The unmeasured life

The way I think has been a bit of a trap, at least historically.

I have a lot of angst, shame even, that I am not as professionally successful as my peers. No matter how hard I try, even on vacation, I can’t get away from thinking about whether I measure up - either to my peers, or even to the career trajectory I thought I would be on.

Which is all foolish, by the way, because I don’t even care that much about career. Where I intend focus most of my energy is family, community, and character. And yet, because I have been trained in the realm of organizations, business, management, and leadership I am always going back to that foolishness of measuring myself up. 

Because that’s what many of us who are professionals by training - whether in business, law, public service, health, athletics, or anything else - do. We measure things and maximize them, because in our professions the result is what matters.

Again, for me this thinking is a trap. It’s the relentless pursuit of more, and my ego wants me to be cooler, professionally speaking, than I am. And if I use my peers (and my own egotistical visions) as a yardstick, I don’t measure up to that expectation. 

And so I try to cope, probably in a way that’s irrational. Because I try to cope with the fact that I don’t measure up professionally, by counting the ways I think I measure up in other domains. I always think - “I have a loving marriage and family. We have a dog. We have a home we like. I get along with my parents. I have a BMI that stays at a healthy level. We have kids with good hearts. I may not have a fast-track career, but I measure up. I measure up. I measure up.”

And that is the trap. Measuring my non-professional life is the trap. Because what I’ve realized is that, my life is not an enterprise judged by it’s measurable results. My family is not a business unit. It isn’t in the nature of a soul to be benchmarked, standardized, or process-mapped to ensure it has optimal peacefulness.

And by trying to “measure” my non-professional life, I’m propagating this pernicious, unsustainable mindset that my life must be measured. I’m locking myself into a mindset that keeps me anxious and makes me live in a constant state of needing to quench my egotistical desires.

The whole mistake I’ve been making is to try applying the principles and methods of my profession (i.e., focusing on measurable results) to my life. I can’t live at peace with my own thoughts if I try to replace the measurable career results I’m not achieving with an attempt to measure love, family life, children, happiness, faith, peace, experiences, stories, or moments of ordinary joy. Doing what I’m doing locks me into a place where I’m always on the verge of a stomach ache. What I need to do instead is let go of measuring my life.

Because life is something, I think, that cannot be measured.

The problem is, I want so desperately to be able to grab hold of something. My lesser self wants some morsel of incremental progress to remind me that I’m not wasting my life. Some mile marker along this long walk that makes concrete the messy path of life I have ahead and the road I have already traversed. Some interim report card that shows I am doing well at living out the life and that I won’t fail the final exam on my deathbed.

And this is the trap. It’s akin to the plight of Sisyphus. He was rolling a rock up a hill that could never be summited, and I trying to measure my life - something that is not only immeasurable, but that defies measurement.

But after all these years of acculturation and training - how do I resist the near-natural urge of measurement, and instead live an unmeasured life?

I admit now that I should not try to look for mile markers, or anything that charts progress along a fixed path toward a final destination. Because after all, my life has no fixed destination, duration, distance, or pace. Life defies measurement.

But perhaps there is some consolation.

If we know how to look for them, there seem to be where God gives us a window into our inner-compass, to remind us whether we are heading north toward home, or whether we have veered from the righteous path. 

The other day, I had one of these moments. Myles got into a spat with his older brother. He, as a 1.5 year old occasionally bruises his nearly four year old brother. And Bo was sad. And we said, “Myles, that was not nice. It is not kind to hit your brother. You need to say sorry.” And he pondered for a minute. Bo gave Myles a glance back, unsure whether Myles was heading in his direction for reconciliation or to continue the bruising.

But there Myles went, arms outstretched, toward his brother. And it was, without any words or babbles, as sincere of an embrace as I’ve ever seen between two people. It was a moment where my soul reminded my body that it was still in there. It was a moment where God gave me a look at my inner-compass, and it reminded me I was on the right path. 

I never know when those moments are going to come, and sometimes they’re reminders that I’ve veered. But when those moments happens, I am consoled. Because even though they aren’t the mile markers of progress that my egotistical self craves, they are reminders that I am on the right path, heading toward home.

And as much as I would like to, I can’t put moments like that into some sort of scorecard or graph. Those sorts of moments,  where God shares the light see my compass, and reminds me to look, defy measurement. There are so random and nuanced, they can’t be counted or formed into a pattern.

But at least those glimpses are there, consolations to help orient us in a life we want to measure but can’t. It’s still so hard. Because we, who were once young men, are trying so hard not to waste this life, and trying so hard to put one foot in front of the other and eventually reach home. All I want to do is measure something to prove I’m not failing, but what I’m realizing I’m left with is unexpected trail markers which signal whether I’ve veered from the right path or not.

Because at the end of the day, life defies measurement.

Riley’s lesson in fatherhood

Riley couldn’t stand to be alone with me for at least three solid months after we first adopted him. Riley happens to be a dog, by the way. We don’t know exactly why, but we suspect he had some bad experiences with men before he became part of our family.

I remember one morning, I was feeding Riley before work. At the recommendation of a friend, I had been in the habit of feeding Riley from his bowl with my hand. Apparently, that’s a technique used by handlers of military and police dogs (or something like that) that builds trust between the dog and their partner.

This particular morning, Riley was refusing to eat. He wouldn’t eat anything from my palm. I distinctly remember, I was on the linoleum floor in the kitchen of our tiny apartment, literally on my hands and knees, trying to coax Riley to eat. Dude wouldn’t budge.

