that passage for our wedding Gospel reading because we wanted to anchor our marriage into the “rock” of God and love so we could celebrate the good days and weather the bad days we knew would come.

We didn’t know exactly what was coming or when, but we knew it would.

All that said, something happened over the last 8 years that I never predicted, and honestly, it completely blindsided me.

I never imagined, after that first season of falling in love, that I’d fall in love with Robyn again. That I’d feel that rush of romance after we had long passed the days of being love birds and our honeymoon phase.

But I have. As we’ve lived through each new season of our life together, I’ve fallen in love with Robyn again and again.

And I’m so grateful.

The reason why this happened is simple: we’ve each changed, a lot. Of course, our core principles remain intact. But holy cow, so much has happened these past 8 years. The entire context in which our lives are set has changed, how could we not be different people?

All this change has made things novel and fresh. It has given us an opportunity to fall in love again and again, in every new season. That’s a choice: we’re choosing to grow together instead of apart, and that has perhaps made falling in love the second, third, and fourth times even more exciting and beautiful than the first.

And what a silver lining that is.

Because I know I’m getting older. I see it and feel it regularly. Like when with each new haircut I notice a few more grey hairs. Or in how my hangovers are less frequent, but last much longer.

All these are mile markers that remind me that every day I’m a day closer to the end of this beautiful life.

But damn. It makes aging so much more bearable to know that as we grow old we are growing older together. And that as our seasons change we will get to fall in love several more times throughout our life.

If we must trade our youth for age, it is a blessing to realize that we get this gift to fall in love, again and again.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

I’m not going anywhere.

This is one of the most divine things a person can hear. Especially someone, like me, whose nightmare is to be alone. But aren’t we all that way, in the deepest part of the heart at least, where it’s hardest for the light to reach?

I knew that if Robyn and I started dating, I would marry her. We started, and I loved her quickly. I was hers, before the end of our first summer. As summer became winter, I started to get scared. I honest-to-God loved Robyn. And I knew that when we married and had our life together, eventually one of us would pass from this earth. And there was a chance that Robyn would be the first to go, and that I’d be left alone.

The idea of being on this earth without kissing Robyn goodnight is among the most painful realities possible for me. What if? How could it? Would I? When?

By then, Robyn already knew the reaches of my curious and inquisitive mind - both the gregarious dimension of it and the morose. And so she said to me, those divine words that protected my soul from its darkest fears.

I’m not going anywhere.

Really, saying this is a promise. It’s a promise that we’re going to stay. It’s a commitment to companionship and love. Whether we reach the gates of heaven or hell, when we say something as bold as “I’m not going anywhere,” it means we’re there. This word, anywhere, is all-encompassing. When we say anywhere, it means we’re ride or die for someone.

But that’s the catch, isn’t it? The second part of ride or die is just that, die. We can’t control when we die; none of us can. So we know that “I’m not going anywhere” doesn’t mean that we’re going to be here forever. We infer that it means we’re here for as long as we can outrun the reaper.

I’m not going anywhere.

Our sons are at the age where they’re afraid of the dark, afraid to go to bed, or some combination of both. I get it. I slept in my parent’s bed well past kindergarten. I was scared too. Part of me still is.

So we say this to them: “I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be here. I’ll check on you before I go to bed.”

This is what most soothes them. Because they know we mean it, and they know they’ll be safe because we have the night watch. They know they won’t be alone and they’ll have someone to run to if they have a bad dream or throw up in the middle of the night - because we’re not going anywhere.

But they don’t understand the deal, fully. I can’t tell them, yet, that when I say this I implicitly mean unless I die.

This unsettles me because I am making them a promise that they don’t fully understand. I am running the risk that I will be stolen from them before they understand this. They need me to say it, so I say it. And I mean it, so I say it. And I plan to be here for a long time, so I say it. But I’m always still sending up a prayer every time I speak those four words.

I’m not going anywhere.

When I wake up in the morning, I believe in God. And when I go to bed at night, I really believe in God. This faith is what carried me through tonight.

Robyn is traveling this weekend for our soon-to-be sister-in-law’s bachelorette party. It’s Saturday as I write this, and I’ve been solo parenting since lunchtime on Thursday. The kids are having a really hard time with their mother being away. I can tell, even though they are the same rambunctious, gleeful, hilarious set of brothers that they always are.

It was a boys weekend and tonight was game night. Bo was the last one up today because I let him. And to be honest, I think we needed each other. We are both incredibly emotional. We both feel the sting of loneliness more devastatingly than anyone else in this house. So, I let him stay up later than his brothers, so we could play one extra game. He chose Ticket to Ride: First Journey, probably because it’s the only game where it’s at least 50% likely that he’ll beat me.

After his bath and bedtime story, he started to wig out. He flailed his arms, and contorted his body while sputtering semi-coherent sentences, as if the closing of the book’s cover caused him to be possessed by a wandering ghost. Thank God I wasn’t a train wreck of a father like I was earlier in the day. Next thing I knew, he was clinging to me, he and I on top of the duvet - and he was just clutching me, tight as he ever has.

“I’m never letting go,” he whispered.

This may be the most vulnerable he’s ever let himself be around me. His big feelings scare him, and with Bo, there’s no such thing as little feelings. So I am surprised, and humbled, as he says this.

“I will always be with you,” I replied.

Then my heart started to quicken, and tears squeezed out the sides of my eyes.

“No matter where you are or when it is, part of me is always with you, bud. Wherever I am, I am always thinking about you, mommy, and your brothers. Part of me is always in your heart. I will always be with you.”

This, I suppose, is the way out of this ride or die dilemma. I believe in God, and I believe that I have a soul. And I believe that if I love and pray hard enough, part of me will always be with Robyn, and with each of my sons. I can say those words and actually be telling the full truth. Because even if I die, part of me will always be with them.

And that is the divine element. Because with the help of God, I can say “I’m not going anywhere”, fully, lovingly, and deeply, without any exception.

And that’s where I left it with Bo tonight. I carried him to his room. I helped him squirm under the covers, tucked him in, and told him.

I’m not going anywhere.

---

My new book, Character by Choice: Letters on Goodness, Courage, and Becoming Better on Purpose, is now out in soft launch. I’m so excited to share it and proud of how it turned out. If you liked this post, you might find it a good read. You can learn more about the book here.

The Steady Years: Strengthening Marriage in Comfortable Times

There are no existential threats to our marriage, and maybe that’s why I feel like this phase is so dangerous.

We are no longer newlyweds. We are no longer new homeowners. We are no longer new parents (or dog-parents). We aren’t going to be sending our kids to a new school for at least 8 years. We aren’t new anythings, and if everything goes to plan, we won’t be new anythings for a while.

Our life is in a spot where it’s pretty settled in as “parents of young children”. We won’t have kids that are either into high school or have all of them into kindergarten for 4 to 6 years. Neither of us are in a place where we’re likely to have rapid career growth - partly by choice.

Our marriage is feeling really settled in, with very little that may rock the boat unless something tragic happens in our extended family, God forbid. The water ahead isn’t placid, but we’re aren’t in stormy waters either. It feels like we’re just in a place of “keep the chains moving” or “one foot in front of the other” or “turn the crank.”

In a way, our lives are so stable. After the past decade with tons of change, it feels so bizarre to think that a season of sustainability and relative peace could be dangerous to our marriage. But I think it is. This seems like a time where it could be so easy to just do what we’ve always done. For things to get boring. For things to get not just comfortable, but so comfortable that we float and drift, without even realizing that our marriage isn’t anchored.

