Category: Life Questions

Credo

Everyone should have a credo. Consciously-developed beliefs, understood and articulated so that they can guide individual actions.

So what is my credo?

I believe many things, and, like any credo worth its salt, all of those things have implications for action.

First, I believe we all have equal human value, even as we are unequal in what we can contribute to the collective at any one time. No one is inherently better or worse – or worth more or less – than another because of their specific talents. The value to our community of those talents may ebb and flow, but fundamentally we are all worth the same, and as such we deserve the same basic communal benefits.

I also believe that every dog will have its day.

Meaning that we will eventually need those folks whose talents and skills and experiences are out-of-season today. We don’t know when, but their days will come, and we want them healthy and committed when they do. So we must provide to each other food and shelter and education and basic healthcare, all of those things that ensure survival and growth, regardless of what each of us contributes to our immediate needs.

I believe that people should be rewarded for their efforts and the positive outcomes that result (positive outcomes are those that improve collective utility). Every dog will have its day, but the dog that hunts today rather than tomorrow must get some benefit, lest that dog withhold its talents.

Why would a dog withhold its talents? And why wouldn’t we insist that it make its contribution to our collective benefit?

Because I believe in full agency. In fact, I might believe in full agency as my foundational truth.

Until our decisions and our actions hurt someone else, we must be allowed the widest discretion to choose our own paths. Each of us is uniquely human, a complex stew of ambitions and experiences, influences and knowledge, skills and blind spots, and we exist in a complex and dynamic environment. I cannot know what’s best for anyone else. I’m not sure I can know what’s best for me, given how much everything changes both within and around me. And since I cannot know what’s best for you, I cannot tell you what to do. I can suggest action, I can provide data so I feel like you’re better informed, I can share what choice I would make, but I cannot force you or even manipulate you into a decision. You must be free to choose your way, just as I must be free to choose mine.

I believe people are communal. We form tribes. Even introverts like me relish other people’s company (at least sometimes!). A shared laugh is so much more fulfilling, so much more robust than a solitary chuckle. We find meaning in community. We find purpose in working with others towards common ends. We want to belong with other people.

When someone holds themselves outside our community, it’s possible they’re just an antisocial asshole. But I believe it’s far, far more likely that they just feel rejected by the rest of us. They feel unappreciated or vilified or ignored. They feel like they’ve been treated unfairly. So when we see someone isolated, instead of asking what’s wrong with them, we should ask ourselves whether we’ve made that person feel welcome. Or, looking forward rather than backwards, let’s ask how we might help them feel welcome, so that they will join our community and strengthen it. Regardless, people must freely choose to join community, not have it forced upon them.

(If Gallup Strengthfinders is to be believed, Includer is my greatest strength, and it likely comes from this part of this fledgling credo – helping others feel like they can be part of our team. I see value in others, and I want to bring people together in a way that makes each individual feel valued.)

I believe we all strive to matter. We want to make a difference in the world around us. We want other people to know that we are here. So we strive to achieve. We create. We don’t need other people in order to achieve or to create, but other people add dimension and perspective to our accomplishments. And they allow us to achieve even greater things, more complicated things, more intimidating things when we band together with them. Many hands make light work, after all.

We can accomplish more when we work together. Not only do we have more capacity for work, we also have more creativity, more imagination, and more energy to call on. We have countless examples of individual genius, but we have many more examples of teams that accomplished amazing things because they combined the knowledge, wisdom, skills, experiences, energy, and creativity of many minds and bodies.

So put it together, and my credo is that we make community to accomplish things that benefit us collectively while recognizing the value that each of us contributes, knowing that those contributions will be uneven, always favoring some of us over others. We need to recognize those who contribute more, but we need to care for everyone so that they are ready when their turn comes and we need them. And all of it has to be chosen freely, individually, by each member of our community.

That’s my credo. Or at least the start of it. I’m sure more elements will occur to me as time marches on.

Measured

I am, if nothing else, measured.

I think linearly. Deliberately. Some might even say ploddingly. When I gather data to make decisions I plug my emotions, shut them below deck even as they heave against it; they unbalance me from time to time, but I don’t let them get to full throat. I consider as many perspectives as I can, though that seems innate rather than something for which I can take credit. And I try to be generous towards other people in my assumptions about them.

