Sacrifice

Agency

I believe in Agency.

Letting every person make as many decisions about their life as possible.

I draw the line at full Agency when a choice or decision hurts another person, but until then I want us all to have discretion about what we do with our time and our energies. Let us each create the life we want.

Agency is just a fancier word for choice. I use it a lot, maybe to sound smarter than I am, but it really is the foundational value on which everything else I believe is hung. It’s like freedom, but less static. Freedom to me is lack of controls, whereas Agency implies action. Freedom allows choice but doesn’t demand it. Agency requires action, the act of choosing.

I talk to my children about intention too. Choosing with intention. To me, that’s even more what what Agency is about: choosing consciously and with intent for an outcome. You may not get what you hope, but you increase your chances, and that ups the odds of living a satisfying life.

I’ve not always used my Agency. In fact, I’ve been pretty negligent until recently about taking action to achieve a specific goal. Most of that is because I haven’t set intentions, but it’s also true that I haven’t had the courage to try for the ones I did set. I trusted the universe to take care of me, and that is a sure path to an underwhelming life. The universe is ambivalent to each of us; it’s not malevolent, it doesn’t want to screw us to the floor, but it’s not going to care if we’re unhappy with our lots either. It will march on in step with that taskmaster Time, blissfully ignorant of our frustrations.

No, it’s up to each of us to choose the life we want to live and then work to create it. Not one of us will get everything on which we set our sights – the universe seems petulant that way – but those who work most diligently and with clear eyes on their own prize will reap more of it than those of us who coast. 80-10-10 after all (80% of the time we get what we earn, 10% we get hosed, and 10% we get away with something).

We win at life when we don’t begrudge what we sacrifice for our choices, because instead what we gain with those very same choices fulfills us. We win when we make the benefit worth the cost, including the opportunity cost of foregoing other choices in favor of those that bring us the biggest returns.

My experiment in Agency is still in its nascent stages, and I am overwhelmed with doubts from time to time. But I have also experienced the exhilaration and excitement when I have a small success on the road to my larger intentions. Because I know that I made that little success happen.

I look forward to the rush I’ll get when I achieve one of my big goals.

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.

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.

Essential Me

There is always someone better than I am.

I’ve believed it for as long as I can remember. It is an – perhaps even the – essential part of me. It’s the thought that has shaped every single part of my life.

Sometimes it’s for better. I’m humble. Obviously. It’s hard to be arrogant when there’s always someone better. I’m other-aware, which makes me a great community member. Resilient, since why wouldn’t I get a little grit in the gears from time to time? I often take one for the team, and usually don’t stop at one.

Sometimes, though, it’s for worse.

During our marriage, my wife threatened me with divorce more than once. Of course she did. There’s someone better out there. She might have said it to spark a reaction from me, to inspire me to fight for our marriage. But I accept my fate easily. I’m not deserving of good things, not because I’m a terrible person or lacking in something specific, but simply because there’s always a better option somewhere. Why shouldn’t she get that good thing instead of settling for me? In fact, it was really just a matter of time before she realizes she can do better, so I spent plenty of time waiting for that other shoe to dropkick my ass to the curb.

I do go gently into that good night. I only rarely make much of a fuss, because I understand that I’m second best. I may deserve something, but I don’t deserve the best. So I settle, and I’m content in doing so. It is what I expect. It is my lot in life.

There are many worse things than to expect less from life. Every day people go to bed hungry, or beaten bloody, or with the knowledge they are sick and will never get better. The cross I bear is much lighter than the pain borne by parents who bury a child or the drunk driver with blood on his hands. I don’t crave sympathy, because I don’t deserve it. There are, after all, people who have it much worse than I do. I don’t even get the best of the worst.

But it’s still a waste. I am often lonely when I don’t have to be. I defer when there’s no need to do so. I self-impose decisions about my worthiness that others never make.

“To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.” So said the fully-confident Steve Prefontaine. I give my best, but I’m not convinced it’s the best that can be given. And that may be true at times, most of the time even. But sometimes – and in one specific instance at least – it’s not true.

I hope to prove that by writing. The thing about art – really anything creative – is that only I can make the art that I make. And maybe that will show me that I can be the best at something. There’s no one else who can do this particular thing better, because there’s no one else who can do it at all. I am a population of one, as is every other artist out there.