I worry that it would be so easy to mindlessly go through the motions for the next 4-6 years. That we get to 2030 and our marriage is stiff or slightly zombie-like, because we’ve gone half a decade getting so in the groove that we no longer have to give 100% attention to our marriage and family life.

I don’t think the way out of this is to seek crises. All the crises we’ve had have certainly made our marriage stronger, starting with my father’s passingly nearly 8 years ago. Even though that season, and other difficult seasons, have made us stronger - it came at high price: sadness, suffering, anxiety, and wounds. Looking for crises is an option, but that can’t be the best way to keep deepening and strengthening our marriage.

At the same time, I don’t think the full solution is to amp up novelty either. We could go on lots of fancy trips. We could eat out and go to the theater a lot more. We could move to a new house, just to liven things up. We could do any number of things to spice daily life up. But would that really lead to strength?

Sure, novelty is fun, and if we’re laughing and having fun it’ll make things feel good and positive. We’ll be able to keep things from getting stale. We definitely need some level of new and fresh - we’re only human.

But our time and money have constraints - it’s not unlimited. We can’t buy novelty indefinitely.

And moreover, how much can novelty strengthen our marriage? Surely, there are diminishing returns after a certain point. After a certain point, have we really deepened our connection or brought something more of ourselves to the marriage? At what point does novelty become a crutch or a stopgap?

I think there is a third way to strengthen marriages in these stable-but-could-be-dangerous years without entirely depending on crises or novelty: little sparks.

I figure, maybe I could try to just dial in extra deep for little moments of our days and weeks. You know, just throw in a little extra. Maybe when I’m making a pizza, I try some black pepper on the crust in addition to garlic salt. Maybe, it’s a little “I love you” post-it note I could hide in Robyn’s sock drawer every once in awhile. Maybe I try just a little bit harder to be extra specific when Robyn asks me, “how was your day, Honey?” It could even be just remembering to make real, genuine, loving eye contact at least once after the kids go to bed and we’re talking.

I really mean little sparks as just that: little. Nothing grand or flashy. Just little, intentional, things that lock me back to a state of attentiveness. Little sparks that say to Robyn, “I know our lives feel pretty similar every week, but I’m not daydreaming through it, I’m here with you in it.”

These little sparks are probably even me just proving to myself that I’m not mailing it in and that I’m digging deeper. That I’m paying attention. That 100% of me is still here.

These years, God willing, will be stable and not riddled with crises, grief, or existential threats to our marriage. But there’s no free lunch. If we have stability, it means we have to fight against the calcification that these stable-but-could-be-dangerous years could catalyze.

These years, where our kids are little, will certainly be some of the sweetest that we will have, and they already are. But we can’t let our marriage atrophy through it. That’s not a price I’m willing to pay. I want to make these little sparks so that once these years are over, we’re not going through the motions of our marriage for the rest of our days, relegated to reminiscing about the good ol’ days where our kids were little.

No, I want to be stronger and deeper in love and marriage than we were when we started this season of our life. This time doesn’t have to be dangerous, it can be a time of renewal if that’s what we make it. We can renew our marriage if we ride out the crises, add a dose of novelty, and stay committed to making those little sparks in our daily life.

2023: The Year of ‘Not Helpless’

My biggest regret this year was not attending a memorial service for someone I knew who died unexpectedly.

Despite our distant connection, my grief was real, but fear held me back. I worried about navigating the unfamiliar customs of their faith and feared saying the wrong thing to their family, whom I had never met before. Additionally, I was concerned about how others would perceive my attendance, given our weak ties.

Upon reflection, none of these fears justify my absence, and this regret has been a poignant lesson for me. It seems so obvious now, but I actually have some control over how I react to fear. Nothing but myself was stopping me from making a different choice.

I am glad that even though I feel regret, I have learned something from it: My ignorance is my responsibility and under my control. My irrational fears are my responsibility and under my control. My boundaries and response to social anxiety is my responsibility and under my control. These are all hard, to be sure, but I am not helpless.

—

I’ve now proven to myself that I can do better. This is my greatest accomplishment of the year.

On vacation, where work stress dissolves into the Gulf of Mexico's salt, I find myself more patient with my sons. In the last two months, gratitude journaling helped me realize that I was unfairly expecting my sons to manage my frustrations. This insight has made me a better listener, helping me see them as they need to be seen - closer to how God sees them.

On vacation, when the stress of work dissolves into the Gulf of Mexico’s salt, I am more patient with my sons. In the last 2 months of the year, when some gratitude journaling I did finally made it click that I’m expecting my sons to help me manage my own frustrations, I am better. I am a better listener and I finally see them in the way they need me to - closer to how God sees them.

Now, I know, I can do better - I just have to do it when the world around me feels chaotic and when we’re out of our little paradise and back into our beautiful, but very real, life. This will be extremely difficult, but I know I can do it, because I’ve already done it.

Once I am better - as a listener, as a father, and as a husband when Robyn and I work through this together - I start to talk to them different. I’m curious. I’m asking questions. I’m taking pauses. I’m no longer trying to control and react, I am the powerful wave of the rising tide that is firm but gentle, enveloping them and their sandy toes until they are anchored again.

I change how I talk. Instead of saying - “stop it, now!” I start to say, with a full, palpable, sense of love and confidence in them - “you are not helpless.”

—

Over the years, Robyn and I have taken exactly one walk on the beach together during our Christmas vacation.

We saunter away for 30 minutes at nap time, letting the masks we so reluctantly maintain as parents and professionals fully drop. It's just us, speaking to no one except three young girls who earnestly and eagerly approach us, asking, “Excuse us, but would you like a beautiful sea shell?“

Some years, one of us is weeping as our grief and frustration finally is allowed to boil over. This year though, we are incisive and contemplative. I am honestly curious. We struggled so much this year, how is it that we aren’t more frustrated with each other?

By the end of our walk and our conversation, I see her differently. She is more beautiful, but that’s how I feel everyday. Today, I also feel the depth of her soul and resolve more strongly. Her gravity pulls me in closer.

We have fought hard to get here. All the hard conversations we’ve had and all the conflict resolution techniques we’ve studied and applied have made a big difference. Yes, we have put in the work.

But at the root of it, is something much deeper and strategic. We have seeds of resilience that we have planted consistently with every season of our marriage that passes. We plant and reap, over and over, not a fruit but a mindset. We have vowed to be in union. We are dialed into a single vision that is bigger than both of us. We are committed to make it it there and we have jettisoned our escape pods, figuratively speaking, we have left ourselves no choice but to figure it out.

And with every crisis, we feel more and more that we can figure it out. With each year that passes, the difficulty of our problems increases, but so does our capacity to manage them. More than ever, as the clock strikes the bottom of the hour and we end our saunter, I remember - we are not helpless.

This year was hard. But the silver lining was that I finally internalized something so simple, but so important.

When the going gets tough - whether it’s because of death, our children growing up, or external factors adding stress to our marriage - nobody is coming to save us. We are on our own. But that’s okay, because we are not helpless.

Holding onto forever

ACT I

I appreciate things I can hold. I mean this literally.

I savor burritos and breakfast sandwiches - these are the foods that I enjoyed with my father and remind me of him, down to the detail of us both dousing them with hot sauce. I relish the feel of a tennis racket in my grasp, gripped to perfectly that the racket feels like it’s gripping back - the tennis court was where I could find peace and freedom, before I even knew what meditation even was.