In my head I know there’s a place in the world for me, because there’s a place in the world for everyone. Yet in my heart I have doubts.

The world of arts and letters is stuffed with talent. I haven’t chosen to write as much as I feel compelled to do it. But of what interest are my thoughts, my ideas, my observations compared with both the wide and the deep perspectives shared by other authors and artists, particularly those who come from places underrepresented in our collective narrative? My prose doesn’t soar or dazzle, and my themes are simple, universal. My advantages are an unflinching gaze and pleasingly straightforward expression. That feels meager.

The world of analysts is also full, and though I have the talent and the nerve for it I don’t have the fire. Analyzing for profit is a competitive market, and I lack the motivation to win. I’m curious and creative and unafraid of ideas, but I might be collaborative to a fault. I have no agenda other than understanding. It is how I’m wired.

So I have a compulsion to create where I won’t necessarily succeed, and where I can more likely excel I have little interest. The conundrum of my life, though one I don’t own exclusively. I know there are others with similar situations, people who want to do what they aren’t best-suited for doing.

So how do I measure my value in such a place?

I haven’t a clue.

I am testing that value. I’ve committed to a year of writing to see if my voice does matter, if there are enough people interested in what I have to share to make the dedicated effort worthwhile. I will always write – compulsion, remember? – but it might be more of a hobby than a vocation. It’s a beautiful dream for my writing to support me, and once in a while dreams do come true.

But if this dream remains just that, if there isn’t space for me in the world of letters, then I’ll need to make peace with that and try to return to the world of analysis. I don’t really know how that will work, however.

I’m older and definitely wiser, but I also stepped out of that world for quite a while. My business performance since I retired from corporate jobs is abysmal, though the covid pandemic is wholly responsible for that failure. And while I’ll probably be more at peace with a role back in the business world I will likely still lack the passion that a full commitment requires. Commitment is kind of important to those who would engage my services and pay me for them.

Perhaps I’m destined to close out my working days doing a collection of part-time jobs. Credit counseling. Tutoring. Perhaps even making coffee or stocking shelves. In other words, doing things I’m neither suited for nor driven to do.

And wouldn’t that be fitting for someone who couldn’t find his place because his head and his heart just weren’t aligned?

New Year, New Home

2023 will be one of significant change for me (I hope).

Change in how I spend the bulk of my working day. How I earn a living. Where I earn that living. With whom I share my time. Yet as we turn the page into the new year my thoughts are with my parents, who will make just one significant change (I hope).

They are leaving their 4-bedroom home with its huge patio and multi-terraced garden in favor of a 2-bedroom apartment in a senior independent-living complex. I’ve been staying with my parents while waiting for my post-divorce life to begin, and though I was initially opposed to their move – they love their house, and my father is an enthusiastic gardener – I’ve come to see the wisdom of the move. They just don’t have the stamina they once did. My father is 87, my mother 82, and keeping up with the house and garden takes more energy than they want to give them. The reason for the move makes eminent sense. And I get it.

So they are not leaving their house kicking and screaming.

And yet it’s still not without stress.

Odds are that this new apartment will be the last place they live together. If – really, when – their health fails, it’s unlikely it will afflict them at the same time and in the same way, so even if they are in the same facility they may not be in the exact same place. And while we don’t talk about it, I think it’s clearly on their minds. How could it not be?

Mortality is the tie that binds us all. We all come face-to-face with it eventually, with varying degrees of grace. And this move for my parents is the most tangible evidence to date that they are approaching that point of their lives when their deaths are real possibilities. Not likely, but definitely possible, and more possible than it’s been before.

My father faced prostate cancer a few years ago and kidney cancer last year. He had moments of fear during each scare, but the information he got from his doctors in both cases was encouraging, and there were other options for treatment if the procedures didn’t succeed. We are eternally grateful that they did succeed. He was also in a small-plane crash in Tanzania 28 years ago, but that happened so fast he didn’t have time to reflect on his risk.

My mother has age-related macular degeneration, high blood pressure, and diabetes. Those illnesses erode her quality of life and hint of struggles to come, but none of them are currently life-threatening.

