The Journey

 

Nobody prepared me for the season of life we have been easing into for a few years and have officially just crossed into - the “Empty Nest”.

I never cared for that term, although it is descriptive.  With birds, it’s that biological event of young birds leaving the nest to live on their own. 

The reason I don’t care for the term is that as human beings, there is much more involved than physical growth and the leaving our “nest”. We don’t view it as a mother bird does.  We are much more complex.  We have spent a lifetime with our children, and as they leave, we can’t help but have a mixture of feelings.

It is perhaps when the last one flies off that the impact of our children leaving hits us the hardest.

Now don’t get me wrong… it’s healthy to leave the nest… let’s get that out of the way.  The health of it isn’t up for debate, and it’s also not what’s on my mind at the moment. Also, we will always parent to a degree.  We will always be available to our kids. That’s not on my mind either.

The journey… THAT’s what’s on my mind.  I have been encouraged throughout my life, regarding all aspects of life, to “enjoy the journey”, and advised that “it’s the journey that’s important.”  I’ve taken that encouragement and tried to apply it to different situations. Sometimes it’s been a struggle. For instance, I didn’t view college so much as journey to enjoy.  It was something to hurry and get done.

With raising kids, I didn’t have to even try.  I think Tina and I both instinctively enjoyed our journey of parenting. It was never a task we were in any hurry to get through.  Incidentally, that’s a good thing because with four children,  we have been at it for about 30 years. 

I wish there were other areas of my life where I instinctively enjoyed the journey, where I wasn’t so much focused on getting through, but rather where I was fully immersed in the present.

Maybe, just maybe, this was a 30 year lesson of learning how to enjoy a journey without even trying. For that, I thank our kids.  You have indeed been a joy.

Milestones

As of yesterday, our nest is officially empty.

This marks the end of an era for Tina and me.  Since our marriage in 1992, we now have four children, which currently includes two marriages, five grandchildren, three Bachelors Degrees, and one Masters Degree.

Our youngest, Asher, just graduated from the University of Delaware, and is about to move back up to Newark, DE to start his first job.

Our empty nest has been coming slowly, and has been nothing like I anticipated. Yes, it's inevitable, it's healthy, it's the natural progression of our lives.  But there is a paradox. The years since having our first child have been the most enjoyable, the most rewarding, the most full of life, and the most exhausting years of my life. I am not glad to have those years behind me, not relieved, and not looking forward to the quiet. Yet I am completely satisfied when I consider all that has happened and where we all are now.

But I digress.  We have watched Asher grow exponentially in these past four years.  He has challenged himself, pressed through difficulties, and devoted himself to various things too numerous to mention.  He has determined to be a good friend to others, to learn his craft, and to press into his faith. It has been our pleasure to walk with him these past four years.

We were prepared for Asher to move away to another state, given his degree in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation.  Much to our delight, he elected to stay in Delaware, and will be helping to manage two Delaware Fish and Wildlife Preserves here in Delaware - Augustine and Cedar Swamp Wildlife Areas - both in New Castle County.

 

 

This past Spring has been one of planning for the future for Asher.  As a typical college senior, he's had to finish his last classes, find a starting place in his career, find a place to live, and find a truck so he doesn't have to rely just on his motorcycle for transportation. (still looking for a 4Runner!).

 

Asher will only be an hour and 45 minutes away... close enough for a Saturday morning breakfast date.

Bonsai. Part II

 

I suggested an idea I had about a series of posts basically discussing some influential people in my life who shaped the way I think and view the world.  Seemed like a good idea at the time.

I think it was disingenuous.

At the moment I was considering it, my thought process was probably “If I lay out how I got here, it may affect how others think and view the world.” Admittedly, that’s not the way it really worked for me, so I shouldn’t expect it to work that way for anyone else.

Yes, those people I had in mind did indeed have an influence on me, but the process has been over a lifetime.  Even if I tried, I wouldn't remember them all... there were innumerable people and circumstances in that process, over the course of 60 plus years.

So my re-telling of my own experience would be just that… my OWN experience, with an end result unique to me. What would be the point of all that energy poured into recounting my own influences?  It would be a lot of effort with little, if any, fruit from it.

