Fifteen minutes. Without stopping. One, two, three…
Thinking about Edison. Missing your children. Parents with children at home. They don’t miss them. It’s the opposite. They need a break. They get a night out with friends—feels like a vacation.
I have a break. A break from Bree. A break from Edison. But I want no break from neither of them.
The little blond boy running in circles. Just right there. Right outside this window. The one with the “Champ” shirt. He could barely walk. It’s one of those walks that’s basically a run because he’s catching himself. Barely. He’s the one with his proud mommy, showcasing him with the half dozen spectators.
Wonder if she could use a break. Bet she could. Because I remember.
Early mornings. It’s dark outside. Read. Something on PBS kids. No iPad back in those days. Wonder what my screen policy would today be if I had a two-year-old.
But back to the break. I have two big breaks. One from Bree. One from Edison. And I don’t want these two big breaks. At least not this weekend. But I don’t want them living at home, either. It was time.
And all these parents chasing toddlers who have no breaks, but want them.
I’m not sure we always even know what we want. And “to want” is the weirdest verb, anyway. Think about it. Sometimes we say things like “I thought I wanted x but I really didn’t, deep down.” (Oh, “x” is something we use in philosophy. You can substitute x for anything: A person, a career, a new car, etc.)
So I once thought I wanted a break from my children. Especially at 5 am. But then many years later, I got a break. And, then, another. They are both away at college as you probably have heard.
I got what I wanted. Did I really want that? Be careful what you wish for. Not sure I wished for it. I wanted it. Or, thought I wanted it.
Are wishes and wants the same kind of things?
Lots of married people think they want to be single again. Many will soon find out whether they really wanted that freedom. In some cases, out of the frying pan and into the fire. In others, out of the frying pan and into freedom.
Lots of teenagers want their mom or dad or both to leave them alone. Wonder if those teens really want that. Many parents of teenagers don’t want to leave them alone. Let ‘em grow up already.
Sometimes we want something and we are not really aware of that we want it. So later we even say those exact words: “I realized I really wanted x, deep down, but I just hadn’t realized it.”
Yoga was like that for me. Never had a clue that Bikram would dramatically change my life in ways church could not. Not bashing church. Just saying Bikram did things that church never could do.
I think we all want what we don’t have. At least to some degree.
Deep down. Do we ever know what we really want, “deep down”?
Philosophers like Kant, I’ve heard, didn’t think so—there was this idea of a veil over what’s deep down in us, blocking us from knowing our motivations. We don’t really have access to what even motivates us.
But we know physical pleasure motivates: eating, sleeping, sex.
We know desire for status motivates: awards, status symbols, recognition, kids’ accomplishments.
Deep down, I think we all just want to know everything’s going to be okay.
We don’t have access to our subconscious. We don’t have access to what we want. Like the iceberg. Ninety percent of it is under water.
A “Champ” t-shirt. White with navy blue sleeves. Navy blue is my favorite color. I can never understand people whose favorite color is black. I’m not even sure if black is a color. I like black. A lot. On the right occasions. But I like the whole array of colors. Blues mostly. When I was a kid, “powder blue” was a popular color. Dad bought mom a powder blue car. Don’t even remember the model, but think it was a Chevrolet.
Before that she had a lime green 1965 Mustang. But lime green is lighter than the color of a lime. I remember she ran over our cat with the limish green Mustang.
I wonder who will win the election.
I wonder when there will be another terrorist attack in the USA.
I wonder why nobody knows that a main pillar of Mohammed’s ministry was social justice for the poor and outcasts, and rights for women.
I won’t stop writing even though I don’t know what to say. I’m not saying anything, however. I’m writing. Freewriting is only freewriting if you never stop.
It seems I always want, again, want, to write on “heavy” things. Welcome to my world. Maybe I need to brush up on my humor. That’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to try and be more humorous in my writing.
That’s what we all need. We need to laugh more.
So here it goes…
Here are questions I ask myself, often.
First, I ask myself if everyone is self-conscious. (Okay, I was making an attempt at humor, and the first thing that came off my fingers was a serious question. So let’s postpone the new and improved funny Paul for just a minute.)
Here’s the deal. I think that everyone is self-conscious. Everyone. I think that some of the people that are most self-conscious are the ones that everyone thinks are the least self-conscious. Because the people who seem least self-conscious are really trying to appear as if they don’t care what others think.
I’m self-conscious. But only with people who I want to impress. Are you that way? I’m never self-conscious with that gardener. Or the teenager that works at In-N-Out.
