Listening to: Cat’s in the Cradle – Cat Stevens
There seems to be a utopian ideal inside of most, if not all, members of the human race. It could be on any scale, large or small, personal or societal, economic or religious. It’s the feeling inside us all that starts with the words “things will be alright when . . .” and then proceeds to describe the necessary change that will effect a better world.
This, I’m coming more and more to believe, is not a healthy way to start a sentence.
I don’t mean, in saying this, to insinuate that instances of optimism in life are a bad thing. Far from it. We are encouraged in most situations (and commanded in others, see Gordon B. Hinckley) to be optimistic, and I think it is absolutely right that we should do so. But the sentiment of “things will be alright when . . .” is not optimism, in the strictest sense. Optimism is a point of view, an attitude and perspective on life that is not, or at least should not be, specific to any given situation. Optimism is the attitude that things will go well, or that they will improve over time. Optimism is having a personality that is saturated with hope, until it is not just a matter of hoping for certain things, but of truly possessing a ‘hope for all things.’
The thought process I’m talking about here is the one that says, “when I get out of my parents’ house, then I’ll finally be free to do what I want,” or, “when the kids are out of the house, then we’ll be able to have some free time again.” And yes, my son is only ten months old and I’ve already had that thought. You may now go ahead and have your condescending and judgmental thoughts in my direction. I’ll wait.
Back? Great. Let’s continue.
There are a lot of other iterations of this pattern that may be somewhat more subtle, but fall into the same general realm for the purposes of this discussion. When I get a house, I’ll finally be an adult. When I get a new job, then I’ll be happy with life. Once I get married, everything else will be wonderful. When I get that credit card paid off, I’ll be able to start saving money. When I get to five o’clock, I’ll be much happier about life. When I finally see Paris in the spring, or the pyramids, or Jerusalem, or Athens, I’ll feel like my life is complete. When I retire, then I can be happy. Once I get this bottle of wine open, I’ll feel better about life.
I do this a lot. Everyone does, to some extent. We love these thought experiments because they’re essentially fantasizing about a life other than our own. In which we can save money, have more space, have more time, have fewer headaches and more fun. We love them for the same reason we love to think about getting our Hogwarts acceptance letter, because it takes us out of the world we're presently in and puts us into some other world, no matter how miniscule the differences between those two worlds are.
But that’s just it. The entire process removes us from the world we currently inhabit, which is where we’re located in this moment of time, and it’s the one we need to deal with. I would love to be able to sit back and say that I’m really going to enjoy Adam when he gets old enough to talk to and play games with. I really look forward to teaching this guy to play chess and love old cartoons. I’m going to love reading Harry Potter to him and talking to him about which house he wants to belong to. I’m going to enjoy watching him grow up and play sports and do homework and book reports and science projects, start dating the wrong girls, maybe finally start dating the right ones, whatever the kid’s going to do with his life. I look at all those things and I think “man, it’s going to be so much more fun to be a father when he’s . . .”
In the meantime, he’s over there in his crib asleep at the moment, and I’m sitting here realizing that I’m focusing so much on what he isn’t yet that I’m not looking at him for what he’s already become. I’m reading books to him that are so short and simple I’ve memorized them, all the while waiting on the day that I can get his opinion on The Hobbit, and I’m letting that fantasy make me utterly bored with the current version of him. “When you comin’ home, Dad? I don’t know when, but we’ll get together then, yeah. You know we’ll have a good time then.” I’ve always loved that song, and it’s the perfect version of this entire philosophy.
So I’m going to try and remember, every time I look at the clock and pray for the big hand to race around to the twelve and the little hand to jump ahead to the five, to sit back and remind myself to do the best work I can while I’m at work. I’m going to look up at my son when he’s walking around and encourage him on the level he’s currently reached instead of just looking ahead. I’m going to look around at the life that we’ve created for ourselves as a couple and be grateful for what we’ve built already and the blessings we currently enjoy instead of focusing on the ones we hope to gain in the coming months and years. I’m going to try very hard to watch how I begin my sentences. And someday, when I’ve gotten really good at keeping those future fantasies out of my speech . . . ah, dang it . . .
This is your life. And not only is it ending one minute at a time, (thank you, Tyler) but it’s also progressing one minute at a time. It’s never going to be easy. You’re never going to sit back at the end of the day and say “wow, nothing at all was difficult for me today.” You’re never going to look at your finances and say “I have enough money for the rest of my life, guaranteed.” You’re never going to look at your knowledge of the universe and say “I don’t need to learn anything else, I’m good.” You’re never going to look at yourself in the mirror and say “I’m finished working on my appearance, that last sit-up did it.” The world is never going to get cheaper to live in. The society around you is always going to have problems, no matter how well-balanced its various regulatory systems. Even in a perfect world, I’m convinced the DMV is still going to be infuriating. Things are never going to be the fantasy we believe they’re capable of someday becoming.
That is not to say that these various goals are not worth working toward. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that at some point, we need to accept that life will always be a work in progress. If it is not, you are no longer alive. Knowing this, then, that we will always be somewhere on the continuum between the beginning and the theoretical end, we need to put more focus on being happy going five over the speed limit with the windows down, dealing with rush hour traffic while blaring music with a heartbeat, than we do on the destination.
So here I am, and here I’m going. It’s a nice place to be, this moment I’m sitting in, and I’m grateful for the chance to have gotten into it at all.
(photo quote by Terry Goodkind)
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