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AustinMama offers up some Daddy props.
- Robert A. Heinlein
Be a Man
Transitions are hard. For
our friend Theo, who’s not two yet, there’s a difficult few minutes that mark either his arrival at my house for a
daytime visit or his reluctance to leave when his mother arrives to
collect him and he’s been having fun. For the elderly, the
ongoing
restructuring of our world by technology paints modern existence as a
constantly steepened learning curve eager to shake them off and
leave them behind. Between the two, pretty much every crossroads our
lives turn at has at least a hundred yards of rough road, but there
are huge transitions more akin to a car crash, changing vehicles,
setting out into a deep and unforgiving sea, or rocketing off giddily
into orbit. Puberty, and the awkward and phenomenal ongoing
transition from child to adult, feels like all of them at once.
Twelve-year-old Keefe stands at the brink of that abyss, one foot
firmly planted in childhood whim and the other stepping into space.
Rather than rehashing arguments about Playstation 2 usage in the
house and struggles about skills development and other manifestations
of this process, I was inspired by a recent Escape Pod podcast to try
and compose the advice I would give him for life as an adult if I
weren’t here to give it to him later. After all, I have to have
learned something from that life experience Jan and I mention as part
of our decision making process and about which he rolls his eyes. I
like to think I’ve picked up some habits that work, and I’m positive
I’ve made plenty of mistakes I’d love to help him avoid. He’ll
make
new ones.
Life as a man is a horror without respect. We seek the respect of
others, and at our worst moments are ego driven and dangerously
wounded by feeling dissed. At its heart, this isn’t about anything
but our quest for an unshakeable sense of self-respect. To earn the
respect of both yourself and others requires acting with a kind of
personal integrity. The idea of a ‘code of conduct’ by which men
must live is familiar to anyone who’s ever watched a western, knows
what a Klingon is, or befriends a successful professional. Like all
men, I fail to live up to my own ideals at times, but the code I try
to live by looks a bit like this:
Show up. Be present. Do your best, and take pride in what you do.
If you give your word that you will do a thing, do your best to make
it happen.
Know your limitations. Try not to promise things you cannot deliver.
Find reasons to do it, rather than reasons you didn’t.
Learn about things before you make decisions about them.
Be ready to revise your opinions and try new ways of doing things.
Have a reason for what you do or decide, but don’t expect everyone to
like it.
Don’t expect life to be fair, but try to add to the fairness where
possible.
If your approach isn’t effective, it doesn’t matter if it feels good
or you’re proud of it.
Anticipate the worst and prepare for it. You can’t stop chaos from
happening, but the moment it strikes is too late to start thinking
about what to do.
Hope for the best and plan for it. If the pandemic kills you, it
doesn’t matter, but if it doesn’t, making the most of your life takes
effort.
Never stop learning. The more you know the more options are available
to you.
Cause as little harm as you can. Heal whenever you can. Forgive more.
Walk softly, minimize your footprint on your environment, and know
when to shut up.
Speak out against injustice. Back the little guy. Even the odds.
Don’t trust authority, but don’t pick fights with it, either.
Feed yourself and your family first.
Be generous when you can feed others.
Don’t try to be honest all the time, it’s impossible. Be honest when
it counts and always to the people you love or who rely on you.
Don’t lie without compassion or to be lazy. When you’re lying or
breaking the rules, do so carefully and with conviction.
Trust your gut. If something feels wrong, don’t do it.
If someone pressures you to do something that feels wrong, tell them
to piss off.
When someone does something you appreciate, thank them. Give
something back.
Don’t take anything for granted.
Identify and respect the sacred. That doesn’t only mean what’s
sacred to you.
Know what matters to you.
Don’t gamble more than you can afford to lose.
Wear a condom. Don’t drink and drive. Avoid stupidity.
Admit your mistakes.
Remember that resolving things through conflict is the absolutely
last resort.
If you must fight, don’t play nice. Fight to win.
Own your choices and their consequences.
Save time for activities that feed and refresh your spirit.
Pay attention. Seize the moment.
Love more.
After going away overnight and coming back to read those, it occurs
to me that my rules for living are unwieldy and overly complicated,
and also that I’m not terribly good at them. I’ve picked plenty of
fights with authority, normally to my detriment, and the gleeful
malice with which I open the door to hapless door-to-door religious
proselytizers is only the first example of how little I respect what
some consider sacred. So is the example I set as a man that you
should be a hypocrite, with ideals you don’t live up to? No, I think
the point is to have something to strive towards. Beyond that,
though, I guess I can boil things down a bit.
When we are children, because we are so helpless, we can take some
comfort in the way the adults who care for us seem confident or
competent, with a vast array of knowledge about things we have yet to
experience. The family game where a child asks “why” over and over
again and we get to reveal how much we do or don’t know about the
apparent color of the sky or how the toaster works or what
riboflavin is (or at least how effectively we can talk convincingly
out of our butts) is illuminating not only for seeing our limits, but
because it generates an infinite number of further questions. Still,
as creatures who intrinsically value order, it’s nice when we are
little to think that the grown ups who are running the world know
what they are doing. Eventually it becomes more and more clear that
we’re making it up as we go along. The best of us are trying to
follow some sort of values in our process, but we’re all are trying
to do the best we can with the limited tools and powers we have, and
we often work against each other and our own self interest.
Maddening, but true. To be the best sort of men, I just want the
boys to be conscious about their impact on things. So let’s call
that my first principle of manhood – you pay attention, know your
limits, and earnestly try to be part of the solution rather than the
problem.
Boys also like to think of the rite of passage into adulthood as a
kind of door that you walk through, but it’s a long and ill-defined
road that must be traveled. That’s the other thing I have to stress
while Keefe alternates between “But I’m a kid, dad! I want time to
play!” and “But why can’t I watch this restricted movie/buy a
paintball gun/have the house to myself for a week?” There isn’t
going to be any magical moment that he suddenly wakes up feeling
mature and motivated, with the skills and attitudes he’s going to
need to hold his own in the adult world. If he learns to type today,
it’ll be one more tool in his tool belt to work with later, and
taking responsibility for his laundry or his homework is a stepping
stone towards showing us he can be trusted alone downtown for the
day. So that’s number two – you’re never done, there’s no
moment
that you’re done learning, improving, or growing up. It keeps you
humble, and after that, everything’s negotiable.
“When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could
hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.”
-
Mark Twain
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Michael Nabert is a Canadian writer who loves to talk and sing, and writes mainly about
parenting, the art of wooing and paleontology. Widely traveled, with an opinion about everything, his friends often describe him as having
"a
deplorable excess of character." He is currently stay-at-home dad to Hugh
and Keefe. Visit his site here.
