Upstairs my son is humming.
I can hear him through the floor, two fans, an air conditioner, and my earplugs.
It’s wonderful. I love his hum. At eight years old he is a singer and hummer like me, and his youngest sister, the almost-two-year old, hums and sings too. All the time.
The middle child—she used to hum when she was younger, and now she whistles. She always has to be different. But her whistle is one I look forward to, as it’s a personal belief of mine that no one should whistle, ever.
And it’s wonderful.
Down the hall my wife is cleaning up and settling into the night and I’m already—just a bit after dinner—back in here working. Always working. It doesn’t really matter what I’m working on—it could going to work, working at home, it could be the same career work you do at home or a bunch of jobs we do to make ends meet. I feel like I’m beating the system, working hard, longer, ahead—smarter, faster, all hours.
But the system is really beating me. And then I’m beating myself up trying to justify the means with which I’m trying to beat the system.
If I worked harder and longer, I’d be more successful, and fulfill my potential.
I have to do this now or I’ll regret passing it by, and in the future I’ll look back and shake my head.
If I just shaved off some time here and there, I’d be done with the fill in the blank, and I could finally fill in the blank.
If I just commit to one more thing, it will be the thing that gets me to the place that I’m supposed to be.
If they just paid me what I was worth, then we’d be all set.
If we could live on less, then we’d be all set (but we’re already living on the least of a few options of “the least”).
Thoreau would be so disappointed. Shakespeare too. I’ve learned nothing, they would tell me, from Hemingway or Miller or Updike or Baldwin. I know of every moral lesson and hard-fought cliche, but I’m trying to “let matter that which matters” and all that.
Self-help writers would be so disappointed—I should know better, and I do know better, but I can’t resist the life that eats up men and makes the self-help writers millions. I’m not making millions. In fact, at my rate, if I saved every penny for twenty years, I might have a million.
Inspirational speakers, wizened old leaders, sages of old, preachers, faith-healers, teachers, sagacious grandmothers, hoary seers of ages past, professors, movie producers, poets, grad students—they would all tell me and you and everyone the same. We all know the routine here.
Here’s the lesson we’re always learning, since time and memorial, and It’s A Wonderful Life, and “Cats in the Cradle”and every book written about men who work too much, and every film about family being more important than x, y, and z, work always being x, y, and usually z. Where’s daddy? When’s daddy coming home?
But I’m doing the thing that all men do and then say I don’t really want to live like this.
But we do.
We want to be successful, and fulfill our potential, and have it all. It really isn’t that much to ask.
Except that we’re all working hard and broke, just as hard.
We’re all living in the lap of First World luxury and beating ourselves up to get more luxury.
And everywhere men are doing it, so much so that I think about the statistics for men and exhaustion, heart attack, and suicide, and how exhaustion, heart attack, and suicide make perfect sense for how we either avoid these pressures or let them build to a consequence that causes us time to pause.
And rest.
And take more time to consider things like family, and home, and rest.
But what if?
What if I die without having fulfilled my true and lasting purpose?
What if I get old and miss the chances I could have had, that are right here, right now, but I couldn’t see them?
What if being a good husband and father means nothing because the money runs out?
What if—and here’s the theme and conflict for the ages—all this is for nothing?
Well I’m still hopeful. Always holding out for the best. I have to be, right? Considering all other alternatives?
I’ve been self-aware and examining my life since the notion to do so was novel and I was young enough to not be self-aware or have anything worth examining yet.
But even though Shakespeare warned us about the cycle of ambition and what it would get us, and even though the Preacher of Ecclesiastes and generations of nihilists and cynics have doubled-down on the “so what” response to the burning pressure of life, and although I can quote every line of Fight Club, Glengarry Glenn Ross, and Death of a Salesman, and despite the fact that Odysseus’ journey and heroism is mythical nonsense in that thousands died to bring his name to legend, we all still want it.
We want to be so alive, and have it all.
We have it all, and we want more.
We get more, and we want the next thing.
But there’s only one Odysseus. And none of us are him.
And as much as I want to—and currently am—fulfilling my potential as a worker, husband, father, and person, I know that you can only fill a cup with so much.
I don’t want ex-wives and distant children like the “greats” of each genre.
I don’t want a 14-hour-day edging on 16-hours, edging on never resting just so I can say I did it my way.
And I’m too old to be Bob Dylan.
But—if I sit still, I can hear my children and wife, and see my life with them, and see my accomplishments so far, and I can be satisfied in this moment, right here, right now.
And that can be enough for a spirit within us that always wants the next thing.
Because it needs to be enough, for now, for the ages, for the fit and fever that wants to claim us.
And I don’t want to be the voice saying the thing that all men say about the force that drives us to do the thing that all men do.
At least not for the moment, when I can be at peace with all the life that is mine up the stairs and down the hall, and in my very self.
And then I settle into the night, and rest for a bit before the next day of things that make us weary and wish for the very chance to be myself and to be alive.
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Photo: Tanya McKeen
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And thank you for sharing this!
This, not unlike the little moments of taking our spouses or other loved ones for granted, is this hugely important thing that most of us realize when we just pause and think. “I should start doing this other thing more,” we think, and we intuitively know life would be better if we did, but then we snap out of it because of more chores and more deadlines. Until we think of it again. I haven’t the slightest what powerful trigger would be required to NEVER take these moments for granted. To never lose sight of the constantly ticking clocks in… Read more »