In a 2013 essay in The Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates writes of Saul Bellow’s question, “Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus?” Analyzing Bellow’s question, Coates makes note of writer Ralph Wiley’s excellent response. “Tolstoy is the Tolstoy of the Zulus. Unless you find a profit in fencing off universal properties of mankind into exclusive tribal ownership.”
It is good to see things the way Wiley does. Creations as the universal property of humankind.
To observe you all in the kitchen making cupcakes today brought me such joy. For each of you to make your own flavors, each with a unique theme—Nature, Love and Smoothies—was impressive. My joy came not from the actual process itself, which was very messy, but from seeing each of you completely focused, energized and passionate about what you were doing. Taking pride in the activity. Fully invested in the outcome. The best was your giddiness and smiles. My joy came from your joy. As a parent, I realized that when you are happy, I am happiest.
Embrace music, languages, mathematics and reading. Wharton professor and author of Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World, Adam Grant, referenced an interesting study, which showed that Nobel Prize winning scientists are twice as likely as their peers to play a musical instrument, seven times as likely to draw or paint, twelve times as likely to write fiction or poetry, and twenty-two times as likely to perform as dancers, actors or magicians.”
On many occasions throughout my childhood I witnessed my dad giving money to people on the street. It is not because he had extra money to give away. He had a wife and four children to support, and a family business that was on the brink of collapse more than once. He did it because, as he once said, “That person needed the money more than I do.”
Never overthink charity. Be quick to give. You will certainly hear advice to the contrary. Some will say that the people you are giving money to will use it to buy liquor or drugs. They’ll say that most people on the street are perfectly capable of getting a job. You will hear these people call the homeless all sort of disparaging names. Where this hostility comes from, I can’t speculate, nor can I relate.
My advice to you is to not to concern yourself with what someone might do with a small handout, or why they aren’t gainfully employed even though they appear at first sight to be perfectly capable of work. Discerning one’s situation is not that simple. All you have to know is that they are suffering. If your contribution can in any way ease their despair, even for a short time, it is worthwhile.
A person on the street does not want to be there. This is not how they saw their life going. To be on the street is a desperate and dangerous predicament and to me it does not matter how they got there. Maybe they weren’t born into an environment that offered the opportunities you have been afforded, and therefore have been at a disadvantage from the start. Maybe they have an affliction or an addiction they cannot overcome. Maybe their story is even more tragic.
Whatever circumstances brought about their homelessness, there are a few things of which you can be certain. You are lucky, they are not, and showing compassion is never the wrong choice. It is our duty.
Everywhere I go, I make a concerted effort to act as ambassador, representing whatever label might be attached to me in a given place. For example, when I travel abroad, I act as an ambassador to my country. When I interact with people of different ethnicities, I see myself as an ambassador to my race. When I communicate with women, I am an ambassador of men. When people visit from elsewhere, I am an ambassador to our home town. I even go as far as to act as an ambassador to my university alma mater, engaging happily with opposing fans on those lucky occasions I am able to return to campus for a football game.
This is a simple thing to do, and the value far exceeds the effort it takes to do it. Make connections, greet people warmly, say hello and ask them how they are doing. When possible, engage in conversation, even if it goes no further than a brief exchange of pleasantries. When the interaction concludes, wish them well. These gestures, while subtle and seemingly insignificant, generate good-will between people, they lift people’s spirits, and thus, carry far more value than one may realize.
Be aware of the things around us that bring about a feeling of magic. Be attentive. Observe keenly. Listen. As V.S. Naipaul wrote in The Enigma of Arrival, “see the way weather and light redesigns disregarded things.” During a summer road trip we listened to a reading of this passage by the Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard. You can find it in The New Yorker’s Fiction podcast. To hear an excerpt of this book read by Knausgaard, in his quiet, monotone, Norwegian voice, is like listening to a meditation. I am pretty sure it put you all to sleep on that drive, but I do encourage you to return to it when you are older. Pay attention to the details of your surroundings. It is this level of observation which invites magic into our everyday lives.
Last week I had a dream that replayed vividly in my mind the moment I awoke. What I remembered of this dream was a scene that took place in a doctor’s office. The very doctor’s office I visit when I am sick, with my actual doctor, Dr. M__, looking just as she did the last time I saw her, more than five years ago. My memory of the dream picks up at the very moment a diagnosis was being delivered. Dr. M__ stated, very matter of factly, that I had two years to live. I reacted to this final verdict with the calmness and practicality of one who had long been prepared for such news. Somehow, I was okay with it. The comfort, I believe, was due in part to the knowledge that I would have time to finish this book. I had two full years. My focus was now singular. Complete this book. All else fell away. What a gift!
