Beneath the noise is where true change occurs

​Many years ago, I wrote an article called "Good Dads Stay." If you read the article, you would have concluded an alternative title for the article could have been "Bad Dads Don't Stay."

The article was full of not so silent judgment. Judgment shaped by the fact I had a dad who stayed. Judgment shaped by years of working with teens who had a lot of struggles that I strongly correlated to fathers who were absent in those kids' lives. And, the truth is, it was largely shaped by one side of a cultural narrative.

Then, just a couple of years ago, I wrote an article about leaving my marriage. The dad who wrote about good dads staying was now writing about the dad who was leaving. It was the hardest article I've ever shared. Not because of what I was doing, but because of what I perceived I was being - a hypocrite.

I'm sure my fear of being called a hypocrite kept me in my marriage longer than I would have been if I hadn't written that article. And in the end, I'll always wonder if that wasn't more unhealthy for my boys than me staying.

Because what I've come to know, in the end we've come to define too many issues as right or wrong, good or bad - when the right question is 'healthy' or 'not healthy' for the people involved. It's about doing what is best, and that isn't always in perfect alignment with what one side of a narrative has defined as right.

I still believe it's a really healthy thing if kids can grow up with two parents in their home. But I've also come to know there are a lot of really healthy kids and adults who didn't have that. And a lot of really unhealthy kids and adults who did.

I am grateful. In the aftermath of writing the article about leaving, very few people called me out for being a hypocrite. But not everyone is so lucky.

There are a lot of people who change. They change because they learn - they evolve - they come to see that right might not be what is healthiest or best. But many times, these people who have been publicly scolded for their stands, get publicly labeled as hypocrites when they change their stands.

Meanwhile, a lot of people who are in the midst of their own potential evolution are watching. And growing fearful of being called hypocrites themselves.

I spent a lot of years clinging to some views I no longer have today. Often, they were views I clung to because of the approval I got from the folks clinging to them with me, and to fight off the noise of folks clinging to something else on the other side of the room.

I changed when I left the room. When I sat down and started having quiet conversations with people who wanted to talk about healthy and best and not right and wrong. Often times, with people who had been judged by people like me while I was being "right" and they were being "wrong."

I changed when I realized a lot of damage was being done while I clung to right. I changed when I realized a lot of damage was being done while I hid from being called a hypocrite. I changed when I left the fray and started talking to a lot of people who weren't fortunate enough to have a say in the fray.

But I'm not everyone.

There are a lot of people who have changed but have backed themselved into the corner of the fray with articles they've written about bad dads.

And there are also a lot of people we unknowingly keep pinned in the fray with all the noise.

I do wish the world would have more quiet conversations about healthy and less volatile conversations about right and wrong. I think in the end there would be far less hypocrisy and far more change.

And far more healthy.

Because in the end, I've personally discovered the 'right' choice isn't always the healthiest choice.