And so we sat there. 5 minutes went by, then 10, and 15. Maybe even 20 minutes had passed. I was fuming because Riley was refusing to eat and I needed to hop in the shower to avoid being late for work. And yet, nothing. Kid wouldn’t eat, and would just point his snout in the opposite direction, rebuffing my offer of kibble for breakfast. I was losing my mind, and getting progressively angrier.

When I was at my wit’s end, I had this idea. What if I “spoke Riley’s language” and growled and howled at him. I figured that if I showed enough aggression, it might startle him into eating - you know, put him on the defensive.

In retrospect, this was obviously a terrible idea and a horrible approach to even contemplate. Looking back on it, I can’t believe I even tried it, because it’s obviously callous. Unsurprisingly, it had no effect. Riley still wouldn’t eat.

And during this excruciatingly stupid experiment, I had an epiphany. I realized that I couldn’t control Riley. Even though he was a dog, and even though I had pretty much all the real power in our relationship, I literally couldn’t control him - I couldn’t make him eat.

But in addition to not having the ability to control Riley, I realized that I didn’t want to control Riley. Because as I growled and got in Riley’s face on our kitchen floor, I realized that to control Riley, I might have to go the distance. I might have to make him submit to me. I might have to get in his face for weeks. I might have to yank his collar and threaten him or shame him with persistence. Because in Riley’s case, I knew he wouldn’t budge easily; it was clear his issues with men were deep-rooted.

To control him, I realized, I might put myself on a slippery slope that started with a desire for obedience but ended in physical or emotional abuse. Because if Riley kept refusing food, for example, I’d have to increase the intensity of whatever control tactic I was using. And if I had to exert dominance to control him for something like food, some other behavior of obedience was probably next. And then, what would be there to stop me from crossing the line from control to abuse?

The alternative, I decided in that moment, while I was literally hand-feeding Riley on my knees in our apartment, was to treat Riley as an equal. Not equal in the sense that he was a peer - after all, I do have a duty and responsibility to take care of and raise Riley - but as someone worth of equal treatment and respect.

Which is a radically different perspective, especially for a dog. And it looks really different to raise and care for a dog if I’m trying to treat him with equal respect, rather than trying to control him. In practice, it meant that I had to earn his trust to eat from my hand, rather than trying to bully him into it. I had to be incredibly consistent with trying to calm him down on walks in the neighborhood rather than yanking him around on his leash every time he stopped to smell a rock or chase a squirrel.

As is said by Mary Poppins, in the iconic film, I had to be “always firm, but never cross.” And that takes tremendous patience, nudging, trust, and self-control. And honestly, everything takes so much longer when you’re actively trying not to control him. And it took months to even get Riley to show any signs of progress or positive feeling toward me.

And, if I’m being transparent - there have been lots of  times since that morning in the kitchen where I’ve exploded at Riley and regressed into this dynamic where I utilize control tactics instead of tactics governed by the principles of equal treatment and respect. 

And I don’t how it would’ve turned out if I had kept trying to control him, but Riley and I do have a great relationship now - he trusts me and I trust him.  Everyday is still a challenge (especially when the mail carrier shows up in the middle of a Zoom call), but it’s okay that our relationship is still a work in progress.

The lesson from all this has been profound, as I’ve become a father to our sons. I realized the situation with Riley was more generalizable: if I want to control anyone’s behavior - Riley’s, our sons’, my colleagues’, my wife’s or anyone else - it might require me to abuse them at some point. Which leaves me with a choice: try to control someone and risk crossing a line, or, let go of wanting to control them in the first place.

But actively choosing not to control someone is difficult, as any parent would probably attest. When our sons are yelling at me, kicking me, and sometimes literally trying to spit in my face, I want to control them so that they stop. When we’re late to go somewhere, I want to control them so that they pick up the pace. At these high-pressure times It’s really hard to treat them as an equal, because it’s honestly incredibly inconvenient to do so. Having control of them would be so much easier!

And this approach of treating my sons as my equal is incredibly hard, for a few reasons. For one, sometimes my children need me to take control of a difficult situation because they’re too young to assess or handle the consequences of their actions. And controlling a situation and controlling them is a slippery slope in and of itself. But perhaps more so, I feel like I’ve been programmed to control my kids, not treat them as equals. The language and concepts our culture uses around children reinforces obedience and control. We’re expected not to have our kids throw tantrums in public. We use the words “mommy” and “papa” in the third person which reinforces the positional, hierarchical relationship between parent and child, at least somewhat. And in the back of my mind there’s always this simmering pressure of wanting my kids to be “successful” so they can earn a living and be independent someday, yes, but also because I know my children are a reflection on me. So yes, I feel like there are cultural tailwinds that encourage me to “control” our children.

But that experience on the floor trying to growl Riley into eating his breakfast left a lasting impression in my mind. I can’t shake the thought that control over someone else might require abusing them, in some way, eventually. And so I’m trying to imagine, “if I parented our sons not as peers but still as equals, what would that look like?” I’m still trying to figure it out, but it’s involved a lot of “I messages”, candor, patience, and transparency.

And honestly, I’m still really terrible at this approach to parenting. I slip into control-freak mode often with Bo and Myles, especially when we’re around hot frying pans, vehicular traffic, and sharp objects. But I think it’s worth it to keep trying. 

Because what happens when they’re adults if all I’ve done their whole lives is try to control what they do? They’ll eventually have the freedom to make their own choices, would they know how to handle that freedom if I’ve stolen the chance for them to explore it their whole lives? I feel like I owe it to them to try, and fail my way through it. Hopefully, someday I’ll get it right.