But moving into a smaller apartment with no yard to maintain is a tangible admission from them both that the scope of their remaining time is narrowing. My friend Jim’s parents lived in a retirement community that talked about the go-go years (where people were able to do anything they wanted), the slow-go years (where they could still do some of the things they wanted to do), and the no-go years (where they were limited to things in their residence). My parents are still enjoying their go-go years, but the end of that freedom is in sight, and the implications for what’s ahead are sobering to them.

And they are feeling it.

They’ll still make the move, but settling into a new community will include living with a new awareness, that, after a lifetime of moving about in the world, they might finally be in the last home they will see.

Loss and My Friend John

I saw my good friend John yesterday.

John is a man who delights in his family. He revels in their company. His wife and daughter are always – and I do mean always – in the forefront of his mind. He feels very close to his sister, and he relished his relationships with his parents until they recently passed away.

Every weekend, every vacation, every spare moment he has available he wants to spend in the company of his family. He chooses them first. Every single time. And his devotion isn’t forced. It comes from a heart filled with love and gratitude for having people to care about.

John has hobbies – he enjoys sports, both playing and watching – but even those interests he shares as much as possible with his loved ones. I can think of no one who gets more fulfillment, more satisfaction from spending time with his family. His unadulterated joy in their presence just radiates from him in big, happy waves.

Which is why the death of his son earlier this year is simply the cruelest thing I’ve ever seen.

John’s son was 19, in his freshman year of college, and he was killed by a quick and sadly painful illness.

His death is devastating to everyone who knew him. But depriving his father of his presence, the father who pulled limitless joy from his son, feels so despicably merciless and mean. And John is shattered. His infectious energy is now subdued. He looks so very sad.

I have hope for John though.

Perhaps it is merely wishful thinking, but I can’t think so. Relegating my good friend to this level of suffering indefinitely is inconceivable for me. How could anyone withstand it? I don’t know how I could cope if one of my daughters died now, and I don’t know how John has been able to function at all these past few months. I fervently wish I could heal him somehow, make him whole again, but he will never be whole again while he walks this earth, and I can’t offer anything that will help him through this trial.

Still, John has two advantages that not everyone in his situation can claim.

First, as he has given his complete devotion to his family, they have returned it to him in full. His wife and his daughter and his sister and the rest of his family loves John like he loves them. The enormous hole left when his son died won’t ever be filled, but the relationships he shares with his other loved ones will continue to grow and deepen as the days and weeks and months and years pass by. They won’t erase his loss, but their love will fill him nonetheless.

Second, he is a faithful man. He believes – strongly – that God exists, that He is benevolent, and that He cares for his flock. I don’t claim to understand faith (I don’t have that tool in my toolbox) but I can see that John, despite his overwhelming grief, believes that the death of his son serves a purpose, inscrutable as it may be. John has found occasional peace and some solace in his prayers and meditations, and as skeptical as I usually am about spiritual things, I believe him in this: his son may be physically absent from his life, but John experiences him in any number of ways that prove to me that his son is very much present. I am far beyond my depth in all things spiritual, but given my own admittedly limited experiences I believe that there are dimensions we don’t understand that nevertheless touch us. And again, maybe I’m naive or simply willing something to be that isn’t, but that’s not how this feels to me.

I grieve with my friend John, even as I can’t fathom the depths of his loss. I also acclaim his humanity, his faith, his stalwartness to move forward in the face of such complete devastation. And I pray – in my own way – that he finds comfort and meaning and relief in his family, including his late son, so he can heal from this wrecking blow. And that no other parent ever has to face something so calamitous.

Aspirations

It seems we’ve ended this year’s third quarter with another decline in broad stock-market indices. Safe to say it hasn’t been a stellar year for equity investment returns.

I saw my friend Dave last weekend. He recently retired, and he’s a little freaked out by the market decline. He is in good shape money-wise, despite his anxieties. He has plenty of assets from his lifetime of work, and he’s worked with a financial advisor pretty extensively, so his asset allocation should allow him to weather this storm.

But he’s unusual.

First, he has assets. The median retirement savings for Americans 60-64 is about $225,000, which can reliably generate a bit over $10,000 per year in income. That’s not very much. Dave has a lot more, so he doesn’t need to eat into his principal. Eating your seed corn is only a good idea if you have no other choice.

Second, by working with a financial advisor, he’s balanced his investment risk tolerance with his desired returns. So he has investments that will provide him returns that might vary, but during times like this he should have enough cash-type assets to keep him from having to sell other assets at depressed prices.

