This is re-written from a rock throwing memory that popped up from our trip to Damascus 3 years ago. I'm happy to say, I remain focused on saying yes to the boys as often as possible.
And to saying yes to me. *** A couple of decades ago, I led a group of kids on a canoe trip. We found ourselves standing along the edge of the Cape Fear River in North Carolina. It was the end of a long hot summer day; the kids were grumpy. One of the kids, being a kid, started throwing rocks into the river. A fellow counselor, always reasonably on the lookout for the next disaster, instinctively yelled, quit throwing rocks. Then I did something that had previously NOT been my instinct. I said, line up boys. Give yourself plenty of room. Now find a rock. I want to see who can throw it the furthest. And for the next hour, ten boys stood on the edge of a river claiming to have thrown a rock further across the Cape Fear River than any boy in history. That day was long before I became a dad, but I learned a valuable dad lesson that day: always look for a way to say yes. Yesterday, the boys and I were headed for a two mile walk on the Creeper Trail before heading back home from our little spring break get away. About a quarter of a mile into the walk, Elliott spotted a small beachy area. Can we go down there?, he asked. Yes, I said. And for the next hour, I watched them skip rocks across a river much smaller than the Cape Fear, but the beauty in the "yes" was still there. I watched the boys work together to dig up a giant boulder and together plunge it into the water - it sounded like a bomb going off as it disappeared - all while claiming the rock had indeed skipped. I watched Ian drop a leaf onto the surface of the water and stare it down as it floated off, claiming it was still skipping as it disappeared into a distant rapid. I listened as they dreamed out loud of the water being warm enough for them to float down the river like a leaf. I stood there thinking about all that gets missed when we say no. I thought about how sometimes it seems when it comes to kids, maybe our instincts are programmed to say no. I suppose that comes from a good place - this place of wanting to protect kids. Wanting to steer them in the "right" direction. I think it also comes from another place - this place where we ourselves are too quick to focus on the "no" in our own lives, on these things we can't do in life or aren't supposed to do in life. We get obsessed with memorizing the rules and the laws and the diets and the fences that tell us where not to go and what not to eat and what not to do in life. We can get to believing the secret to life is memorizing all to say no to. I'll never forget that group of grumpy kids standing along the edge of the Cape Fear River who turned suddenly happy the moment they became - in their grumpy minds - the furthest river rock throwers ever. I'll never forget my boys watching that "skipping boulder" plunge to the bottom of the river beneath a giant splash. And you're right boys - that water IS cold... Today, I'm reminded, as often as possible I need to find ways to tell those boys yes. And as often as possible, I need to be finding ways to tell myself yes. Sometimes no looks and feels like the safest bet, but what no often says no to best to is life. And living. I've learned that one the hard way. I think we're all a little better if we allow ourselves a chance to skip a few rocks in life. Maybe even go looking for a boulder or two. Say yes to skipping today. Say yes to living.
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I suppose by the strictest view, there are three kinds of parenting when it comes to risk-taking.
Please don't ever take any, risks are where danger lives. Or, don't worry about danger, there's no such thing. Or, lastly, some approach in between. This week, I feel assured the boys fall in that someplace in between. Whether climbing mounds of rocks to take the perfect photograph, or scaling down slippery gorges and over limbs to get to the magic fishing hole, I've watched the boys apply appropriate caution while having their eyes focused full steam ahead on their immediate dreams. Because that's where dreams lives, where really living comes to life, somewhere between eyes wide open to every possible problem and eyes closed to the possibility that problems exist at all. Life is not about perfection. It's not about finding the fail-proof or danger-proof path. If you believe that path exists, you are currently and possibly hopelessly stuck in the trap of an endless pursuit. You are currently living an offshoot of death. In fact, at this dad's age, one thing I've come to feel sure of is that life is far more about mastering the art of overcoming the screw ups than it is mapping out the course that avoids them. If I were to make a list of all the things I've lived out perfectly in life, and another of all of the things I've screwed up, let me just conservatively say that the screw up list is a few tens of thousands of entries longer than the perfection list. But here's the big thing about that. Here's the truth bomb. If I had to throw one of the lists away, it would be that perfection list. The perfection list has shaped little in me. It's taught me almost nothing. But that screw up list - what a gold mine. It's at the heart of all that I get to do professionally these days. It's at the heart of all that I get to sit and write about each morning. It's at the heart of so many of the next steps I take in my life. I have not mastered the art of overcoming the screw up, but I'm getting there. Are there missteps I sometimes wish I hadn't taken? Certainly. But would I have ever figured that out with actually taking the misstep? Probably not. I've never told my boys I don't want them to make the mistakes I've made in life. And I never will. Mainly because I don't want them to live afraid of my mistakes. Or theirs. I simply tell them what I've learned in the process of overcoming mine. Take that to your next step. I tell them that and hope they proceed with caution, but never with so much caution that they become afraid of finding a way to proceed. Parenting is a tough deal. Maybe the toughest part is you never get confirmation that you perfected it or that you totally screwed it up. The signs always point to some outcome in between. But this parent finds deep satisfaction and hope and maybe a little cautious optimism watching my boys march into the land of possible missteps this week. March and discover, that's where their dreams live. March and remind me, that's where mine live too. As a culture, I feel like we are obsessed at times about our children's futures. Obsessed about shaping them. Educating them. Protecting them. Spiritualizing them. Monetizing them.
