I should preface this missive as well as the next few with a disclaimer: it will be less about the “Thomases in Tandem” than what my dear Aunt Gail Ann once described as the “lamentations of a unicyclist.”
As I had hinted at in the conclusion of my last letter, this—being a stay-at-home dad homeschooling a small child while simultaneously trying to keep the even smaller children from destroying things/each other while I am distracted— is not where I saw myself ending up, even if it is not necessarily a bad place to be. It has its petty frustrations and its little moments of joy, even if these are often obscured in the near-constant background haze of bickering and chaos and the treadmill of laundry and dishes. In my more lucid moments of reflection, I can see that this is perhaps the most important job that there is. There is a quote attributed (probably spuriously) to CS Lewis that goes, “Children are not a distraction from more important work. They are the most important work.”
Whether or not Lewis actually said it, it’s a good quote.
One hundred years from now, the odds are that the only living people who will still remember that I ever existed will be the descendants of those that I am now raising. Jenn and I read a book called Sacred Parenting by Gary Thomas (no relation) that contained a chapter called “The Most Boring Chapter of the Bible.” Thomas’ conclusion in analyzing the genealogies that rudely interrupt the narrative flow in Genesis chapter 5 was that this list of names, ages, and descendants of varying pronounceability is a call to humility—to realize just how small our role is in the sweeping narrative of which we are all a part. No one now knows or cares how many camels Jared amassed, or whether Mahalalel’s dwelling was nominated for “Better Tents and Gardens,” or whether Enoch was first in his class at the local sheep-herder’s academy. They were born, they lived a certain number of years, they begat sons and daughters, they died. That’s it. That’s the extent that we know about them, and we know more about them (and the other denizens of biblical genealogies) than we do about 99.99% of the rest of humankind, whose only remaining legacy (if there is one) is a sequence in a strand of mitochondrial DNA.
That’s a reminder to me that, if I want to really make a difference in the world, the best place to start is right here, with these little human beings who laugh and cry and scream and make me want to do the same. Yes, it’s a very long-term investment, and in the midst of work that often feels endless, thankless, and pointless, it would be nice to see some more dividends here and now. Still, Jenn is pretty good at noticing and appreciating what I do (or at least attempt to do), as are my parents. Even my kids will occasionally let me know that I’m the “bestest daddy” (when I’m not the “worstest daddy”).
What’s more, I know that materially speaking I am among the most comfortable 1% of all people who have ever lived. I have permanent shelter, abundant food, clean water, modern medicine, steady electricity, multiple sets of clothing. I am married to a wonderful woman and have three beautiful, healthy children, none of whom has died of preventable childhood illness. The four horsemen, not just of the Apocalypse but of the historical human condition, have thus far given me a wide berth: my closest encounter with “war” is in the news and in the movies; my brush with “plague” left me with a particularly bad flu for a few days and unwanted mask for a few years, but certainly nothing that any of the more robust souls of previous centuries would have batted an eye at; “want” mostly means having to economize on coffee purchases; “death” has stayed peripheral, mostly striking only those whom I did not know well or whose time had come.
By Thomas Hobbes’ “nasty, brutish, and short” standards, I have led an utterly charmed life.
All of this, I get. But still, it is hard to accept, because the fact remains: professionally, this isn’t where I thought I would be at this point in my life. And in a society that defines us (all of us, but especially men) by our professions, that feels like a crisis.
One of my history professors in college noted that it’s not simply a people’s conditions that determine when revolutions happen; it’s when conditions fail to match the people’s expectations. (This goes a long way to explaining why the Americans were willing to revolt over a miniscule duty on tea, while Ukrainians under Stalin and North Koreans under Kim ate their own children rather than rise up against their oppressors.) Expectations may not be healthy, they may not be realistic, but they are an inevitable part of the human experience, and they are the lens through which that experience is interpreted, whether you are a San bushman or a Silicon Valley executive. Life is a game, personal and societal expectations set the rules, and the degree to which you meet those expectations determines whether you win or lose.
Looking at the last 15 years or so of my life, it is hard to avoid the feeling that I’m losing at the game of life.
I don’t begrudge those who have by hard work found success; it’s just that I have also worked very hard and been rewarded (professionally at least) by failure upon failure. It’s hard to tell if I’m here because this is part of a grand plan that I’m simply too small to see or if I just made a wrong turn or two somewhere up the road.
In conclusion, this past year, for reasons I will explore later, seems to be the year when the quarterlife crisis which started winter term of my senior year in college and has been more-or-less constant except for brief intermissions has finally transitioned seamlessly into a midlife crisis. It is unlikely that most people associate midlife crises with Dante’s Inferno (to the extent that most people associate anything with Dante’s Inferno), but the opening lines have been echoing in the back of my head with increasing volume over the last several years:
Nel mezzo dell’ cammin di nostra vita,
Mi ritrovai per una selva escura,
Che la dirrita via era smarrita.
“Midway through the journey that is our life, / I found myself in a dark wood, / for the straight path was lost.”
As I look back in order to try to discern a way forward, I invite you to look with me. Perhaps with your help, a straight path will become visible again.