I like pens, pencils, and chef’s knives - because words and a meal prepared for others are two of the only ways I know how to tell someone I love them. All those three objects - pens, pencils, and a good knife - feel less like implements and more like extensions when I handle them. Then take on the rhythm and flow of my heartbeat and tapping toe, as if they’re a part of my body.

With the things I hold, I develop a symbiotic relationship. I fuse with them somehow - I become a little of them, and they become a little of me. This connection brings a feeling of peace, serenity, and security.

My whole life may resemble that one chaotic drawer in the house, filled with knick-knacks, rarely used items, and tiny screwdrivers that only see the light of day in a frenzy. But when I'm holding something in my hand, I've got it. And when I've got the thing in my hand, I start to feel like I've got this. The act of the body changes the act of the mind.

I, quite literally, cherish things I can hold. But I also mean this metaphorically. I appreciate buffer and the freedom it provides, borne from a lifetime of needing to feel control and security. I prefer to save rather than spend. To this day, I pack one more pair of underwear than the number of nights I'm traveling. I’ll pack a rain jacket even when it’s sunny. I like to be prepared. I like to hold onto extra.

I think I do this because I know what it feels like to lose. When I was young, money was tight. It was tight again when the recessions hit Michigan. Our brother, Nakul, was taken from us too soon, as was my father. In some ways, the seriousness with which I was raised makes me feel like the innocence of childhood slipped away prematurely.

When I hold things, I' feel like I’ve got them. And when I've got them, I can tell myself for a little while that nobody else can take them. Now, I finally have a world - my wife, my children, my family, good friends, my health, a livelihood, and a few dreams - that's worth holding onto.

And I'm going to hold them in the palm of my hand, gripping them tight enough so that nobody can ever take them away from me.

I intend to hold onto them forever.

ACT II

Everything feels like forever when you're a child.

Even a summer vacation, with all its bike rides and fireflies, seems endless. Middle and high school, infused with a sense of invincibility, appear as though they'll never run out. Every long car ride, every grocery queue, every football practice - every single thing is long.

Childhood is the part of our lives that feels like forever.

And for you three, so much of that forever is shaped by your mom and me. The golden, fuzzy forever you experience - your memories of childhood - isn't entirely up to you. Part of it is your responsibility, sure. But a lot of it is ours.

And so I wonder - what will you three, my sons, remember about what forever felt like?

I want you to remember being held because to be held is to be loved. I want you to recall that you were loved. I want you to feel loved. I want you to be loved, and I want to love you.

Holding onto someone and being held is not a small thing. It, in a very physical way, proves that we are bonded. It proves that we are together and committed to each other. It demonstrates, with certainty that I care about you because I am here. The Jesuits talk about finding God in all things, and I think embraces are an example of what they mean in this teaching. There is something divine about being held, because to be held is to be loved.

You will have memories of fun, laughter, and joy, of course. You will experience snow days and summer nights. You'll have spring flings and Friday night lights. You'll have moments with your toes in Burt Lake and in the backyard grass on Parkside, ice cream dribbling down your chins. You'll have all this. I promise you'll have all this.

But when I think about my own childhood, the only thing that endures enough to be more than a memory but a feeling, a deep-seated sensation, is love. Love is what endures.

Even a single moment of true, unconditional love is what carries you when you want to give up or when you feel like all you can do is surrender everything. Just one moment of love is enough to save us.

I want you to remember being held because being held is to be loved. So that no matter what, you have that. When you think of the part of your life that was forever, I want you to feel like holding onto it. I want you to feel like holding onto forever.

This is why I must hold you, all three of you, forever.

ACT III

Nothing feels like forever now that we're grown. We have a clock, and it's ticking. Tick tock, tick tock.

When we’re drinking wine after the kids go to bed, I often say that last weekend feels like "forever ago," but that's not really true. Our days are full. Our nights never seem long enough to rest. Our weeks and weekends are packed enough to trick me into thinking time is passing slowly.

I notice this the most in photographs now. We look different than we did not long ago. I see it in our hair and skin. Our postures. The settings in which those photos were taken.

Seven years have passed since my favorite photo of our wedding day was captured. It's the one on our mantle, the black and white image in the silvery frame, where we're on the river, and you're embracing me from behind, around my neck and shoulders, your mehendi-adorned hand visible. I'm smiling at you over my right shoulder, looking up at you, as if you're the sunshine. It reminded me of what forever can feel like.

We've aged seven years since then, and luckily it doesn't look like more. But it feels like it should have only been two, maybe three years since that photo by the river. Tick tock, tick tock.

We hug and hold each other often and spontaneously. We naturally find our way to an embrace. It could be in the kitchen while the pasta is boiling, or for a few minutes in bed after you've showered, and I'm still lying in my pajamas. You hold me, and I hold you.

These moments, where we're holding each other, don't stop the clock. The clock moves ahead. The alarm rings. But during those moments, when we're holding onto each other, we're reminded. It takes us back to that photo by the river, where I am smiling, and you look like sunshine, in the moment that reminds me of forever.

And sometimes, when we were there in those embraces that remind me of forever, I don’t want to leave. I want to stay there. I feel safe there, loved there. To be held, after all, is to be loved.

But at the same time, what would our lives be if we did not have the world around us, if we just kept it to us in that embrace, just you and me?

If we did not have our children or our families? Or if we didn’t have our friends and neighbors? Or even kind strangers? To embrace them we have to open up and expand our hearts from just us, to give more than we think we have. To hold onto them, we have to let go.

I have to remember sometimes, that not everyone is trying to take you all away from me. Not everyone is a threat to what we finally have. I can hold on while still letting go, at least for as long as it takes to share some of the love in our hearts with others.

This ability to hold on and let go first felt like a paradox, but I think now that it’s merely a leap of faith. It is okay to make this leap, I know this now, because we will always get back to holding each other. We will come back to an embrace of each other. And we will get back to this place that reminds me of forever.

Photo by Marcel Ardivan on Unsplash

In-sourcing Purpose

When it comes to being a husband and father, doing more than just the bare minimum is not difficult. At home, I want to do much more than mail it in.

The obvious reason is because I love my family. I care about them. I find joy in suffering which helps them to be healthy and happy. I believe that surplus is an essential ingredient to making an impactful contribution, and with my family I give up the surplus I have easily, perhaps even recklessly. I love them, after all.

Photo Credit: Unsplash @krisroller

And yet, love doesn’t explain this fully. The ease with which I put in effort at home taps into a deeper well of motivation and purpose.

With Robyn, our marriage is driven by a deeper purpose than having a healthy relationship, or perhaps even the commitment to honoring our vows. We find meaning in building something, in our case a marriage, that could last thousands of years or an eternity if there is a God that permits it. We’re trying to build something that could last until the end of time, until there is nothing of us that exists - in this world or beyond. We’re trying to make a marriage that’s more durable than “as long as we both shall live.” We find meaning in that.

Though we’ve never talked about it explicitly, I think we also find meaning in trying to have a marriage that’s based on equality and mutual respect. It’s as if we’re trying to be a beacon for what a truly equal marriage could look like. I don’t think we’ve succeeded in this yet; I’m certain that despite our best efforts, Robyn still bears an unequal portion of our domestic responsibilities. But yet, we try to find that elusive, perfectly equal, and mutually respectful marriage and we find meaning in that pursuit.