I’m going to write in an intellectual tone for a minute before I think of a way to be funny.
In spite of proclivities, which naturally manifest, one conversant with one’s self—her unique capacity for second-order desires, namely, the unique ability to think about her own thoughts, feelings, moods—concludes that libertarian free will remains a cornerstone attribute of the human person.
Meh.
Better… I think we all have choices. Free will. We are not determined robots. We can vote. Exercise. Learn. We can choose to improve our lives. Make it a better day. Be lazy. Not be lazy.
Not vote.
Write have a good weekend.
Write happy Friday.
Can we choose to not miss those for whom we thought we needed a break?
Yesterday I wrote this post about a part of my intellectual journey. This morning I woke to proof that post. And it was gone. Gone.
Here is the outline of what I remember. I’ll turn this into a proper post on day. Or, maybe this will suffice.
Bullet points.
First, I went to UCLA with the intention of being talked out of what I believed, especially about Christianity.
Second, I figured that if Jesus couldn’t stand up to secular philosophy, he must be pretty weak.
Third, over the course of a few years, I started realizing that people I was hanging around were all about the same:
White
Protestant.
Evangelical.
Charismatic
Middle class or upper middle class.
Conservative (I did live in Orange County, California, after all)
All very similar in how they thought.
Conversation started feeling like an echo chamber. And I started sitting there in church during the sermons wondering how the passionate 36-year-old who was often shouting could be so certain about the topic of the week (and it was always a he, which sometimes made me feel curious).
This season wasn’t bad, per se. I loved my friends and colleagues. Life was good.
But I think growing up with an immigrant family, growing up Roman Catholic, having a father who was a remarkably bright contrarian, and an influential celibate sageish old monk-like uncle who was just like Saint Francis and lived alone with piles of books in every room — it all caught up to me.
I think I was getting older. I started wondering if this kind of Christianity was the best kind.
And I felt insecure that I didn’t know more about the great thinkers: Aristotle, Plato, Augustine, Mill, Kant, Descartes, Hume. I assure you that I knew just about nothing about every single one of them.
I wanted to understand political philosophy better, too. Not what each side said during an election campaign — not what Rush Limbaugh told me what to think, and I certainly was getting my news from him — but about the original thinkers that our founders read: Burke, Mill, Locke, Machiavelli, Rousseau.
Fast forward.
One day I was on a business trip to Zurich, Switzerland. Waiting for a client. In the lobby of some posh hotel, probably sipping some German beer. I had picked up Time Magazine during a layover in New York. Billy Graham on the cover. He turned 75.
Was thinking I had the best job on the planet. In my late 20’s, traveling the world for a Christian music company.
But this thing about education, no this thing about just how ignorant I was — it was on my mind daily.
I’m reading, and Billy Graham tells Time he has one great failure.
One. Great. Failure.
“I had one great failure, and that was intellectual. I should have gone on to school. But I would talk to people about that, and they’d say, Oh no, go on with what you’re doing, and let others do that. I do regret I didn’t do enough reading, enough study, both formal and informal.”
(Oh, I forgot to say that I had dropped out of college when I was 19. Bored the heck out of me, just like high school did. And this fact brings up a whole new subject: Parents, some of your kids are like me. They struggle in high school but bloom later. Keep them interested in learning even though they might not like education.)
I went to live in London for a few years. That also added to my discontent. There, so many of the evangelical Christians I knew were liberal. Huh?
Anyway, I soon found myself in Dodd Hall at UCLA reading Hume and Russell and Mill and all these atheists (along with many Islamic and Christian philosophers, too). And about the metaphysics of modality and moral luck and the mind/body problem.
I soon found myself with a graduate degree.
And I soon found myself understanding that how people come to believe (whatever they believe) is so very complex. This helped me to no longer demonize people because they disagree with me.
Today, I still find myself shying away from echo chambers. I think the main problem in our country today is that few people are willing to take the risk of understanding, truly understanding, what other people have to say.
This great temptation we all have to surround ourselves with people who think just like us. Not good.
Then I came to this view that was popularized by Gandhi: “It far easier to hate you enemies than to disagree with them.”
Today, I don’t think everyone needs to follow in my footsteps. Lots of dang smart people out there without a college degree. But I think everyone, EVERONE, needs to notice if they’re living in an echo chamber. And if they are, they need to go find some new friends.
Christians, find a Muslim friend.
Atheists, hang out with some devout Jews.
Catholics with Protestants, progressives with fundamentalists. Straight with LGBT.