In other words, it would be just a lot of talk. I think we are weary of talk.

So what DO I do?

At the moment, much of my energy is poured into my work.  I go to work, and I do my job.  I try to be helpful.  I try to be kind.  I listen to what people need and attempt to fill that need. I listen to people who want to vent, and try to offer something positive. I get people to help me when I need help, and thank them for doing that. 

I try my best to build relationships.

At the end of the day, I come home with the feeling I have accomplished something… something much more than talk.  It is infinitely more satisfying than talk alone. 

Bonsai - "Planted in a Container"

Yesterday Elias and Michelle gifted Tina, Tina's mom,  and me to a day at the PHS Philadelphia Flower Show. It was a beautiful gesture on their part, especially given the love that Tina and her mother have of horticulture. I did in fact find it a pleasure, and found a few things of special interest.

One was the Bonsai display. 

This tree was started a few years after I was born. So it's old.

 

I present it here as a symbol of my life.  I too, as the definition of Bonsai goes, was planted in a container.  That container has changed over my lifetime, starting with my family, then moving to college life, the Army, Philadelphia for a short season, and then to the community in which I now reside.

All along the way, just as this tree has been, I was pruned.  I was pruned by various people, various circumstances, various communities.  And now, as this tree is emblematic of the careful hands of a gardener, I represent 60 plus years of pruning and care by the people around me.

Each of those people pruned and shaped me a little differently.  Each took swipes at various parts of my being.

If I get the motivation, I may map out those caregivers in my life, and lay out the work they did.  It will take me a long time to do that, as it was a slow process, and is still happening daily.

Just as this tree has undergone slow transformation, hopefully for the better, I trust that I too have undergone a slow and meticulous transformation under the careful hands of my pruners. You may not care for the end result, which is fine, but it is the to-date result of people I appreciate.

Perhaps you will enjoy reading about my pruners and their work.  If so, keep an eye out.

Peace 

Change on the Rise

 

This past Friday marked the fifth week of a new job.

By new job, I mean totally new job.  After being self-employed since 1990, I accepted a position working under an employer… this at the age of 60 something as many of my fellow classmates slide into well deserved retirement. (For the record, I do plan to continue to do some small self-employed gigs on the side, if I have the energy).

I had been doing some soul searching about this for the past few years.  This Fall, circumstances pushed me to pursue the change wholeheartedly.  After applying to numerous positions which aligned with my skill set, just one presented itself, and I jumped on it.

The job involves working closely with a group of about 30 folks in my group.  My specific position involves serving a building of hundreds of others.

Looking back, I have probably always been interested in people, but when I was young I was insecure and inward looking. I was hesitant to reach out to build relationships, and wasn’t really sure how to go about that. Also, I tended to pour myself into just a few people, which interfered with the building of other relationships.

Now, here I am, plopped into this group of hundreds of people.  I could not have seen this being a good fit for me as a younger man.

Yet here I am, completely at ease in it. 

Our kids are grown, we are empty nesters, and I have been longing for something to devote my energy to (what little I have left, that is).

That sensation of being “at ease” means a lot to me. It reassures me that this was a good move, a natural progression. On top of that, I have been mentally challenged in a fresh way, specifically with learning new work-related things.

So you see… this is all much more than just a job, much more than a simple change in my work life. The work is just an avenue for something bigger… at least I choose to define it in those terms… otherwise it’s just a thing I do to make money. And I refuse to view it that way.

It has to be bigger than an income.  It has to be bigger than just for my own energy outlet.  It has to be for more than my own mental health.  It can’t just be for my own benefit. It should have an impact on Tina, my family, my coworkers, the folks I encounter daily, my friends, and who knows who else.

It’s a new job, yeah, but in ways, it’s an old thing for me.  It’s what I loved to do as a 10-year-old, sitting in my grandparent’s living room listening to my family discuss their lives.  It’s what I loved to do as a college student, learning about how people interact with each other.  It’s what I loved to do as a home improvement contractor, listening to what people needed done in their home, and then helping them towards that goal. It’s what I love to do as a friend, listening, and helping that friend in any way I can.

