Tears and Laughter Make us Rich

Every Christmas, Robyn and I watch It’s A Wonderful Life together, and every year I cry harder.

This year, I felt myself resisting, but eventually, I let myself go. And when Harry Bailey walked in the door and said, “A toast, to my big brother George, the richest man in town,” I just wept.

And it’s not just this film, I’ve noticed. When I read A Sick Day for Amos McGee at bedtime, I cry harder and smile bigger because the simple story of friendship between a zookeeper and his animal friends reminds me of my own experiences of friendship. When I hear the song Joe, I can’t help but feel my lips tremble mid-verse while I’m singing it in the car, even though I’ve never lived through addiction or recovery. It just gets me, because the protagonist—a gas station attendant—is a hero because of the content of his character and his success in slaying his own demons, not because of any external measures of success.

Or in Finding Nemo, now, I cry for different reasons in both eyes. When Nemo and Marlin reunite, I now understand the perspective of both father and son. And I find myself marveling at the beauty, relevance, and power of children’s stories—these tales we dismiss as childish often hold the simplest and truest wisdom.

And when I watch comedy specials—whether it’s Matt Rife, Hasan Minhaj, Dave Chappelle, or Trevor Noah—I laugh and laugh and laugh in ways I didn’t know were possible without being a bit drunk with my college friends at the pub.

As we get older, we just get it more. Because, if we’re doing this right with each passing year, we’ve actually lived more.

I see now how courageous it is to be an everyday guy who consistently swims upstream to do the right thing, like George Bailey does in that classic film. In a way, writing the book Character by Choice has been my attempt to figure out how to be more like George Bailey.

I find him so remarkable as an example of what a good, everyday man can look like. Because at the end, George doesn’t even “win” in the conventional sense. He doesn’t walk away with a big payout or a victory over the villainous Mr. Potter—he’s still a modest business owner. But his years of sacrifice are validated when the rest of Bedford Falls comes to his aid.

Now, I get how special it is to sacrifice for others and to accept the sacrifices they make for me.

And I also see the mirror universe of what my life could’ve been, just like George Bailey does after he “saves” his guardian angel, Clarence. It’s like I started making choices for myself as a teenager, and each of those choices was a fork in the road—left or right. Over time, those choices compounded as I kept making right turns. Again and again, at each fork, I went right.

And now I see so clearly what my life could’ve been. I could’ve been richer, with fewer kids and responsibilities, probably living in Washington, D.C., or San Francisco. That version of me would’ve had a nicer house and a more vibrant professional and social life. But would it have been a universe where I was here with Robyn, Riley, Robert, Myles, and Emmett? Probably not.

Honestly, I would’ve probably found a way to rationalize my story if I had made all those left turns instead of right. I might have convinced myself I was content. But damn, I’m glad I’m here and not somewhere else. And that clear, honest realization—that it may never have been this way—keeps my heart from stiffening.

And so the tears flow.

Maybe this is good, maybe it isn’t. Maybe it’s a sign of strength, maybe a sign of weakness. Maybe both. Honestly, I don’t really care. I’d rather avoid the culture wars and punditry about men and crying. That kind of commentary—no matter where it comes from—feels reductive and unnecessary.

Because at a minimum, I think crying and laughing harder is an indicator of acceptance—of life and all that it brings. It’s a sign that I’m letting myself live life—letting it soak into my bones and my soul, rather than keeping it at arm’s length.

It’s not the choice everyone makes, but for me, I can only hope that as I age, I let myself live more and more. I can only hope that with each passing year I cry harder and laugh harder. Because in my own way, that makes me feel like one of the richest men in town.

“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.

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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 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.

Gratitude and grief for slow-feeling time

My thirty-third year was not actually longer or shorter than any other trip of mine around our sun. Every day I was thirty three, still had 24 hours in it and it still had three hundred sixty five whole days, each with a sunrise and sunset.

And yet, thirty three will be the age I held onto the longest.

It was the year that we put everything on hold. We held off on house projects and trips. We held off on swim lessons and soccer practices. Instead, it was just us, our family, our close friends, and our neighbors. And  everything was slow-feeling. It was like we could savor each day just a little more because we were holding off on letting our lives change with the seasons.

But I don’t think I’ll remember this longest-age-I-ever-was year, exactly as the year of “slow-feeling” time. I’ll remember the year that our boys realized they were brothers. I’ll remember the year Myles became a walking, talking, bruiser and Bo got his big-heart and his imagination. I’ll remember the year Robyn and I had so much time together, and we started this ritual of turning to each other and saying, “Hey babe, it’s a good life.” I’ll remember the year Riley finally trusted me enough to become father and son.

It was all so slow-feeling because we were just stewing and simmering in all of it - all the muck and the tantrums and the love, tears, chocolate chip cookies, and all the grief and singing and hugs, and uncertainty and glorious monotony. That is what I will remember from the age I held the longest.

The day I turned thirty-four we played tennis at the park. It was our immediate family. Our boys running to and fro, Robert minding the net with his new racket, for the first time. And perhaps symbolically, I literally ran out of the soles of my shoes. And none of us said it, but playing tennis as a family was like the unofficial end of this year that was stewing, and simmering, and slow-feeling. We pulled the pot from the stove and that was that.