Third, he is a frugal man. While he has hobbies, and he has an appetite for the whimsical purchase, none of that is particularly expensive. He doesn’t travel much, and when he eats out he’s content with good-quality fast food and local taquerias. He doesn’t drink to excess, his gambling is restricted to nickel poker with friends, and I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t even know where to source drugs outside a cannabis dispensary.

So he’ll be more than fine financially.

I’ve often felt that we are directed to oversave for retirement. It’s obviously not working if the median 60+ year-old has only $225,000, but I contend that’s because of low earnings rather than profligacy. Professionals suggest we save enough to allow us to live to 95 years old. Yet life expectancy is in the mid-80s for those of us already in middle age. Some of us will make it to 95, but most of us won’t. So we will have oversaved by several years, depriving us of those resources we could have used during our lives.

I get the moral hazard argument, but I’m not sure data supports the idea that people shirk their responsibilities. There are anecdotes, of course, because someone somewhere has done anything you can possibly imagine, but I think people are generally honest and have good intentions. Yes, we are lazy, and yes, we often take the path of least resistance, but I think we also see ourselves as team members, and we usually want to do our part for the greater good, especially when we think others are doing so too.

So perhaps we need to rethink our savings targets and enhance social security or some other public income program for those who live beyond their projected lifespans. It would free up resources, so people wouldn’t have to sacrifice as much, and it would help that $225,000 nest egg the average person has to use.

It won’t stop my man Dave from worrying, but it could let a lot of others sleep better at night.

Cousin Mike

I don’t have a particularly large family, but then again it isn’t small either. Each of my parents had two siblings, and they gave me six cousins on my mother’s side and four on my father’s. All of my cousins have an appeal, but lately I’ve been thinking a lot about one in particular.

My cousin Mike (on the right, above) is the oldest on my father’s side. My Uncle Edward’s four children showed musical talent, and family gatherings with them always featured guitars and banjos and singing. Everyone enjoyed it, but music to cousin Mike is like oxygen. He simply needs music to live.

He made his living as a salesperson for a big company that makes a lot of different things for buildings and machines, but whenever he had a spare moment he played music or listened to music or thought about music. He can play just about any stringed instrument, and he’s played in hobby bands throughout his life, often with other family members. He’s played for the past several years in a bluegrass band that plays regionally in the midwest, mostly northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin.

To call it a compulsion is probably accurate, but there’s something of a muddy film that coats the word compulsion. Mike really feels compelled to make music, but music brings him great joy and satisfaction. It’s not drudgery, it’s a light in his life. It’s such a part of him, fused to his identity and the goals that give his life its purpose, that he yearns to do it, so there’s no friction at all with his need to do it.

I envy that alignment, and I hope my writing becomes that for me.

I am sometimes reminded of my brother’s bachelor party when I consider questions like this one. We took Shawn to Las Vegas, where we did the expected shows and gambling and adult entertainment and extravagant meals for a long weekend. It was probably 3am on Sunday morning when I found myself with a couple other friends of his sitting in a lounge cut out of the casino. On the tiny stage was a cover band playing pop hits from the 70s and 80s.

My first thought was dismissive, bordering on disdain.

“How pathetic do you have to be to play someone else’s music in front of six people at a casino at 3am? The effort to practice, the expense of the instruments and equipment, the costumes, the opportunity cost of the time and money invested, and this is the best you can do?”

And then a second though occurred to me (not in time to save me from proving myself a judgmental jerk, of course).

“If they are playing this gig, then it’s obviously worth the sacrifices they’re making. They get to do what they love to do, and someone is paying them to do it. They are performing on stage, playing music with their bandmates, because they want to do this exact thing. And that’s such an admirable trait. Chase your dreams and appreciate the journey.”

I chose to believe that they were living the life they wanted to live, not grudgingly punching the clock on a dream with a different destination.

That Vegas trip was a couple decades ago, and I hadn’t considered my cousin Mike at that time. But thinking about him validates for me the second thought I had on that early Sunday morning: some people are lucky enough to love what they must do.

And I hope to be one of them.

The Struggle

There’s a purity in selfishness.

An enticing simplicity.

A seductive ease.