Maybe there is some good in that somewhere. I don't know. But I'm pretty sure any good in it ends when obsessing about the future takes away even the slightest bit from the present. We were on the way back from a long hike yesterday. We were all pretty tired. Clearly, though, Elliott was less tired than the rest of us. Or more ambitious? He looked over the grassy highlands to a tall stack of rocks and said, "I kinda want to go over there." Uhm, timeout, can we agree that no kid ever 'kinda' wants to do anything? So Ian and I agreed that we'd 'kinda' like to go with Elliott and we began the trek. I have to confess, as we got closer to the rocks, I began to wonder, worry maybe, is there an age restriction to this ride? I feel like I might be a little too old to be making climbs like that. Watching the boys bound up those rocks when we got there, though, made it clear it was at least a teen-friendly experience. Which was enough for me. Until it wasn't enough, and I managed to join them. And what a gift to join. I stood there watching them do their things. Maybe studying them. Admiring them. Elliott snapping pictures, Ian looking out into the pictures Elliott was taking. I have come to know my boys well enough to know that in that moment, Elliott is falling in love with the world. It mesmerizes him. Maybe the mountains speak to him like they speak to me. And in the same moment, Ian is dreaming of taking over the world. I'm not convinced he wants to rule it, but I'm pretty sure he's not against owning it. I stand there watching them both, with no desire at all to shape where that moment takes them. I've lived a life that knows the moments often take us places no one has much say in. There are moments best left to the moment's desires. That's a tough one for a father to grasp hold of at times. But maybe it's the best thing for a father to learn to grasp. That a child's imagination is often a far greater source of wisdom than a father's. Because when a father comes to understand that, a father will begin to grow the child's imagination more than he will try to define the direction and the possibilities of the child's future. We are all created to find our way. And with a little help, we will. Maybe a parent's biggest mistake is coming to think that help best comes in giving their children opportunities. When in reality, that help best comes in helping our children discover their own. That often starts at the top of a giant heap of rocks. Looking out into the world, into their futures. Looking out into the moment. I don't know what the moment said to them yesterday. I don't know what possibilities it offered them. And I'm okay with that. Because in that moment, the moment was far wiser than I can ever become. I am simply thankful for what the moment gifted us all. I told one of my sons the other day, don't perfect procrastination, because once you do, it's a skill you'll fall back on all your life.
Does that sound like a voice of experience? It should, because it absolutely is. All my life I have thrived under the pressure of a deadline. That can be a good thing, until you come to NEED a deadline to thrive. Ryan Holiday talks about a sense of urgency at the other end of the clock. Holiday says, "We don’t control the clock, but we control when it begins ticking on our projects and pursuits. Every moment of hesitation delays the outcome and diminishes the potential for success." The key word there for me is success. Often, when driven by a deadline, just completing the project or turning the assignment in on time feels like success. Not nearly as much importance is given to quality in a deadline mentality as there is given to just getting it done. Thriving at completing work is not always the same as thriving at producing meaningful work. Writing has taught me a lot about shifting the point of urgency. I've always been capable of putting something good together as the clock expires to meet a deadline. But these days, I wake up with a sense of urgency to begin writing so I have ample time to create something I hope will be more meaningful than good. I look back on my life and I'm afraid my gift of procrastination has probably been more curse than gift. I wonder how many things I never started because I thought there was plenty of time to get that done? I wonder if some gifted procrastinators - like me - become so dependent on deadlines that they begin imagining deadlines somewhere way out there that ultimately stand in their way of getting started on something in the here and now. Something that might have made a difference in someone's life. Oh, I still need deadlines. But today, I try to use them for things that HAVE to get done, like work assignments at the bottom of my to-do list that would likely never make it off the list without the pressure of a deadline. For things I want to get done, though, for things I dream about and imagine leaving to the world as part of a legacy, for those things I try to focus more on starting the clock and not waiting for it to expire. Whether it's with my parenting or writing or teaching or sharing my faith, I'm trying to feel more pressure to get started on something meaningful than waiting around for pressure to arrive that implores me to just get it done. How about you? Do you wait for the ticking of an expiring clock, or are you reaching to hit the button that gets that clock ticking? If you're waiting to start the clock on something meaningful, a hope or a dream or a project that might change or shape someone else's life, maybe today is the day. Maybe today is the day to start the clock. This memory of my boys popped up from 10 years ago. One of the miracles my writing brings me is that ten years ago the writer captured a moment, and then ten years later the moment is capturing the writer.