As a father, too, I find purpose and meaning that exeeceds the strong love and attachment I have with my children. I find it so inspiring to be part of something that spans generations and millennia. I am merely the latest steward to pass down the love, knowledge, and virtues of our ancestors. I find it humbling to be part of a lineage that started many centuries ago, and that will hopefully exist for many centuries in the future. Being one, single, link in this longer chain moves me, deeply.

I also believe deeply in a contribution to the broader community, to human society itself. And there too, fatherhood intersects. Part of my responsibility to humanity, I believe, is to raise children that are a net force for goodness - children that because of their actions make the world feel more trustworthy and vibrant. Through my own purification as a father, I can pass a purer set of values and integrity to our children, and accelerate - ever so slightly - the rate at which the arc of humanity and history bends towards justice. This is so lofty and so abstract, but yet, I find meaning in this.

These sources of deep purpose make it easy, trivial even, to put forth an amount of energy toward being a husband and father that a 16 year old me would find incomprehensible.

Finding this deep and durable source of purpose has been harder in my career, though I’m realizing it might have been hidden in plain sight all along.

I often felt maligned when I worked at Deloitte, especially when it felt like the ultimate end product of my time was simply making wealthy partners wealthier. At least Deloitte was a culture of kind people, and also had a sincere commitment to the community - I found some meaning in that.

But in retrospect, I think I missed the point. Deloitte, after all, is a huge consultancy. Its clients are some of the largest and most influential enterprises in the history of the world. Deloitte also produces research that is read by leaders and managers across the world. The amount of lives affected by Deloitte, through its clients, is probably in the billions. While I was there, I had an opportunity - albeit a small one - to affect the managerial quality of the world’s largest companies. That is incredibly meaningful. In retrospect, I wish I would’ve remembered that when I was toiling away on client projects, wishing I was doing anything else to earn a living.

While working in City government, sources of purpose and meaning were easier to find. It was easy to give tremendous effort, for example, toward reducing murders and shootings. I was a civilian appointee, and relatively junior at that - but we were still saving lives, literally. But even beyond that, I found meaning in something more humble - I had the honor and privilege of serving my neighbors. That phrase, serving my neighbors, still wells my eyes up in tears. What a gift it was to serve.

And now, I work in a publicly traded company. We manufacture and sell furniture. These are not prima facie sources of deep meaning and purpose. In the day-to-day, week-to-week, grind I often find myself in the same mindset as I was at Deloitte, asking myself questions like, why am I here, or, am I wasting my time?

And yet, I also realize that with hindsight I would probably realize that meaning and foundation on which to assemble a strong sense of purpose was always there, had I cared enough to look for it.

Why, I have been thinking this week, is it so easy to to find meaning purpose at home, but so difficult at work? There must be a deep well of meaning from which to draw, hidden in plain sight, why can’t I find it?

At home, I realized, we are free. We have nobody ruling us, but us. We are free to explore and think and make our family life what we wish it to be. I think and talk openly with Robyn about our lives. We reflect and grapple with our lived experiences and take it upon ourselves to make meaning from it. We aren’t waiting for anyone else to tell us what our purpose as partners, parents, or citizens.

In a way, at home, we in-source our deliberations of purpose. We literally do it “in house”. We know it is is on us to make meaning of our marriage and our roles as parents, so Robyn and I do it. We have, in effect in-source our search for meaning and purpose.

At work, I have done the opposite.

In my career, I have outsourced my search for meaning and purpose. I’ve waited, without realizing it, for senior executives to tell me why what we’re doing matters. I’ve whined, in my head at least, when the mission statements and visions of companies I’ve worked for - either as an employee or as a consultant - have been vacuous or sterile.

In retrospect, I’ve freely relinquished my agency to create meaning and purpose to the enterprises for which I have worked. What a terrible mistake that was. Why was I waiting for someone else to find purpose for me, when I could’ve been creating it for myself all along?

When companies do articulate statements of purpose well, it is powerful and I appreciate it. My current company has a purpose statement, for example, and it does resonate with me. I’m glad we have one.

But yet, that’s not enough. To really give a tremendous amount of discretionary effort at work, I need to believe in something much more specific to me. After all, even the best statement of purpose put out by a company is, by design, something meant to appeal to tens of thousands of people. I shouldn’t expect a corporate purpose statement to ignite my inspiration, such an expectation is not reasonable or fair. No company will ever write a purpose statement that’s specifically for me, nor should they.

Rather than outsource my search for meaning and purpose, I’ve realized I need to in-source it. Perhaps with questions like these:

What makes my job and working as part of this enterprise special? What’s something about it that’s so valuable and important that I want to put my own ego, career development, and desire to be promoted aside and contribute to the team’s goal? What can I find meaning in and be proud of? What about being here makes me want to put effort in beyond the bare minimum?

Like I said, I work for a furniture company - certainly not something glamorous or externally validated . And yet, there can be so much meaning and purpose in it, if I choose to see it.

We are in people’s homes and we have this ability to rehabilitate people’s bodies and minds. We create something that brings comfort to other people and for every family movie night and birthday party - the biggest and smallest moments in the lives of our customers and their families, we are there. That’s worth putting in a little extra for.

And we’re a Michigan company, headquartered in a relatively small town. I get to be part of a team bringing wealth, prosperity, and respect to our State. I can’t tolerate it when people from elsewhere in the country snub their noses at Michigan, calling us a “fly over” state. I find meaning in that competition to be an outstanding enterprise - why not have the industry leader in furniture manufacturing and retailing be a Michigan company?

Without even considering the meaning and joy I find in creating high-performing teams that unleash people’s talent, there is so much meaning and purpose that’s hidden in plain sight - even at a furniture company. But that meaning is nearly impossible to find unless we stop being dependent on others to create meaning for us - we have to bring the search for purpose back in house.

How interesting might it be if everyone on the team created their own purpose statement, rather than depending on the enterprise to provide one for them? What if companies helped their employees create their own purpose statement instead of making one for them? I think such an approach would be interesting and, no pun intended, meaningful.

Becoming giving beings

Children are selfish. By design. That’s what they’re supposed to do and their survival depends on it. From the moment they are born, they demand that we feed them, clothe them, protect them, love them, and bathe them.

Photo Credit: Unsplash @adroman

And so did I. Like every other person that has ever lived, I was a selfish child. Far into adolescence, I was selfish, even if it was slightly less so than the day I was born.

As we age, it seems as if life extracts the selfishness, little by little, from our bodies and minds. First through marriage, then through children. For those of us who believe, through faith also. Through the intensities of grief and joy the selfishness is stolen sneakily, by the experience of life itself - if we let it.

If I am lucky enough to live a full life, without sudden death, I don’t know, exactly, what it will be like to die. I know it’s coming someday, but say I am dying at 95 from the ailment of a having a body that has long since depreciated past its useful life - what will it be like? I meditate on what it might be so that I can be prepared.

If I am so lucky to not die a sudden death, I think it may actually be like the movies. That’s what I hope for, anyway.

When I meditate on what I will be thinking and feeling on my deathbed, I imagine being close to Robyn and our children. I think I will want to just sit with them, drinking water and eating rice with lentils. Simple food, that does not distract from the company.

As I visualize myself slowly chewing the tasteless rice, my deathbed meditation progress to its very last moments.

I am there. Robyn is there. Our sons are there, and even in my foggy mental state, and despite the excruciating pain of inhabiting a dying body, I can tell our sons are grown because the hair on their temples has started to grey - that is the mark of a grown man in our line.