Fortunately, younger people are good at this; older people are not.
Gotta end this post now. But glad to report that it’s all worked out so far, and Jesus stood up perfectly fine to all those horrifyingly brilliant atheists. 😉
It’s summer. Your teenager is 15. He wants to go to a friend’s house.
But you don’t know the friend.
You don’t know the parent. Nor the uncle. Never met them.
So what do you do? I’ll get to that. But one thing for sure — it’s much easier when they’re young.
Because when you kids are five or 8 or 10, the law requires parental supervision; at least one parents is always at home.
And when kids are younger, chances are that their elementary or middle school is relatively small. And they’ve probably played on local sports team or dance teams or whatever local community activity. So you’ve already met a ton of parents. You’ve spoken with them. You’ve shared stores. You’re able to weed out that bad kids because you know the parents.
On top of that, your kids are fine with you calling their friends’ parents. It’s the norm. So playdates feel safe because you get to verify everything: the adult supervision, what the plan is, drop of time, pick up time, etc. And if you’ve never met the parent, it’s still acceptable to just get their number and call. And if they seems sketchy on the phone, it’s easy: you come up with some sudden excuse why your kid can’t go today. You lie to the parent through a text about having to run to the doctor or your spouse needing you or car trouble or whatever.
But then they go to high school. And in high school, the middle school of a few hundred is replaced by a high school of a few thousand. And the kids come from further distances. Now know each kid and parent is harder to know, or even meet. It’s a numbers game: you’re just not going to know all the kids.
Then they send you a text and want to hang out.
But your kid ain’t going to let you call the parent. He’s almost 16. There’s no way in hell he’s going to text his friend: “My dad needs to talk to your mom or dad…can I get their number and my dad (i.e. daddy) will call them and make sure it’s okay. Not gonna happen.
And, here’s an aside. The system for socializing kids is tilted against single dads. We don’t have the luxury of being part of the mommy social network. When it comes to raising kids, school, school activities, parent networking, and activities, it’s a mom’s world. Single dads aren’t in the know because we aren’t part of the mom social network. And when you try to break-in to that group — trust me on this one — the moms don’t quite seem to capture your motives.
So what do you do when summer starts and your 15-year old wants to go over to a friends house—a friend you’ve never met, with a parent or parents you’ve never met, etc.?
First, write a short post about it to get it off your chest.
Second, take a deep breath and look at the big picture.
Specically, that it’s a very safe world out there. Especially in Irvine, Calfiornia–regularly voted one of the safest cities in the US.
My ultimate view is that there’s far too much anxiety out there today. Everyone is focused on what can go wrong, even though crimes and homicides are lower than they’ve been in decades. Kids are safer than they’ve ever been. And in most countries and for most of history teenagers have had their own families are the men were fighting in wars.
Today, we’re paranoid. All of us. Too many evils. Most which are perpetuated by sensationalism peddled to us by the idiot news reports. That crap sells advertizing, so we keep hearing about it.
I block that crap out.
Because I don’t want to infantilize my teenager, even against the cultural pressure to do so. Much of the pressure comes from the Evangelical Christian community I’ve been a part of.
1. This parent laments the days when kids had freedom, but I don’t think it’s ever too late for parents to loosen up and let kids be kids already.
If I gave an 8-year-old this kind of freedom, someone would call social services. My children will never have the luxury of dreaming alone on their bicycles as they pedal slowly down the sidewalk, bumping over curbs.
2. I’m no millennial, but this study saying that being a Dad makes you very happy is of no surprise to this “older” father of three.
Just in time for Father’s Day comes a new report in which millennial fathers claimed significantly higher levels of satisfaction wheith their work an home lives than single men.
.
3. I can’t relate with this study in the least (wink), but for all you others, here are five resons you procrastinate.
The costs of procrastination are often considerable. Evidence suggests that the habit of leaving things until last minute generally results in low quality work performance and reduced well-being. For example, students who routinely procrastinate consistently get lower grades. Procrastinators tend to postpone getting appropriate medical treatments and diagnostic tests.
4. This is a classic that is becoming increasingly relevent in my world these days. A must watch, and very good as a reminder!
Those of you with kids in high school probably have college on the brain. You want your kids to be successful and happy, but there is a chance their idea of successful and happy and your idea might be a little different. You want them to go to college, but with the pressures they feel in high school, maybe that’s the last thing they want to do right now. I’m here to tell you that the best way to support your kids is to not pressure them to go to college; it may be what ultimately gets them into college and flourishing in it.
