The fear of wasting our talent; living a happy but unremarkable life

The funny thing is, I still feel this dread, even though every day I have bubbles, and even overflows, with joy.

This, decidedly, the life I chose and I wanted. “Family first” is our mantra and “It’s a good life, babe” is our refrain. We have a fairly simple life that’s fun, and fulfilling. And joyous. And meaningful. Our days, admittedly, are remarkable mostly because of their consistency.

Our kids waddle into our room, wearing their pajamas of course, at about 6 AM on most days. Robyn and I work our jobs. If it’s a school day, we go through our morning routine with the kids and “do drop off” as a family. If it’s a “home day” we all move a little slower as I prep for the work day and Robyn prepares herself for a day with the kids - mixing in walks with Riley, swim lessons, doctors appointments, snacks, and other modest mischief and adventure throughout the day. 

What anchors our day, on most days, is a free-flowing sequence of cooking dinner while the kids play, followed by a family dinner, dessert, tooth-brushing, potty, pajamas, two stories, and a lullaby before tucking them in.

Our nights and weekends waltz and sashay with different versions of roughly the same activities. We do whatever remainder of work we haven’t crunched through during the day, which luckily isn’t as pervasive, urgent, or stinging as when we both worked in public service. We have chores that never seem quite finished - dishes for me, laundry for Robyn. In the rare instance we watch television, it’s either a British detective drama like Endeavour, or a music competition like The Voice or The Masked Singer.

If it’s a weekend, our chores remain but are different (groceries don’t buy themselves, yet, at least). Our excursions outside are a little longer and a little more like a sauntering ramble than the focused, brisk walk Robyn and I take with Riley at lunchtime when we’re both working from home. 

And then there are the weekend’s mix-ins. We take Bo to soccer practice and try to go to church and participate in civic and cultural life as best we can. We do our best to see our family once a weekend and nurture friendships with our small group of close ties, our neighbors, or extended family. We both steal away an hour of exercise, as many times we can.

I try to write and chip in to the efforts of the neighborhood association and Robyn tries to explore her budding interest in photography, plans trips, and tries to support the other young moms she knows through small but deliberate acts of kindness.

The moment of the week I relish most, probably, is a short window between 8 and 10pm Friday nights. That’s the one part of the week where Robyn and I are most likely to be able to spend together, doing nothing but enjoy each other’s company. This, again, is remarkable only because of the consistency of our activity - we watch a show perhaps, open up a bottle of wine, fire up the power recline feature of our La-Z-Boy love seat, and or listen to some light music while absorbing and reflecting on the last week of our life. It is the time of week, I feel most comfortable.

This is our life. And as I said, it would otherwise be unremarkable if not for its consistency. Because it truly is unglamous, and seriously is not for everyone. Plenty of people would probably go bonkers under our roof, as we would under theirs.

But for us it works. Because as consistently unremarkable our daily grind is, the moments of laughter, joy, love, and gleefully, willing suffering & sacrifice - the moments we live for - are consistent and remarkable.

It’s hard to explain, but there’s an inexplicable ease and warmth I feel when our sons cast spells of “giant golf ball powers!” completely unannounced. Or when we have 60 minutes of struggle and yelling and tears to get out the door, only to spend an hour and a half with someone at their birthday party. Or when we get to walk outside and see the majestic 100-year old trees triumphantly changing color down our block. And there are dozens more small moments like this, which are unremarkable in isolation, but their consistency feels remarkable.

This is the life dreamed of when I was wandering through the badlands as a younger man. It’s the life Robyn and I wanted together and that we both still want, even though we have to hustle for it damn near every day. It is a happy life, made more exquisite by how challenging and sacrificing it is.

This is the life we chose, intended with each other. It is a life on purpose. Every day is a good day, truly. Our life is admittedly quite opposite of a novel, flashy life - much closer to boring than glamorous, more like monochrome than technicolor. But it’s still a thrilling adventure - healthy, prosperous, joyful, and meaningful,

And yet, I hear the echoes of my father’s stubbornly accented voice and the dream-like memory of him talking to me in the kitchen of my family home - “you are a very capable person,” he said, in a way that was straining, almost exasperated even, to make me understand how serious he was.

And then, on top of my serene and happy state of mind, the existential dread sets in.