And then, at the very end, I gaze at Robyn. I am there, trying to muster some last words before I go ahead. In that last moment I do not ask for more painkillers. I do not cry. I do not beg God for more time. I do not say to her, “tell me you love me.” In those last moments, I am determined not to take.

With the last breaths of oxygen I breathe, and the last beats of my heart, before my thoughts go dark, I will try to say, “I love you.”

I will try to give love, to her, until the literal end of my life. Until God takes me from her embrace. In that moment, when I am as vulnerable as the day I was born, I dream of giving whatever love remains. Just like that. Just like the movies.

In life, and death, there can be so much suffering. That’s part of the deal. But what a beautiful thing to be part of. It is wonderful to know that if we must suffer the fate of death that there’s at least a fighting chance that life will have transformed us from something selfish into something more gracious.

It is utterly remarkable to me that we can go from being newborns, designed to be selfish, into giving beings. What a beautiful and curious thing it is, that after the immense suffering of our lives, at the moment of imminent death, our singular focus, above even our own survival, can become, “I love you.”

Being that, a giving being, is what I hope to become.

The blessing of a sturdy table

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

Photo Credit: Unsplash @ddealmeida

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

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

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

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

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

—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We do not have monsters inside us

The first time I had the delusion, was probably around the time I started high school. I don’t remember what preceded it, I just remember thinking, “there’s something untamed and dark inside me.”

As I’ve aged, I’ve come to realized that I’m not the only man who has felt the grip of something inside them, small to be sure, but something that feels like evil.

For decades now, I’ve believed this about myself as a man: I have this tiny little seed, deep down, in my heart. That seed is a little root of evil and I must not let it grow. I know there is a monster within, and I must not let it out.

I don’t know from whence this deluision came. But it came.

The delusion reawakened when I started to seeing press about a new book, Of Boys and Men by Richard Reeves, which is about the crisis among men we have in America. I haven’t read the book, yet, but here’s some context from Derek Thompson at The Ringer:

American men have a problem. They account for less than 40 percent of new college graduates but roughly 70 percent of drug overdose deaths and more than 80 percent of gun violence deaths. As the left has struggled to offer a positive vision of masculinity, male voters have abandoned the Democratic Party at historically high rates.

Or this from New York Times columnist David Brooks:

More men are leading haphazard and lonely lives. Roughly 15 percent of men say they have no close friends, up from 3 percent in 1990. One in five fathers doesn’t live with his children. In 2014, more young men were living with their parents than with a wife or partner. Apparently even many who are married are not ideal mates. Wives are twice as likely to initiate divorces as husbands.

I come away with the impression that many men are like what Dean Acheson said about Britain after World War II. They have lost an empire but not yet found a role. Many men have an obsolete ideal: Being a man means being the main breadwinner for your family. Then they can’t meet that ideal. Demoralization follows.

For more than a year, before this book was released, I’ve been grappling with some of its core themes. I might not call my own life a crisis, per se, but I struggle with being a man in America today.

I have been wanting to write about “masculinity” or “the American man” for some time, but have struggled to find the right frame and honestly the guts to do it.

A different version of this post could’ve been about how lonely, and isolated I feel and how hard it has been to maintain the ties I have with close, male, friends from high school, college, and my twenties. Or I could’ve written about the pressure of competition in the workplace and the way other protected groups are supported, but I and other males are not, though we also struggle.

I might’ve written about the confusion I feel - I am trying to operate in a fair and equal marriage with Robyn, but we have no blueprints to draw from because society today and what it means to be a man feels so different from the time I came of age. A different version of this post might’ve be political and angry, pushing back against the stigma I feel when I’m gathering with other men - for example, sometimes I feel like getting together in groups of men is something to be ashamed of because it’s assumed that groups of men will devolve into something chauvinistic or destructive and “boys will be boys” and masculinity is “toxic.”

[Let me be clear though: abusive, violent, exploitative, or criminal behavior is absolutely wrong. And the many stories that have been made public about men who behave this way is wrong. And I’d add, men shouldn’t let other men behave that way, toward anyone. I do not imply with any of the struggles I’ve referenced above that any person, man or women, is exempted from the standards of right conduct because they are struggling.]

What I do imply, is that the struggles that are talked about in public discourse about the crisis of men is real to me, personally. My life does not mirror every statistic or datapoint that’s published about it, but directionally I feel that same struggle of masculinity.

As I’ve searched for words to say something honest and relevant about masculinity, what I’ve kept coming back to is that delusion I’ve believed that there is an evil and dark part of me, even if it’s small and buried deep down, that exists because I am a man. The negative ground that all my struggles of masculity come from is the belief that there’s a monster inside me, and that the balance of my life hangs on not letting him out of the cage.

For me at least, this is the battleground where the struggle of my masculinity starts and ends. No policy change is going to solve this for me. No life hack is going to solve this for me. No adulation or expression of anger is going to solve this for me.

If I want to get over my struggle with my masculinity and difficulties I feel about being a man in America today, I have to dispel the belief that there’s a monster inside me. I have to prove that I am not evil inside and that belief is indeed a delusion. The obstacle is the way.

But how? How do I prove to myself that there’s not a monster, that I was born, inside me?

—

Our neighborhood is full of old houses, built mostly in the 1920s. And fundamentally, there are two ways to renovate an old house. You either paper over the problems, or you fix them and take the house all the way down to the foundation and the studs if you have to.

As it turns out, the only way you really make an old house sturdy is to take it down to the studs, and build from there. Papering over the issues in an old house - whether it’s old pipes, wiring, or mold - leads to huge, costly, problems later. The only way is to build a house is from good bones.

With that model in my head, I thought of this reflection, to hopefully prove to myself - once and for all - that I do not have the seeds of evil and darkness, sown into me because I was born a man.

The rest of this post is my self-reflection around three questions. I share it because I feel like I need to try out my own dog food and demonstrate that it can be helpful. But more than that, if you’re a man or someone who cares about a man, I share all this in hopes that if you also believe the delusion that you were born with a monster inside, that you change your mind.

For sure, every person is capable of terrible things. But we, as men, don’t have to believe the delusion that we were born with a monster inside us. We have to stop believing that. We can build our identity as men around the parts of us that are most good.

—

What are the broken, superficial parts of me that I can strip away to get down to the core of the man I am?

I can strip away the resentment I have about being raised with so much pressure to achieve. I can strip away the bizarre relationship I have with human sexuality because as an adolescent the culture around me only modeled two ways of being: reckless promiscuity or abstinence, even from touching. I can strip away the anger I have because as a south Asian man, I am expected to be a doctor, IT professional, and someone who never has opinions, something to say, or the capability to lead from the front. I can strip away the self-loathing I have about being a man - I can be supportive of womens’ rights and opportunities without hating myself. I can strip back all the times I tried to prove myself as a dominant male: choosing to play football in high school, doing bicep curls for vanity’s sake, binge drinking to fit in or avoid hard conversations, trying to get phone numbers at the bar, or talking about my accomplishments as a way of flexing - I do not need to be the stereotypical “alpha male” to be a man. I can strip away my need for perfection and control, without being soft or having low standards.