I know my own desires, my own needs fully, but I’m just guessing at yours. And who knows what the guy down the street thinks. No, I know what I need, what I want, what I deserve, and that robust and certain knowing contrasted with my supposition of your thoughts – even if it’s well-intentioned – gives exaggerated weight to my side of the scale.

Plus I don’t get a direct return from investing in your satisfaction.

So I have a thorough understanding of the geography of my desires and I reap the entire benefits of what I do for myself. No wonder it’s so tempting to ignore you.

And yet.

We live communally.

I need you and the rest of our neighbors to do things for me, like build roads and schools and hospitals and parks and recreation courts and fields. I need you all to help provide police and fire protection and maintenance for those roads and schools and hospitals we built. I also want you to keep an eye on my house when I’m on vacation, and I need to have some social interactions with you to feed my real need for human connection. Plus I actually like hanging out with you. We play well off each other, you make me laugh, and we both like beer and the Bears.

So for a plethora of reasons, I interact with you, and you need a reason to interact with me. But this is where it gets complicated, I suppose. Some of my interactions are motivated by necessity – I need to be nice to you so that you will do what I want. Others are motivated by good will – I like you, and I like doing things with you. So what looks like altruism might actually be selfishness dressed up. Or it might really be altruism. Giving for the greater good.

How can we tell the difference?

I can’t know another’s heart. So I choose to believe that what looks like altruism really is altruism. That assumption creates emotional risk, of course – the good feelings end when there’s no further gain to be had – but I much prefer it to the stress and distraction to which suspicion and second-guessing lead. And I really do believe that most people are honest. Or at least guileless. They tell you what they think, perhaps shading the truth here and there, but you can generally trust what someone tells you. So I figure I’ll be right more often than not when I give the benefit of the doubt.

There will be pain, of course, because people sometimes lie. But maybe that’s selfishness talking again. If I’m worried about getting hurt and strategizing about ways to reduce that risk, then I’m just saving my ass again, and I’m not thinking about how to make life better for all of us.

And maybe that’s where we should really start.

Divorce

My wife and I are divorcing.

We’ve been married more than 32 years. There’s no precipitating event. No outburst. No affair. No abuse. No addictions.

So why are we divorcing?

I don’t think we’ve ever been well-suited for each other. She wears her heart on her sleeve, sharing her thoughts and feelings broadly. I am very private. She tests ideas out loud, working through her thought processes verbally. When I speak, I’ve already decided. She seeks validation, and I am parsimonious with feedback. She lives spontaneously, changing her mind frequently. I make a plan and stick to it.

Early in our marriage we invested the time to resolve our conflicts and differences. And then, as time passed, we stopped trying. Cracks developed. And, unresolved, the cracks widened into fissures, the fissures into gaps, the gaps into chasms. Dawn made more of an effort than I did to fix what was happening in our marriage, but I didn’t have the emotional awareness to deal with our problems. Or the will to find it.

And so we find ourselves after 32 years not strangers but friends.

But not more than friends either. We are divorcing amicably, as you’d expect of friends, even friends who share children.

We have wounds. We don’t trust each other with our emotional well-being. I have hurt her by rejecting her (her version); she has hurt me by not following through on commitments (my version). Both have merit. Neither is the full story. As with most things between married couples.

In spite of our wounds, we don’t harbor ill will. Or at least not enough of it to complicate our dissolution. In fact, because of lower expectations with the transition from spouses to friends our relationship has been smoother. I hope it continues. I expect that we will remain friends, though it will likely be at a distance, at least until grandchildren pull us back into the same orbit. Among our differences are weather and social preferences: she likes active social scenes and cooler weather, while my ideals are warmer temperatures and few but meaningful interactions with others. Funnily enough, I’m likely to head to colder climes while she makes a go of it in the hot valleys of northern California.

Our daughters are taking the split well. We don’t blame each other, so they don’t either. And they do love us both after all. Damaging our relationships with our daughters is a worst-case scenario, and we are thankful that at least we made a very effective parenting team.

We’ve set intentions to treat each other both kindly and fairly, and we are walking that path. We have a long distance yet to go, and there are potential stressors related to our financial situations that could still roil the waters. We have engaged professionals to help us untangle our emotional wounds, handle the legal process, and counsel us on finances, so I hope that they can help us navigate those potential pitfalls (to mix a lot of metaphors!).