It was sort of a cool brotherly love moment back then. One brother taking off like there's nothing to it. The other brother believing there's way more to it than could ever be overcome. My Elliott has always been able to sense emotions in people. He feels them. Maybe Elliott more than anyone has sensed and felt and understood my battles the last several years. It's his gift. All the way back to those playground days, he could sense his brother's fear. He felt it. And what he felt moved him to do something about it. And Ian. Ian is not immune to fear, for sure. But he IS immune to letting it stand in his way. Ian sees fear as a reasons to call out for a hand, not run from one. It's his gift. There they are, the two brothers: I need you and I see you. I love the image of Elliott standing back, my work is done here, watching his brother take off. A five and seven year old on a playground modeling the core ingredients of the very healthiest of relationships: I need you and I see you. I don't know why, really, that so often kids get that better than adults. I don't know why relationships get complicated beyond I need you and I see you. I mean, it's the way we come into the world as babies. A baby crying out I need you, someone showing up to remind them I see you. In the earliest seconds of our life we learn that the greatest answer to fear is each other. Maybe it is so because it's supposed to be the only answer. Where does it go astray? Is it a culture that over-promotes independence? Needing help is somehow a weakness? Is it a world so caught up and overwhelmed by our own dreams or our own struggles that we can no longer find the way to seeing another? Our common denominator is our fears. If untamed, they individually and collectively destroy us. They leave us frozen on the playground unable to even imagine that first rung on the monkey bars. At least until someone sees us. Sees that we need help. It is the most beautiful moment of all, no matter where it happens, when I need you and I see you join forces. We were created by a God who more than anything wants us to always hear, I see you. A God who wants to leave us always unafraid to cry out, I need you. Maybe two little boys on the playground are as beautiful and powerful as the reminder can ever be. Each other. Each other, there is no better answer. There was never supposed to be. It's the answer we were created for. 12/18/2023 0 Comments Everything is going to be okMy great grandfather's name was Evans Elliott. He was the coolest guy with the coolest name I ever met. Not just met, I was blessed to grow up with him right across the rural Ohio highway from the house I grew up in.