In short spurts I’ve noticed this gift of slow-feeling time starting to fade away. Our friends are starting to become busy again. We are running more errands or heading into offices every once in awhile. We’re talking about swim lessons and soccer practices like we were 18 months ago. We’re doing house projects and planning trips. Our friends and family are starting new jobs, moving cities, and making moves again. The sizzling and crackling of fast-feeling time is coming back.

And I have had this chewing feeling that I haven’t been able to put my nose on until today. It’s grief. 

I’m thirty four now and the year of my longest held age, in all it’s muck and wonder, is over. With all the relief of vaccines, and reopening, and reunions, life has resumed it’s forward motion, yes. The year of slow-feeling time is over.

And I know I can’t hold onto my boys at this wonderful age any longer. They’re going to make up grow their way through lost time. Robyn and I will have more days where we are ships passing in the night. Riley’s snout will get grayer, and so will I. Everyone we love will be busier.

And it won’t be any faster or slower than it ever was. But it will feel faster. It will feel like I’m having to let go more. It will feel like a changed season and a new era. And it all will feel too fast, just like it did before I was thirty three.

And I guess what I’m asking for, Father, is a blessing. A blessing of friendships that endure as the seasons change. The blessing of having time feel slow every now and again. The blessing of gratitude for glorious monotony. The blessing of memories and stories and celebrations we can remember as our hair grays. 

Thank you, Father, wherever you are out there, for the gift of slow-feeling time and the chance to understand it so early in life. Please bless us with more birthdays to cherish and the good sense to age with grace.

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.

Coaxing my best self to show up

Historically, the time between hitting the snooze button on my alarm and getting out of bed has been the worst part of my day.

One of two things usually happens. One, I might immediately open my phone and start scrolling through facebook, which gets me amped because of the memes and sensational posts. Or, my mind starts to run through my to-do list, and I feel like garbage out of the gate because I’m always behind and that’s the first emotion I’m feeling to start the day.

Either way, I never fall back asleep, which makes me feel even worse because I’ve wasted 9 (or 18 or 27) minutes of my day on top of putting myself into a bad mood. This cycle repeats, every day. 

And every day our culture is like Lucy pulling the football out from under me, and I’m Charlie Brown thinking today is different and ending up on my ass before I’ve even put my slippers on.

This past week, I’ve been trying an alternative snooze cycle.

I’m in bed, my eyes are closed, and I’m cycling through my day. But instead of dreadfully asking, “what do I have to do today?” I’m thinking, “what would my day look and feel like today if I were being the best version of myself?”

And I visualize in my head, myself, going through my day at my best. Hour by hour, I’m feeling my attitude and my body. I’m imagining how I am treating others. I’m thinking about how I’m approach the day’s work if I’m at my peak. I’m thinking about times when my day is going to spiral out of control, and I’m feeling in my bones how to bring it back to balance. I’m thinking less about what I have to do, and more about how I’m going to act.

It’s a dress rehearsal for the day. And it takes about 3 minutes.

I remember from dance recitals  growing up, what dress rehearsal feels like. It’s different than rehearsals at the studio, because you’re in the space you’ll be performing and you’re actually wearing the clothes and costume as if it’s the real thing. It’s as close to the real thing as it gets without performing in the actual show.

But there’s less pressure because it’s not the recital; you know it’s not the real show. Which makes it a risk-free rep. But dress rehearsals are amazing because they help your body know what the real thing will be like, for the most part. So when the real show happens, you’re as ready as you can be.

I tried “dress rehearsal for the day” visualization once, and I was hooked. I’ve done it every day since. As I went throughout my day, after the first morning of doing this exercise, I felt like I was in a prepared posture instead of a defensive one. When things started going badly during my day, it’s like my mind and body had muscle memory kick in to recognize that something was wrong and self-correct.

The truth is, I have not been at my best for the past few months. I have been getting angrier at my children more quickly. Resentment piles up faster when I perceive an affront of disrespect from my family or at work. I am more overwhelmed by my to-do list. I have been in a state of general malaise more days out of the week, then I was a year ago. And like most mortal men, when tension piles up, it leads to conflict more often than it would otherwise.

And I don’t want more conflict in my life. I don’t want to be that resentful husband. I don’t want to be that angry father. I don’t want to be that self-absorbed neighbor or colleague.

The problem is, life has trade offs. In addition to not wanting to feel so much tension, I don’t want to give up on the priorities I care about that give me this tension in the first place. Nor do I want to to accept this tension and have a short fuse basically all the time.

There’s one way I see out of this trade off, and that’s to be my best self: behaving with a better attitude and a clearer mind throughout the day. Because my best self is better equipped to deal with this tension than my average self is. My best self creates growth and love from tension, my average self gets washed over by it.

But it’s not easy to get him to show up all the time, even though I want him to. Which is not unique to me, I think. I think a lot of us want our best self to show up more often.

This dress rehearsal visualization has helped my best self show up more regularly (at least a little), which is why I wanted to share it with others.

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.