In our latest session, our divorce therapist asked us how we were feeling about our divorce and to what we were saying goodbye as we split. Dawn feels the loss keenly, though she fully believes it’s the preferrable outcome. I am not sad or grief-stricken but rather optimistic that we can have a more emotionally satisfying relationship once we say goodbye to the stress and tension that marked a lot of our married interactions.

Time will, of course, tell the tale. As it always does.

But I am hopeful.

Adulting

My daughters are going through the change.

Not menopause. (At least I hope not – I don’t have grandchildren yet!)

Their change is from learning to doing, from studying and practicing to working and producing. My oldest graduated college a couple years ago, my youngest will graduate in a few months. Their transition to full-time contributors to our society is going about as well as expected. Which is to say they are confused, anxious, and highly stressed.

Like most of us who have gone through it.

I don’t know that we’re failing our young people as they move from school into working, but I do think we’ve not been able to articulate a path that illuminates what will be different and how they will be able to successfully manage it. Which is weird, because the answer(s) seem simple.

First, find work that fills a deeply-felt purpose. If the goals of your work align with your values, then you can stand doing the boring stuff you’re going to have to do as the noob, because you know it moves the ball forward on things that are super important to you. And you don’t have to make a lot of money, because A) you don’t have a lot of expenses, and B) you’re not going to make a ton more money in another entry-level position this side of Wall Street. So embrace your ideals and find work that results in something that feels important to you.

Second, tend to your health. That’s health writ large. Get daily exercise. Pray. Journal your feelings. Meditate. Do puzzles. Eat regularly. And for God sakes, get enough sleep every night. When you keep your physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual selves in balance, you can manage the ebbs and flows of your life much more capably.

Third, tend to your relationships. Your partner. Your family. Your friends. Your colleagues. Text them. Go to lunch and dinner. Have coffee or beers. Invite them over for game night. Go for a hike or a run together. Call them on their birthdays. Share what’s happening with you, and take interest in what they’re experiencing. The more vibrant your network of people is, the more enriching your life will be, and the more support you can pull from it in your times of need. And there is always times of need. When you are present for them, they will be there when you need help too.

And that’s really it.

If we helped our young people – and ourselves – concentrate on these three ubertasks, then this whole adulting thing wouldn’t be so intimidating. There’s plenty of distractions out there to dull our focus – our phones, TVs and streaming services, booze and pot and other consciousness-altering temptations – and those are among the reasons we struggle with this transtion, but I think if we could present these simple steps in a way that resonates as truth, perhaps my daughters and their peers would heed them and save themselves a lot of agony. And just maybe this transition wouldn’t feel so daunting.

Change

Change is in the air. It’s always in the air. Change is omnipresent.

But there are two kinds of change: the change that happens to us, and the change we make happen.

It’s said we resent the change that happens to us. Lack of control, I guess. I see it differently.

An amazing world has unfolded in front of us with no effort on our part: smartphones that keep us continually connected with the people we care about, cars that safely and comfortably take us where we want to go, access to convenient flights all around the world, medicines that dramatically improve our quality of life in the face of illnesses both acute and chronic, hundreds of channels of entertainment that come from everywhere on the globe. We don’t like some aspects of our lives when they change: the new traffic light that slows my commute by a couple minutes a day, the neighbor who painted his house an unflattering color, the new boss, the new PTA president, the new layout at the grocery store – we complain all about these little changes while we take the newest advances that actually change the way we live as a birthright.

It’s the other change that interests me at the moment though. It’s daunting to try to make change in the world. The investment of time, energy and emotion is enormous, and the outcome is uncertain. And in our world, where we’ve been accustomed to beneficial change just happening, having to face situations that cause us great discomfort – and I’m thinking specifically about the current political situation in the United States, where a government with the minority of votes controls both the legislative and executive branches – is a big-time gut check. If you’re not happy with the current situation, what are you willing to invest to try to change it?

There are seminal events that happen, events that fire the imagination or awake the passions of multitudes of people. But those don’t really create any change. They are the flashpoints that start the processes that lead to change, but to actually change the world we must find focus, determination, and dedication. We need deliberate, sustained action, day after day after day after day.

Do we have the requisite resolve in us? Time, as always, will tell.