When I teach or do presentations on the developing brain, and talk about how much our adult brain reflects the wiring of our childhood brains, I always say my brain is wired to see the world as "everything's going to be okay." These days I'm pretty sure that's not as much a me thing or a God thing as much as it is an Evans Elliott thing. I suppose a lot of that is because my great grandmother was a compulsive worrier; all Evans Elliott had to do was sit next to her and, relatively speaking, he'd look like the calm in the storm. But he is also a man who survived the great depression. In my eyes, though, he always seemed to have thrived it and not survived it. This is a man who could reach deep inside a ewe and pull a lamb out like he was calmly pulling a candy bar out of a vending machine - me nearby wanting NOTHING to do with that candy bar - and moments later he'd sit there in the afterbirth covered straw feeding that lamb a bottle. Kind of like that's just how life goes, mess to beauty. I remember a couple of times vividly when the man, his cheek full of chewing tobacco, told me everything is going to be OK. And walked off as if he'd just revealed nothing more meaningful than the obvious. I think more, though, I remember the feeling of everything's going to be OK that came with his presence. Presence CAN be everything is going to be OK. The day he died, I leaned on an old steel gate that opened into the pasture where I often watched him feed sheep or drive a tractor off to tend to the nearby fields. In that moment, I knew if I ever had a boy, I'd name him Elliott. Or a girl.... 🤷♂️ 17 years ago today, Elliott was born, with as the doctors put it, little more than a heartbeat. The doctor worked furiously to save him and collapsed his lung in the process. In that moment, I remember saying the first prayer of my life. Oh, I'd said plenty of "our fathers" and "hail marys" and "the salvation prayer" and tons of scripted conversations with God we're taught or coerced into having over the years. But this was a different kind of conversation. This was me and God and my own free will in the hall of a hospital that smelled and felt too much like death to me. Without my script, the only words I could come up with were, "God, I have no idea what you're up to here. But I trust you. I trust that everything is going to be OK." Looking back, I don't know if I was having a conversation with God or Evans Elliott or how much they were even different that day. In the end, though, I felt God saying I know you trust that. And it will be OK. The past several years I've had to lean on that conversation a lot. I've had to lean on that reminder a lot. That it's going to be OK. I don't suppose there's a greater reminder on earth than looking at my 17 year old son, a deep thinker, compassionate, a crazy New York Giants fan, and a kid who doesn't seem to worry too much. A kid who always seems to walk around looking like it's all going to be OK. There are many days lately when I bow my head, just me and God and my own freewill, and I say, "God, I have no idea what you're up to here. But I trust you. I trust that everything is going to be OK." Today, I add, "I thank you God for the kid who once had little more than a heartbeat, for the kid who many days keeps this heart of mine beating, beating with more belief than I've ever had, that everything is going to be OK." And today, I will also add, what his mom did that day will always be the most heroic thing I've ever witnessed. Our relationship these days is simply mom and dad, but there will never be anything simple about my relationship to that mom's heroism. God breathed life into so many that day through baby Elliott. It will never be lost on me that he breathed it through her. Happy Birthday to my baby Elliott. The one whose mere presence reminds me everything is going to be OK. Because presence can be - everything's going to be OK. (re-written from 2021 As a kid, I idolized the local weathermen on the six o'clock news. I'd wait to spend time with them every evening. They were as much must watch TV for me as Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley and Little House on the Prairie.
(Yes, I'm old). In my mind, the weatherman had the dream job. And somewhere inside me, this kid wanted to be one of those weathermen too. Then I was reminded that I really wasn't great at science, and that Jim Ganahl on channel 4 wasn't making a lot of money talking about the weather, so off to college I went to be an actuary. I had no idea what an actuary was. I just knew it involved a lot of math and that someone in our family made decent money being one. About three college calculus classes into that pursuit, I discovered I wasn't very good at math either. Or, maybe it's more true to say I had more desire to stay out drinking all night than go to calculus class. Either way, the result was the same. I was no longer pursuing a life as an actuary. I don't know what I started pursuing after that. In fact, I have a business degree from Ohio State, but I don't remember one single moment in my 'it took eleven years to get a four year degree' wanting to be anything at all in college. Other than drunk. Drinking, I could have gotten a doctorate in that. I don't have bitterness toward the conversations that pointed me in the direction I went. The generations that raised me and the generations that raised them - they had to fight for money. I can understand why they would think my dream come true would be not having to fight for money. I think we know better today than ever that money chasing is far more a dream crusher than a dream maker. Still, I know that chase remains. I was standing on the beach last winter taking pictures of the sky and the ocean. My teenage son Elliott was standing next to me - taking pictures. I noticed a passion in Elliott that you don't often see out of him unless he's talking about the New York Giants. I asked him, have you ever thought about being a photographer? He responded, you can't make any money being a photographer. A darkness, a deep sadness, an overwhelming sense of fear - all of it - it rolled up through and then over me like one of the waves we'd just photographed. Only this one wasn't beautiful; it was drowning and it was toxic. I told Elliott, dude, if you love photography, be a photographer. Decide today you're going to be a photographer, then figure out how to make a living doing it. My part-time job is meeting with students at a local college who have violated alcohol and drug policies. I will frequently ask them, what do you want to do when you leave here? When they say I don't know, I worry a bit. Not that every student needs to have a clear picture of the life they want after college. But if you have dreams, if you have some life you imagine for yourself, you have something to fight for. And protect. You have something at great risk if you decide to spend your college years drinking all day and night. I am fortunate. Today I do live out my dreams and passions. In my writing and speaking and teaching, I have discovered the life I want to live. I am surrounded by people who encourage it. I could have never imagined feeling more fulfilled by the work I get to do. It's not lost on me that I wouldn't have these passions if I hadn't had the struggles I went through in college and in the years before and after it. So maybe my life, living the life I want to live, is more about God's timing than anything. Maybe God had bigger plans for me than the weather. (But please know I'd rock those live shots in a Weather Channel rain jacket while covering an east coast hurricane 😊). Our young people face the greatest mental health crisis of our time. And I believe no small part of that is more than ever they are being pressured to succeed far more than they are being inspired to dream. They are being pressed to live lives imagined for them instead of being offered opportunities to imagine the life they might want to live. Maybe that's because too many of us are still trying to figure out the lives we want to live as well..... I think we would all be well served to do a hard stop. Stop and wonder, what is the life I want to live. And then, what can I do to make a living within that life? It might be the best favor we ever did for ourselves. I know it would be the best favor we could ever do for our kids. 11/23/2023 0 Comments Home can be as simple as breakfastPost divorce, one of the things I wrestled with a lot was the idea of home. Most of that came from me moving from a house to a small apartment.