I can strip away all pressures to prove my strength based on how I express feelings: I do not have to exude strength by being emotional closed, nor do I need to exude strength by going out of my way to express emotion and posture as a modern, emotionally in-touch man - I can be myself and express feelings in a way that’s honest and feels like me. I can strip away the thirst I have for status, my job title and resume is what I do for a living, not my life. I can strip away the self-editing I do about my hobbies and preferences - I can like whatever I like, sports, cooking, writing, gardening, astronomy, the color yellow, the color blue, the color pink - all this stuff is just stuff not “guy stuff” or “girl stuff.” I can strip away the pressure I feel to be a breadwinner, Robyn and I share the responsibility of putting food on the table and keeping the lights on, we make decisions together and can chart our own path.

Once I strip away all the superficial parts of me, and get down to the studs, what’s left? What’s the strong foundation to build my identity, specifically as a man, from?

At my core, I am honest and I do right by people. At my core I am constructively impatient, I am not obsessed over results, but I care about making a better community for myself and others. At my core, I am curious and weird - that’s not good or bad, it’s just evidence that I have a thirst to explore no ideas and things to learn. At my core, I value families - both my own and the idea that families are part of the human experience. At my core, I care about talent - no matter what I achieve extrinsically I am determined to use my gifts and for others to use there, because if the human experience can have less suffering, why the hell wouldn’t we try? At my core, I believe in building power and giving it away and I am capable of walking away from power. At my core, I care most about being a better husband, father, and citizen.

Now that I’ve stripped down to the studs, what mantra am I going to say to replace my old negative thought of, “I was born with a monster inside me that I can’t let out of the cage?”

I was born into a difficult world, but with a good heart. I am capable of choosing the man I will become.

Photo Credit: Unsplash @bdilla810

The mindset which underlies enduring marriages

If our lives can be explained by the treasurers we adventure to find, one of my few holy grails is understanding how to be a soulmate. I search, everywhere I can, for little bits of the wisdom that can help Robyn have a marriage that endures for our whole life and for anything that exists after.

My perspective on marriage and soulmates has evolved, to something like this:

We start our lives with a paintbrush in our hands, and a blank canvas. And we start to wonder - what’s the most beautiful picture I can put on this canvas? What is the life I want to live? As we grow up we experiment a bit as we learn to paint.

Eventually, we get a pretty good idea of the most beautiful life we can paint on the canvas, and we go after it. We start to paint more feverishly as we hit our teens and twenties.

If we’re lucky, along the way we fall in love with someone. If we’re really lucky, we take a leap and marry them. And then the dynamic at the canvas changes.

A wedding, I think, is the moment two people start to paint onto one canvas.  But here’s the the trick: the moment we say I do, we suddenly have to figure out how to paint while both holding the same brush.

And suddenly, were not only painting, we’re both trying to prevent the brush we’re both holding - our marriage - from breaking. It seems like there are three ways to survive this.

First, we could strengthen our brush and make it more resilient. In a marriage, there are times when each person is pulling in a different direction, and the brush has to be strong and resilient so it does not break. This strategy represents the body of advice people give about integrity, being faithful, committing to better/worse/richer/poorer/sickness/health, having a thick skin, continuing to date, rekindling love and romance, etc.

Second, we could learn to compromise. Maybe sometimes we paint the way I want to paint. Other times, we paint the way you want to paint. We never pull in different directions at the same time. By compromising, we put less tension on the brush. By putting less tension on the brush, it does not break as readily. This strategy represents the body of advice people give about conflict resolution and compromise.

Third, we could both imagine the painting we want to put on the canvas the same way in our heads. What do we want our lives to be like? What’s the beautiful picture we want to paint together? By having a shared vision for what we want our marriage and life to be, we don’t put stress on the brush because both our hands are moving in the same direction. This strategy represents the body of advice people give about shared values, shared vision, and growing together instead of apart.

Truthfully, every married couple needs to be good at all three of these approaches. Moreover, the first strategy of having a strong and resilient brush seems like a given. I don’t know how any marriage survives without that.

What struck me is that compromising seems to be the least optimal strategy here. Sure, every married couple has to compromise at some point and compromise a lot. Robyn and I compromise, too.

But how terrible would it be to have a lifetime full only of compromise? Either you are settling for the average your whole lives, and the painting you produce is the average, path of least resistance. Or, one person dominates, and one person gets the painting they think is beautiful and the other has lived someone else’s dream. 

Compromise is necessary, but it seems best as a last resort. What seems much better is to just be on the same page about life together - and wanting to paint the same painting, constantly evolving with each brushstroke as life unfolds.

This metaphor reminds me of a fundamental tension within management. Teams - whether it’s at work, in sports, in government, or in community - fall apart if people care more about themselves than what the team is trying to accomplish together. So to in marriage. 

If I care more about what I want life to look like than I care about painting our shared vision for the canvas, and painting it together our marriage will suffer. This is no different than any team - a team only endures if its members sacrifice to advance the aspirations of the team and evolve as the team evolves.

When I first began to think about soulmates, I thought it was a question of predestination. There was a soul out there, and through God’s will I was linked to that soul. All I had to do was find her. We’d fall in love. We’d work through problems. We’d put in the work for a great marriage, and after we departed this world we’d be committed to anything that came after.

And I did, thank God, find her. But my perspective on soulmates and marriage is different now. I don’t think that it’s only about this compromise, loving each other, keeping on dating, and putting in the work stuff anymore. 

To be clear, I do still believe all those things - love, compromise, romance, and commitment - are required to be married and probably to be soulmates.

But because of my own experience being married and learning vicariously from hundreds of other couples, I now believe that there’s a key prerequisite to marriage and even being soulmates. It’s a mindset and orientation toward life that believes together is better.

We can’t just keep painting the canvas we started with prior to being married. We also can’t just find someone compatible, that we love and try to stitch our separate canvases together. We can’t even create a fully detailed blueprint for the canvas of our life and marriage, agree to it prior to a wedding, and never evolve it - life’s unpredictability certainly doesn’t permit that.

Instead, deep down, we have to fundamentally believe that the enterprise of painting a shared canvas, with a shared vision, using the same brush is what a beautiful life is. The critical prerequisite for marriage is that our mindset shifts from believing that the best way to live is being a solo artist, versus being part of a creative team.

No amount of love, destiny, resources, compatibility, or compromise can make up for not having this pre-requisite shift in mindset. For our marriages to survive and thrive - whether to our soulmate or not - we have to believe it’s better together.

Life without her

This is the sort of thing I only think about when I’m Robyn isn’t around. I’m not capable of it at any other time.

It’s when she and the kids are already in bed, and I’ve returned to the night-owlish tendencies of my younger days, drawn to the silence of the night. Or I’m driving home from work in the winter time when dusk hits early and I can’t get comfortable with music or nobody’s around to talk on the phone. 

I’m protected from all this when I’m with her, because the thought of having to live without her seems implausible, because she’s right there. I can hold her hand, or laugh with her, or give her a peck on the cheek just because. I never end up thinking about this when I’m with her because she’s right.

Even before my father went ahead, I would think about this sometimes. But his passing made it more frequent and sharper, because now I can’t pretend like Robyn going ahead to the next world before me is an impossibility. It’s what my mom and a few of my aunts and uncles are living through now - life without their partners. It’s more likely that I’ll pass before Robyn; the numbers say average life expectancy for someone like me is shorter than for someone like her. But we can’t know either way. 

I’ve wondered, often, two things: why do I even let myself think about this, and, does anyone else let themself think about this?

Life without your partner is among the 3-5 most painful things one can think about. It’s up there with burying a child, global nuclear war, or some damning ecological catastrophe - like what plays out in the movie Interstellar. It would be more comfortable to distract myself until the thought passed, or hid behind not-actually-validated probabilities and feed myself a line like, “odds are I won’t have to worry about this for a long time.”

