If I had it all to do over, I wouldn’t date. No relationships in high school or after or in college. Just hang out with lots of people and get to know them over time.
I’d want to see how they choose to do life. Because I was pretty consistent in my routine and character. I don’t think I posed significant surprises.
What might I have become if I remained detached and looked for things to study?
Imagine 16 year old me going to work, coming home, cracking open a book, and getting a high school diploma. Maybe playing basketball my senior year.
Going to college in the Fall after graduation and graduating within four years. She would have still been there before I left. Make my own friends, but focus on degree and career plans. Learn budgeting and investing and money management.
Graduate from the university with no girlfriend. Am I going to write a book now? I take time finding roommates and live on the cheap while I write my first book. It’s probably a total flop. But it gives me experience. It familiarizes me with the process.
Without a dating relationship, I probably start off working at a coffee shop until I realize it doesn’t pay enough even with roommates.
Do I move home with my parents? Do I still end up working the bookstore?
These Questions will never have answers
These days, the people I respect most are obsessed with something they love. They pour themselves into learning, practicing, doing, perfecting. They are artists, skilled workers, single-minded thinkers. They are passionate about the thing they are busy doing.
I’d like to be like that.
Somewhere along the way, I got so busy being distracted by a dozen different duties that I left being average at all of them.
I used to be proud of my history. My wild living. The few years I spent doing foolish things and having experiences my parents never dreamed of.
Then I had kids. Now I listen to my wife tell stories she is proud of, and I see the gleam in their eyes as they listen. Mommy’s stories give life. They build, inspire, and assign identity.
Dad’s stories stay hidden. Dad doesn’t talk about his past much. He’s worried we’ll become like him. He doesn’t want us making the same mistakes. He’d rather us stay at home all the time reading books and building our minds.
Do What I couldn’T do
That’s right, kid. Do what I couldn’t. Or didn’t. Be better. Be more. But somehow still admire me and respect me even though you’re actively trying to not be like me.
Do you know what kind of internal divorce that feels like? The splitting of self into parts. The part you can share and the parts you can’t. The parts you want to tell them about because to tell them is to be known, but you don’t because to tell them is to admit how utterly foolish Dad has been over and over and over and over again.
How does one admire a father who still can’t point to memories that aren’t mistakes? Whose current life looks like the ongoing catastrophe of a series of past mistakes?
Don’t be like me. But somehow still love me. And not for pity. Please find a way to love me as a man you admire. I just don’t know what to tell you to admire.