I have been brainwashing myself to stop comparing myself to others for the better part of a decade. And I’m mostly there, I don’t feel jealously of my peers like I used to. I don’t have the addiction to keep up with the Joneses or stack up my professional resume like I used to. Instead of being acute, my inclination to social comparison and seeking the approval of others is now more of a chronic condition - something I can manage and live with, rather than having to treat intensely after a bad episode. I am more comfortable doing my own thing than I ever have, and I have a better grasp of what “doing my own thing” or “being myself” actually means, than I ever have in my whole life.

This relatively nascent state of contentment has come from looking inward. It has come from consistent, intense, reflection trying to understand my inner world and how that inner-self can integrate with the broader world. I suppose you could say, I’ve tried to put into practice an “examined life” as Socrates put it in Plato’s Apology.

But in that act of examination, I haven’t been able to help but contemplate whether I’ve lived up to my Father’s assessment of my talent, or even my own assessment of my own capabilities.

Because it’s true, I am a capable person, even if I was afraid to accept the responsibility that came with acknowledging those capabilities for most of my life. And so I wonder, have I lived up to what I’m capable of? How much of my talent and time have I squandered?

To be clear, I’m under no delusion (anymore) that given different choices, I’d be more wealthy of famous than I am now. The way I operate and think, I’ve accepted, it not attractive of fat profits or paparazzi. And, I know for sure that I’m not a once in a generation genius whose wasted talent has become a missed opportunity to bend the trajectory of humanity.

What I long for and am haunted by, however, is contribution. Meaning, lower-case “c” contribution. Like how many more people’s days could I have made by now, had I made different or better choices? And by different choices, I don’t even mean sacrificing family or my own sanity to work harder or longer hours. But maybe if I had focused differently, or made different choices on the margins, or gotten drunk on fewer weekends in my twenties, or just tapped into my talents more intentionally or earlier..

How much higher would the literacy rate be if I applied myself to it? How many fewer people in Detroit would have been shot or killed had I stayed in public service for longer or been better at my job? How many companies could I have started by now if I acted on one of the dozens of businesses that I’d thought of with my buddies that ended up becoming profitable enterprises? How many people could I have brought out of a dark place had I lived up to how capable I actually am and been more generous? What might’ve happened if I buckled down and finished this book two years ago? How might the world be a little different, and hopefully better, if I were better and contributing my gifts?

Perhaps the dread I feel is better described as remorse. I have everything I dreamed of, and it truly is enough - I feel fully happy, complete and satisfied. And yet, I feel this guilt and a lingering malaise because I know I had more in the tank to give. I know that in a different version of my life, somewhere else in the multiverse, I would’ve been able to create a cherished and charmed home life while making a greater contribution to the world outside our backyard.

And I suppose it’s true that life is long, and many people don’t hit their stride until well past middle age, some even not until their sixties or seventies. It’s just this bizarre reality where I feel confident in the choices that I made, feel blessed and complete in the life I have, but still feel the heaviness of imagining counter-factual life.

I wonder often if this must be a new phenomenon for people coming of age. Because now, for people coming of age right now, we have a much broader understanding of the world and our role in it. The amount of information we have or travel we can do or people we can interact with, gives us a difficult awareness both of who we are and how we influence others. This heaviness of imagining a counter-factual life probably wasn’t possible for nearly as many people even 30 years ago.

What I’ve tried to take relief is is that despite how informed or worldly we can be in today’s time, we still know very little of how far our actions actually travel. We don’t know the extent of the wake we’ve created for others to be cared for, to grow, to live more freely, or to thrive. Because now, the contribution and goodwill of our actions can travel much farther than they could 30 years ago. This is true because of how globalized our world is, even if most of us aren’t destined to have a litany of press clips to our name because of what we do on this earth.

What I hope for now is that even though most of the contributions that most of us are able to make are unremarkable, we just keep doing them. Over and over. If we consistently put good things out into the world, maybe just maybe it will turn to be remarkable and make an extraordinary contribution. With any luck, if we’re at least consistent in being unremarkable we’ll be towards the end of our lives and we’ll see that our talents weren’t squandered and we’d been making a remarkable contribution all along.

Snapping out of social comparison

When I’m stuck in a rut of feeling like I don’t measure up to others’ accomplishments, the advice of “remember how lucky you are” or “don’t compare yourself to others” or “focus on being the best possible version of you” just doesn’t work for me. It never has.

And in general I suppose those are good pieces of advice. They just don’t help me get out of a cycle of comparing my accomplishments to the people I went to school with or am friends with on LinkedIn.