And yet, I still think about this. I let the thought and the pain it brings wash through me like a flu-season’s fever. I let the thoughts run their course. I let myself think about the worst case scenario - life without Robyn - because I tell myself it’s “preparation” in case it actually happens. As if thinking about it in advance and living through it in my head will actually prepare me for what would likely be the worst days of my life. I let the thought cut deep enough into my core, so that I can feel it enough and then I cry. Then I let the fever break, and my mind comes home.

Contemplating this type of “what if…” is not polite conversation. It’s not something that “comes up.”

It’s a topic that’s weirdly a cultural anathema, the most unnatural of conversations, yet perhaps one of the most “natural” of topics because death is a natural certainty. Even now, I’m squeamish, and trying to avoid actually naming “the topic” - how to deal with your spouse dying, there I said it - as if it was the dark wizard in Harry Potter’s world, not to be named.

I can’t be the only one that thinks about this. I can’t be the only one thrashed by the question that any of us living in a union face: which of us is going to go ahead first?

I wonder about this so often. Am I the only one haunted by this? How does everyone else deal with it? Do you let the fever wash through you, too? Do you talk about it with your wife? Do you write about it in a journal that’s hidden away as if it didn’t exist? Do you try to dilute and delude yourself of the thought by hiding behind shadowy probabilities as I do? Is there some other way to prepare for the pain? Is there some other way?

Late in life, my father had to move to Seattle to find engineering work. He loved it there. I always think about how he described the place. “It is cloudy or rains six days of the week, and the seventh day makes the others worth it.” My father had a great appreciation for the extremities of life - suffering and joy, peace and chaos, love and loneliness. He understood that we must confront difficult truths to truly live. 

Pain reminds us to laugh, to love, to appreciate time and not waste it, to be kind and humble, to focus our time on what matters. My father understood this and subtly reminded me throughout my life that a man who doesn’t know clouds and rain and snow, cannot possibly value the full splendor of the sun.

This to me is the silver lining of this unhealthy tendency I have to think about the painful notion of life without Robyn. She is my wife, my love, my soul’s counterpoint in the universe. When we’re apart, like we were this weekend, I really feel the gut wrenching pain of it.

And because of that pain, I am grounded enough to value the everyday, miraculous beauty of what it will be for her to walk through that door and be back in our arms again.

Preparing to be married indefinitely

Love songs use words like “always” and “forever” but indefinitely is all we get.

I always want to think that Robyn and I will be married and love each other always and forever. Including in the afterlife, and all through whatever comes next, until there is no more next left to have. I want to believe this, even though we really don’t have any say in the matter.

Living for indefinitely is a bit of a paradox. Because you have to plan for forever, not knowing whether you’ll make it past next week. And so much can happen between now and next week - I could be vaporized by a laser, eaten by a dinosaur, or drowned in a pool of chocolate pudding, or undergo one of many more conventional methods of death. We could do something so cruel to each other that our marriage dissolves. The universe might must...stop. We don’t really know, because nothing is definite.

I always have thought of the phrase, “live like there are 10,000 tomorrows all of which that may never come” as a paradox that fits when contemplating how to live a life.

But how? How do we prepare for a life, marriage, and maybe and afterlife together that lasts indefinitely. How do we prepare for anything that is indefinite?

All I can think of is a two principles: make adjustments and manage exponential growth.

Making adjustments to me, is all about the process of realizing our marriage is imperfect and trying to change the underlying behaviors which lead to fissures. To me there’s certainly a process for managing these fissures (we use temperature check, for example). Certainly things like “communication” and “conflict resolution” are important skills.

But the more important, overlooked factor here I think, is the humility it takes to acknowledge that our marriage needs to be worked on every day. Every interaction we have is a chance to work on our marriage. We cannot take days off. Processes like temperature check don’t work if we don’t humbly believe we actually need to utilize them.

And the principle of managing exponential growth, to me, is the understanding that both good and bad things can snowball quickly and that we should act accordingly.

Of course, it’s obvious that problems in a marriage can spiral out of control quickly. And so, obviously, it’s important to solve problems quickly, before they get big. The old adage of “never go to bed angry” is a good rule of thumb that Robyn and I really believe in.

But exponential growth can also be positive, and we need that reserve of goodwill to carry us through hard times. Just as we can’t let problems spiral out of control, we can’t let opportunities to strengthen our marriage and create joy - even little ones - pass by.. Little things - like writing a little note, or making a special treat, or saying I love you at an unexpected time - these all build on each other to create joy and love.

There are probably hundreds of these tiny little interactions every day, and those opportunities for joy and love can’t be wasted. We need to give positive exponential growth a fighting chance to happen. We can’t wait for grand gestures to grow our love and trust - they’re not enough to help our marriage at least, last indefinitely.

As it happens, the idea of managing exponential growth also is rooted in a mindset of humility. Because by trying to managing exponential growth, we’re acknowledging that negative exponential growth could crush us and that our marriage is not naturally dynamic enough to survive without positive exponential growth, either.

It seems to me, the key to a marriage that lasts indefinitely is to deeply and truly respect the challenge and then act accordingly. For many years I have wondered where that sort of humility comes from. Like why do some people have it and some people don’t? Humility, to me, seems like one of the most important dispositions to have when participating in human relationships.

It’s the subject of deeper reflection, but I think listening and observing the world around us (even the ugly parts) and experiencing real pain and loss are two things that help humility to germinate in a person.

Equality begins at home

Women are not treated fairly in America.

The splitting of daily domestic responsibilities is one way that this unfairness manifests (there are many more), and it’s the one area I kinda sorta understand so I’ll stick to this narrow subject.

In the past year, two unexpected things happened to help me learn this unfairness existed, even in our own home. First, I was furloughed from my job. My wife became our primary breadwinner and I picked up the role of lead parent, plus 20 hours a week of contract work. Second, Robyn became my office mate and I began seeing up close the tax domestic responsibilities put on her.

I never actually understood “mom brain” until I was trying to do what Robyn had been doing since Bo was born: juggling like 5,000 different details and bids for her time. It’s more than a full time job. But beyond that, it shreds your brain and zaps energy.

I lost a measurable amount of weight within week of becoming lead parent. It was hard to be at my best, because I was mentally and physically blitzed, every day.

And, I felt less valuable, honestly, despite Robyn’s best efforts to make me feel honorable and appreciated. Our culture doesn’t make domestic work heroic, even though it is.

Women bear a disproportionate amount of these domestic responsibilities in America. This is a fact. I liked to think I was some sort of exception and this was not true for us, that somehow our distribution was fair despite the odds.

Wrong. I was lying to myself. Our split of home duties wasn’t egregiously unfair, but they weren’t fair. Which we are working on and have been for the past year. It was tough to read as a man, but if you’re interested in this idea, check out the book Fair Play for a ton of stories and a framework for working toward a fair arrangement.

Of course, what “fair” looks like varies by family. A family with historic gender roles can be as fair or unfair as a family with both partners working outside the home. Both can be great setups, but both can also be unfair - usually for women.

This unfairness makes women pay a tax on sharing their talents with the world. It’s just much harder to contribute something - whether at work, through community volunteering, or through a hobby or passion - when you have a case mom brain induced by an unfair balance of domestic responsibilities.

