Showing Up Is The First Choice

Listening is the key.

We can love, maybe anyone, after we listen to their story. We can understand and solve many challenges if we are curious enough to listen and learn and understand. Relationships of trust and respect are built upon listening, more than anything else, perhaps. Listening to and knowing our own hearts, strengths, and unrelenting desires is a non-negotiable aspect of finding our way.

And from a posture of listening comes the core foundation of inner strength: courage, persistence, and integrity. I really believe this deeply, and as I’ve aged I’ve come to see listening as the under-appreciated linchpin of character and morality.

If listening is the key unlocking greater virtues, the key to listening is showing up. Only after showing up does listening even become possible. I know this without any empirical data.

I know this when I creep into my inbox, and Robert starts to inexplicably lash out at his brother. I know this when the energy in a work meeting changes based on the percentage of people who have their camera on vs. the percentage who are multi-tasking with their camera off. I know this when Robyn mentions that “Myles was asking for ya” at story time when I’m away on a business trip. I know this when I’ve glazed over half a chapter of my nightstand reading because I’m thinking about my to do list.

I know this when I’m rocking Emmett back to sleep, fuming about the slights I’ve perceived from the day, and he doesn’t settle into sleep on my shoulder until I’ve shifted my thinking to his breathing. I know this when I remember what it’s like to go on a date with Robyn and I’m finally hearing her again, not even realizing that I’ve forgotten how to listen.

And though I can wax about it’s importance, showing up is so hard. We can travel so cheaply, to get anywhere but here. We can be any place in the known universe with a smartphone. We can work from anywhere. We can retreat from the present challenge and justify just about anything under the auspices of “I deserve this” or “self-care”. We can disappear into our to do list, because it never ends anyway.

And there, too, is great distraction in struggle. There is hunger. There is disease. There is violence. There is The fear of missing out. There is uncertainty and mean spiritedness. There is the fear of not being enough or a life without meaning. These struggles are a barrier to showing up.

And most insidious of all, we can tell ourselves we can stop showing up if someone we love seems like they’ve stopped first. Tit for tat. it’s only fair. “He did it first” makes it okay, right?

Showing up is a choice. Rather, showing up is many little choices.

It’s the choice to get enough sleep. Or to put the phone away at dinner. It’s the choice to put a boundary on work hours. It’s the choice to meditate and do yoga to build concentration. It’s the choice to eat nutritious food and drink adequate water to prevent the body from distracting the present.

Showing up is the choice to make eye contact, and not scurry into our house to avoid talking with our neighbor. It’s the choice to hear out our proverbial weird uncle or aunt at Thanksgiving dinner. It’s the choice to not weasel out of a commitment when we get better plans. It’s the choice to breathe deeply instead of letting our attention run wild.

In a world of limitless choice, where we can be almost anywhere physically and digitally, showing up is a choice in itself.

I struggle with this. Most of the time, I act on autopilot and don’t actively choose to show up or not. It just happens or it doesn’t.

Like, literally yesterday I had an AirPod in my ear listening to the Michigan game while we had a family afternoon painting pumpkins and playing soccer, in Long Island, with family we flew across the country to see. In retrospect, why did I need to multitask for the sake of a football game? I was on autopilot.

And perhaps choosing whether or not to show up is not the greatest of all choices. That honor belongs to the choice of whether or not to become a better person. But even if it’s not the greatest choice, choosing to show up is our first moral choice. I must remember this, it is a choice. Showing up is a choice. It’s step one.

Before anything, I must stew on this deeply in my bones: will I choose to show up? And I must repeat the echo the answer in my head as a mantra: Yes, I can choose to show up. I can choose to show up. I can choose to show up.

Photo: Unsplash (@a_kehmeir).

We get to watch things grow

How do I live?

How do I live without you?

Will I ever?

—

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

How do I live?

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

How do I live without you?

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

Will I ever?

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

—

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

—

Scene 1, Brotherly Love

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

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

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

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

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

—

Scene 2, Stolen Moments

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

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

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

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

—

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

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

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

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