Most Saturdays, these days at least, we go on a family walk. We live a few blocks away from a neighborhood coffee shop and we go after breakfast. Bo gets a hot chocolate with whipped cream, Robyn gets a coffee with milk, and I treat myself to a mocha - it is the weekend after all. Riley gets a extra long walk with extra time for smells and Myles is content just looking around and feeling the breeze go by as he rides in the stroller’s front seat.

And today, instead of trying to convince myself to stop feeling down about not being as accomplished as my peers, I started to wonder about trade-offs. After all, I made choices - for better or worse - that led to the spot I’m in today. And I wondered, if I had made different choices, what would I have had to sacrifice?

And I quickly realized, if I had made different choices that led to more professional success (which is mostly what drives my feelings of insufficiency, relative to my peers) I would’ve probably had to give up two things: living in Michigan and being a present husband and father. Which are two sacrifices I was absolutely not willing to make.

More or less, this was the thought exercise I went through:

And sure, after doing this exercise there were a few things that I regret and would do differently, like working harder on graduate school apps or sacrificing some of house budget for lawn care (I am irrationally embarrassed about how much crabgrass and brown patches we have on our lawn).

But by and large, thinking about the sacrifices making different choices would’ve required helped me to snap out of the doom loop of social comparison. Trying to ignore the feeling of not measuring up never works. Think about sacrifices and trade offs, was remarkably helpful.

If you also struggle with measuring yourself up to others’ accomplishments, I hope this reframing of the question is helpful to you too.

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.

Joy, Sacrifice, and Cattails

“These are cattails, Papa!”

When we were at the Metropark, I had another one of those moments where I can see the world through our sons’ eyes. “Dang,” I thought, “Bo finds joy, somehow, wherever he is.”

And I began to contemplate, how does he do that? Bo was as happy, peaceful, and silly-seeking as he ever is finding Cattails with Mommy and chasing Dadi around a tree, on this grassy pointe we were on at this lake, on an otherwise unremarkable Saturday morning. 

And I was nostalgic, perhaps even a bit jealous as I watched him, laughing and enjoying the outside.

What happens to us along the way that makes it so that such little pleasures aren’t enough?

Later that week it hit me, one day our sons will grow out of this mindset too, and it will be my fault. 

As they grow, I will teach them to sacrifice for the future. I will have no choice but to. Trade one cookie now for two cookies later sort of stuff. Or, study now so you can earn a living later. Or, that kid came a long way to play here, want to help him up the slide instead of going yourself?

All the examples, and more, are ones that hold the basic structure of: invest for the future so the future can be better, it will be worth the wait.

And that point of view, will probably lead to him believing that there’s more to life than cattails, so to speak. 

As part of this growing up and learning to sacrifice, he will form beliefs on what “better” and “worth the wait” are. And my big gasp came when I realized that he will learn that from me. 

As he learns to make sacrifice, his perceptions of why we should sacrifice will come from me. Should it be to lift up ourselves, or lift up others? Should we always strive for more? What is valuable, money and status? Character? Nature? Family? Being popular? Faith? 

My example will dramatically influence what our boys will perceive as valuable and therefore what they sacrifice for. 

I hope we can live up to that responsibility. And with any luck, at my age, Bo will still find joy in little things like cattails on a sunny day at the lake. 

Is it worth it?

Here are some examples that contrast ends and means:

Is it worth it to shame and ridicule your kids if they end up getting into a top 5 college?

Is it noble to trash that company on the internet on your way out, if they trashed you while you worked there?

Is it worth it to pocket a bank error in your favor even if you catch it? What if your kids need new sports equipment?

Is a CEO who harasses his reports off the hook if they beat earnings targets consistently?

What if it’s a politician that you know will get people like you a big tax cut?

Is it worth it to work over Christmas and neglect your family if it guarantees that next promotion?

Is it okay to ignore your lonely but annoying neighbor because you really need to unload your groceries?

Is it okay to stir the pot to get more clicks?

Is it passable to make fun of the “weird” person on the team to prevent the others from turning on you?

It is on us to determine whether the ends justify the means.

And to be sure, a lot of great things can be achieved without resorting to immoral or amoral behavior. In fact, most things probably can, though it might take longer and be more difficult.

I can’t compel you or anyone else to take a position on this questions of ends vs. means.

But I do leave you with this radical notion: the ends might not ever justify the means.