In my life, there are many things I have done that I am ashamed of, most of which happened in my youth. I am sure there are many fathers that would attest to the same. I am not a brave enough person to confess these mistakes to you. I understand an argument can be made to the value of my teaching “lessons” based on personal errors in judgment. Lesson’s learned the hard way, as they say, that through their telling could prevent you from suffering a similar mishap. It could be that such a book would require multiple volumes, and I do not have the time nor the desire to carry out such an examination of the poor decisions I have made over the course of my life.
Therefore I rely the Buddhist philosophy that states there is no past, nor a future, only the present. Besides, how many father’s bare their most humiliating sins to their children? And would you not have skipped a chapter titled “My Sins” should I have included one? If you for some reason wish I had delved into the dark recesses of memory, read St. Augustine’s Confessions and apply whatever of his sins to me that you wish. I have only read excerpts of his tell-all diary, but am sure that of his sins I have committed many. There. Done.
Which brings me back to the point of this book, which is simply to leave some piece of my soul for you. You, the dearest of all that is meaningful in my life. You, that brings me the greatest joy in life. You, to whom I devote my undying love and support. You, to whom I wish to remain close to forever. And since forever is only possible in the spiritual realm, an unknowing and often questioned realm existing only in faith, I must take advantage of what we have for certain, which is this moment, and leave you this small book that I hope will make clear just how much I love you.
“If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present.”
—Lao Tzu
As a child the passage of a single day seemed to last a lifetime. Time, as I perceived it in my youth, was a slow moving current that carried me through each day. When I entered my late teens and early twenties time began to speed up. After college, time accelerated even more and since then it has continued to gather speed with each passing year.
I think this holds true for most. That’s why the expressions “how time flies” and “seems like only yesterday” are so often used when discussing the past. I have read that our perception of this acceleration is due to the actual measurement of a unit of time over the whole of our lives. When we are young, an hour accounts for a far greater percentage of our total life. As we grow older, an hour becomes a smaller and smaller fraction of our total time on earth.
Whatever the cause, I have been working on ways to slow down my perception of time. One way is to simply sit still. Stillness, without distraction, slows time. Some days, when I get home before your mother and am excited for her return after another day of work, I stop all that I am doing and wait. I put away my phone, close my computer, I don’t even reach for a book. I just sit and breathe. I believe it is exacerbated by my anxiousness for her arrival, but in these moments time slows significantly.
As for how to slow time during other periods of the day, and do so routinely, so as to expand our conscious lifetime, I will be sure to let you know as soon as I figure it out.
Soren Kierkegaard wrote, “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” That is so often the truth, in times of peace and prosperity. When things are going well. When food is plentiful, you have adequate shelter, and there is no real fear for your safety or the dismantling of a civil society. In other words, when we have choices.
You’re grandfather has said when he was growing up there was “an abundance of nothing.” He compares that to today, when he says there is an “abundance of everything.” Is it this abundance of everything, the overwhelming number of choices we have, that creates the dizziness? Today we have access to everything. You can pick up your phone and look at people living lives you wish you had, browse a million products you wish you owned. Maybe I am veering into envy, and away from freedom. Besides, Kierkegaard lived in the early 1800s. Certainly there was an abundance of nothing back then.
But what if our freedoms are limited, or taken away? Is the dizziness stabilized? What then comes from the suspension of freedom? From oppression? Is it a level of contentment? It seems counterintuitive that this would be true, but having fewer choices, restricting one’s life to a box, so to speak, might that relieve us from our constant striving, i.e. the dizziness of freedom? To a degree, possibly. That said, limiting freedoms more likely leads to a revolt of the individual’s mind and soul, and ultimately a sudden and radical demand for change by the masses.
I have gone off on such a tangent, I am not even sure of my point. I suppose it’s this: To cope with anxiety, find a way to be content with your place in life, whatever that may be. No easy task, for sure, but that is the solution. Try this next time anxiety flares. Set your eyes on a flower, the sky, a loved one. Marvel in your surroundings, at the miracle of life, and try to let all else melt away.
Notes From A Father 