For the longest time, I'd return the boys from time with me at my apartment to home. Their home. My former home. And there was a void. A home void. I've come to understand more than I ever did that home is not a physical dwelling. Home is a feeling. A sense. I've come to understand it's possible to live in houses all your life and never find home. And it's equally possible to prepare 3 Thanksgiving morning breakfasts and share them with the people you love most and feel completely at home. This morning, I am thankful for home. I am reminded that God has prepared a home for me. I can get caught up imagining the streets of gold. The mansion on a hill. But this morning I imagine the joy God will feel preparing breakfast for me, and the joy I'll feel eating it with him. This morning I can fully imagine the joy of home. Home. When I feel discontent, it is usually because I have forgotten.
I've forgotten my purpose. When your life is about leaning into purpose, you are never lost. Not ever. It's when we start measuring our standing in life by measures other than purpose that discontentment creeps in. Or stampedes its way in. Measures like: Am I where I think I'm supposed to be? Am I where others think I'm supposed to be? Am I as far in life as she is or he is? Am I noticed. Appreciated. Viral. Famous? Some of those things may be of service to your purpose; most are only interested in hijacking it. If you know your purpose, contentment isn't about 'am I there yet?' Contentment is about 'am I being true to my purpose where I am right now?' When I think about my purpose, my purpose is to live out God's light, to encourage human connections that look and feel like that light, and that my love for my boys always looks like my heavenly father's love for me. Maybe that is more than one purpose 😊- but they are intertwined for sure. The thing is, my purpose has no end game. It has no final destination. It only asks, am I being true to that purpose right here and right now. When the answer is no, my life often feels discontent. When I feel discontent, I know the answer. It's my purpose. I need to realign my heart and my mind and my soul with my purpose. Right here. Right now. For that is always the starting point for contentment. Ian had his fifteenth birthday yesterday. Nothing makes a parent reflect more than a kid's birthday.
I found myself thinking, he's growing up to be just like him. I found myself smiling. I'm in the sixth decade of my life. I feel like I am finally growing up to be just like me. I don't want my boys to have to wait that long. That's why I don't have dreams for my boys. I don't have any desire that they have a better life than I have had. I really don't have any desires for my boys at all, other than that they grow up to be just like them. When we have dreams for our kids, it's tempting to make our dreams their dreams. Which makes their dreams largely fueled by pressure and not desire or passion. Pressure that often has them growing up to be someone other than themselves. I had a conversation with a friend at lunch yesterday. I was commenting just how different my boys are as teens than I was. She asked if that is a good thing or a bad thing. I said it's just a thing. It's tempting to want to measure my kids by who I was or am. It's tempting to measure my kids by who I'd like them to be. It's tempting to imagine the course of their life against the map of some course I have plotted out for them. It's tempting, but I don't do it. I don't do it because I want my boys to grow up to be just like them. Not just like me. Not like my desires. A lot of folks out there in the world are struggling today. I think at the root of many of those struggles is too many people have grown up to be just like someone else. They got so busy living a life looking like someone they were supposed to look like and never stopped to discover who they are. So happy birthday Ian. I love you buddy. And I really love that the you I love looks more and more like you every day. Keep being you pal |
Robert "Keith" CartwrightI am a friend of God, a dad, a runner who never wins, but is always searching for beauty in the race. Archives
May 2024
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