Robyn, still, gets interrupted more when I’m on duty with the kids because she’s the one they want to kiss their boo-boos. Robyn, still, gets her day hijacked more by “emergencies.” Robyn, still, gets more judgement if we have a messy house, messy kids, or miss some sort of caregiving responsibility.

And so she’s taxed on being able to contribute her talents fully. And because she’s my officemate now, I see firsthand how she has to work harder at everything to make the same contribution I can. Which isn’t fair.

The worst part is what the world is missing out on, by treating women unfairly. Whether it’s through a job, a hobby, or community effort, our culture taxes the gifts and talents of women. The loss of that taxation of talent is probably measured in the billions and trillions of hours, dollars, or quality of life years.

So what do we do differently? And by we I mean my brothers, because I’m writing to other men - husbands and fathers, specifically - today. I think we have to do the work with our partners to determine what’s fair in our own families. Because I’m convinced equality has to begin at home.

And it’s for real really uncomfortable to talk about, because even though we may think we have a fair situation going (I did), we probably don’t (we didn’t). And I felt a lot of guilt realizing Robyn was paying a tax on her talents, directly because of me. I was unintentionally harming her. And owning up to that sucks, but don’t we owe that to our partners and the other important women in our lives?

But gender equality is really good for us, too. We have more social permission to be part of home life. Like being fathers or caregivers. We can say, “yup, I can work on this, but after dinner and bedtime”, or, “no, I can’t make the call because my wife has a commitment and I’m watching my kids” with less stigma.

I think if we do the work at home, more equal public policy like paid family leave, childcare support, or reforms to prevent harassment and domestic violence probably follow in spades. Because we’ll have walked that road with our partners and will be emphatically motivated to advocate their interests, because now we understand more of the tax they pay.

This year has opened my mind to the win-win generated by gender fairness and equality, however that’s defined for our individual families. The sacrifice is us doing the difficult work to make things fair at home. But that sacrifice will be so worth it if we choose to make it.

Inputs of good communication

As I walked upstairs to get dressed and brush my teeth this morning, I said to Robyn, “The tea is steeping, I just put it on.”

It’s common knowledge that poor communication usually leads to strained relationships, especially in marriage. And it dawned on me that I had been thinking about communication in our marriage without much depth.

The key I had been missing was understanding that the practice of good communication, structurally, has to do more with listening and self-awareness than an act of communication itself.

So back to the tea. I made a choice to tell Robyn that I had just put on our morning tea to steep, even though I wouldn’t be upstairs long and Robyn would obviously see that I had put the tea on, if she had gone into the kitchen.

So why did I tell her?

Well, earlier that morning Robyn and I had a conversation about tea and that I would make it. From that conversation, I could tell she was looking forward to having a cup of tea. From past experience, I know that she likes her tea to steep for a certain amount of minutes - usually at least two but no more than 5 or 6.

And I also realized that if I didn’t tell Robyn that I had put the tea on just then, she wouldn’t know exactly when I had. So if I ended up getting stuck upstairs - which I did in this case, flossing and putting away some clothes, I think - our tea may sit steeping for too long. Which means it would be overly strong and would be colder than we wanted it.

In this case, again, the communication I made was simply telling Robyn that I just put on our tea to steep. That turned out to be good communication, because it led to us having tea exactly the way we like it and we had no stress over me starting the tea and letting it steep to long - I didn’t feel guilty about it and Robyn wasn’t let down.

I didn’t think much about telling that to Robyn. That communication emerged organically, because I paid attention to what Robyn was saying about tea - both this morning and historically. And, I was thinking about how my action, going upstairs for a tooth brushing and a change of clothes - might affect her. And as a result of those two practices of listening and self-awareness, I blurted out a simple sentence about the status of our tea without thinking about it.

At the same time, Robyn acknowledged that I went upstairs and took it upon herself to finish our cups of tea so it was perfect by the time I came back downstairs. Because we were both listening and self-aware, we communicated well and having a lovely cup of tea this morning.

And of course, this one interaction would not have made or broken our marriage. But an otherwise stale interaction became a bid of love and mutual respect. I got to make Robyn tea and she got to finish it - we were both grateful to each other and felt loved by each other. And this was one small moment, but all these little interactions add up and fill up the piggy bank of trust in our relationship.

So yeah, good communication is great. But “good communication”, I’ve realized, is not just an exercise in expressing yourself clearly in words or body language. Listening and self-awareness are two structural inputs of good communication. 

So if we want to communicate better we should focus there - rather than just trying to “communicate more” or “communicate better”. Good communication can’t help but emerge when we listen and try to understand the impact we have on other people.

And for sure, Robyn and I have lapses and don’t communicate well sometimes, so I don’t mean this story to be self-aggrandizing. Instead, I share this story because we all know that relationships, especially marriages, depend on good communication. Most people I’ve encountered who advise that, however, do so without being specific about where “good communication” comes from or how to actually get better at it.

Common bonds and unity that endures

The Hindu priest that married Robyn and I - to be clear, we were married twice: once by a Catholic priest, once by a Hindu pandit - left us with simple advice that we still remember and recite often:

From now on, you must be Together, Together, Together. Remember, Together, Together, Together.

From that day, Robyn and I were united in marriage.

But to be honest, I usually find myself wanting more when I hear the word “unity” uttered. Unity, to me, is a hollow word unless the common bond it invokes is specific and salient. Unity for what? Around what purpose? For whom? Unity bound by what beliefs?

In our marriage,  and in the marriages of the people that we are close enough to see their marriages up close, I would say the beliefs that bind them are specific and salient. Here are some examples from our marriage:

• Our vows: to love, honor, and cherish each other; for better or worse; for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, good times and in bad, until death do us part

• Our common beliefs: belief in God; that we put family first, but that our marriage ultimately exists to serve others

• Our common dreams: to grow old together, to grow a family and stay close to our international extended family, raise our children to be good people, to learn through travel, and be enmeshed in a community throughout our life

• Our common experiences: the trips we’ve taken; the dates we’ve been on; the time we’ve spent doing nothing but enjoying each other’s company; the suffering we’ve navigated together; the little moments every day where we affirm, support, respect, and acknowledge each other and the investment of love all those moments - big and small - represent

If you’re a married person ( or expect you will someday) I do suggest trying to do a similar exercise where you specifically write down what the common bond that undergirds the unity you have with your spouse. I honestly had never done this until just now and I feel washed over with warmth, confidence, stability, and love.

I think this exercise is worth doing for more than just marriages. Any team or community that wants to endure also requires a durable common bond that is specific and salient. Asking the question “what unites us?” is just as relevant to companies, communities, and even states or nations.

The real hum-dinging implication, though, is how. How do we discover and articulate our common bonds? How do we create and nurture our common bonds? It’s not useful to merely describe that we need common bonds to have unity - that’s obvious. The very difficult question is how.

I’m planning a few posts over the next 4-6 weeks that push this idea of unity and the “how” of it further. But here’s a start: I think a good place to begin is interrogating our own beliefs, and asking what do I believe?

There was a terrific series some years ago that National Public Radio launched called This I Believe. The premise was simple: ask people to articulate their most core beliefs and then share them publicly. And when you hear some of those essays, you don’t just understand others’ beliefs cognitively, you feel and internalize them. We could all stand to write one of those essays and share it with the people we are close to.

Because after we understand our own beliefs, our next job - and I think it’s the harder and more important one - is to listen and deeply understand, feel, and internalize the beliefs of others.

And from there, we are well on our way to articulating our common bonds specifically and saliently - and developing a unity that is durable and enduring.