So in this at least – this art, this written word – I am guaranteed to finish first. When you’re the only one on the course the only thing that can keep you from being first is not finishing at all. And I generally do give my best, so finishing is within my grasp. And maybe that will lead to more confidence, more belief that I can hold my own when I’m not the only one in the ring.

Or so I hope.

My Niece

I saw my niece yesterday.

She’s had a rough go so far. She calls herself the “Queen of Bad Decisions.” Failed by adults during her formative years, she doesn’t feel worthy even now in her early-thirties. She doesn’t deserve to be happy, to find purpose, to be loved. So she punishes herself with drugs and sex and booze and people who steal from her and, recently, beat her. Badly.

After all, she’s not worthy of care, compassion, and love.

And yet, despite all of her self-flagellation, something at her core, an indomitable spirit, won’t let her succumb to desolation, won’t surrender to the voices that tell her she doesn’t deserve happiness. It insists that she matters and that she must persevere, no matter how much pain she feels.

She is extraordinarily brave. She is also often self-centered, regularly manipulative, and less-than-honest at times. I suspect much of that is survival response, but her behavior still raises questions among her family and friends, and she’s been abandoned by more than one of the people she cares about. Mostly because she treats them badly. It’s hard to think of others, to empathize with them when you feel shitty about yourself.

But no matter how much abuse she heaps on herself she always pulls back from the brink of complete self-destruction. She does cut it close sometimes. She’s been hospitalized for alcohol poisoning, and she regularly chooses people who have problems with impulse control and suffer a great deal of pain themselves. I guess those folks are plentiful when you’re living on the margins of society, but everyone needs friends, so like the rest of us you take what the universe provides. They don’t always prove to be reliable.

And she can’t catch a break. She’d worked very hard for about three years to bring herself from homelessness to a sober, employed, independently-functioning member of our community. And four months later a global COVID-19 pandemic closed the retail store where she worked, and without a job she was soon without a place to live again. The pandemic has challenged us all, but it’s one more thing on top of a staggering pile of challenges for those people like my niece.

She’s a hard worker. She likes to do things. She’s got a great sense of humor, and she laughs and jokes with people regardless of how well she knows them. But she has just a high-school diploma, and ADHD makes traditional school hard for her. And her history with adults has left her with a towering distrust of authority figures. So building skills, which requires learning from either books or from people who know how to do things, goes against her talents and life experience.

I don’t know how her story will develop. I worry that the mountain of crap into which she was born that also encouraged her dodgy decision-making will ultimately be too much for her to surmount. But I am heartened by her absolute refusal to take herself beyond salvation. I am hopeful she will find enough people to trust, enough resource to give her the knowledge, skills, and experience that will enable her to function on her own, enable her to find a tribe that values her for who and what she is.

It’s the same hope I have for all the people I love.

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.

I believe in choice. In fact, I insist on choice.

Free will is the essence of our humanity. We decide for ourselves our actions and our inactions. We choose what to say and what not to say, when to say it, and to whom. We choose what we believe and what we do with the time we have. And our legacies are the sum of those decisions. Blaming circumstances or crediting others for outcomes of our decisions dodges the accountability we have to accept in order to realize our possibilities and responsibilities.

And choice necessarily requires sacrifice.

No matter what we do or say or think, in choosing we close the door on anything else we could have done or said or pondered with that same time and energy. And the more extensive the decision is, the more time and energy we must exert to make that choice, the greater the sacrifice required.

In our day and age, sacrifice has a negative connotation. It comes with a sense of deprivation or discomfort. What do you mean I have to give up something? I’m not wired to give things up happily. Just keeping the option open is enticing – it means I could still choose that path. Don’t take anything from me!

Instead of resenting it, we should celebrate sacrifice. Giving something up in order to achieve something else is not just an acknowledgment of reality. There is reason in the conscious sacrifice. There is maturity too, recognizing that some things have more value than others and that striving for something greater means foregoing things that matter less. You can add nobility too, if the sacrifice is personal enough – it is noble to put some things above your own comfort and security. Other people’s critical needs. Principles like freedom. Confronting evil and cruelty.

Recognizing sacrifice should inspire us to prioritize how we spend our time and energy. We would waste less of both if we were clear on what we are trying to achieve with our choices. We could weigh the opportunity cost of each choice confronting us against how we benefit. Like reasonable people do.

We could have such a different world if we looked to make sacrifices to achieve better things instead of looking for more of lesser things to hoard for ourselves. A deeper, more meaningful world. Can we try it?