Only now it’s a different setting, with a whole new group of people.  Five weeks in, and I’m already attached.  I’m already invested.

Meanwhile, I’ve been listening to a set of just a few songs.  I call the set list “Not your ordinary songs of faith.”  Here are a few lines from just one.

Headed up, down the river
Oh, Lord, I feel the reveling
I feel a change on the rise

            - Avi Kaplan, “Change on the Rise”

The song expresses what I’ve been feeling… a change.  It’s a welcome change after a couple of years of fruitless efforts to figure out a path forward.

At the risk of sounding overly dramatic, that sensation of feeling a change on the rise must be a little like the story of Christmas.

In that story, about the time of the birth of Jesus, there were a few people who were alerted to his birth, including the men referred to as the “Three Wise Men”, or “The Three Kings”.  Then there were the shepherds who were told of his birth.  Of course Mary and Joseph had been told who he was. After his birth, other’s were alerted about who he was, and who he would become.

All these folks had some understanding of what had happened, although it would have been limited. But I can’t help but think they sensed a change on the rise.  It must have filled them with a hope for something good to come like they hadn’t had in the past.

That hope, that sense of a change coming, of something good in the making, is the feeling I’ve had these past five weeks.  That hope, that sense of something good in our world, is what we often experience around the Christmas Season.  We are often more generous, more forgiving, more optimistic, and more loving towards each other.  It happens whether we celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday, or simply as a season of giving and being together with family and friends.

We can make it whatever we choose –  just another holiday, or a time to experience that new hope.  We can quietly ponder on working towards influencing our world, even changing it, just as we celebrate a small child coming into this world and turning it upside down.

We can be part of a change on the rise.

 

 

A Case for Optimism

 

A friend recently commented about a longing for something to be optimistic about.

That comment brought me back to my center. She was right.  Many of us teeter on the edge of trying to be optimistic and positive to being a realist and seeing things in all their ugliness.  I think she was saying “How about more of the optimism and less of the ugly”.  I agree.

In order to find optimism, it’s helpful for me to set goals that are realistic.  Realistic goals make achieving them more likely.  To use a life example I’ve written about extensively, I set health goals that are realistic for me, not for a 22 year old young man.

So what are my realistic goals about the coming election?  I’m going to lay out my personal aspirations.  If you find anything there you can grab, then do it.

I believe that there will be some awesome opportunities regardless of who our next president is. 

Either scenario (my preferred candidate wins, or the other candidate wins) will provide a wealth of valuable situations.  This is where the friend I mentioned brought me back to my center.  One of my gifts lies in speaking to the idea of reconciliation between opposing positions. The root of that is multifaceted.  Part of it is my personality, part of it is a love for reconciliation based out of my faith, and part of it has to do with my firm stance right in the middle of the political spectrum. Not everyone finds themselves either with my personality (thankfully) or in the middle of that spectrum.  I’m fully aware of that, but being there makes me especially prone to seeing the prospect of future opportunities and a reason to be optimistic.

I’m optimistic that in my small world - the world of my neighbors, my friends, my family, my co-workers, my acquaintances - we will work together through whatever the new administration brings, regardless of who that is.  We will do that with civility, with kindness, with understanding.

There will be plenty of these opportunities.  It won’t be easy, but easy doesn’t promote growth, challenge does. What does easy look like?  It looks like whatever we tend to fall into that we’ve always done. It looks like regurgitating tired old talking points.  It looks like talking past each other with our opinions, and not listening to each other’s point of view.  It looks like the things we have done that got us here. Easy looks like focusing on our differences.

What does hard look like?  Hard involves giving each other the room to have a different opinion, without attaching a character judgement based on that opinion. Hard involves trying to find the things we CAN agree on. Hard involves a focus on the things we have in common.

Can progress be made, or am I just naïve?  I’ve discussed attempts to curtail the effects of aging.  Guess what?  I’m pretty sure there are ways I am physically stronger than I was at 22.  And also guess what?  I fight stiffness and occasional pain in my lower back every single day of my life, and I will never progress the way a 22 year old would even with twice the effort. Are my attempts to curtail aging misguided and naïve?  I will age, regardless of my efforts, but there is something I can do.  I can refuse to age without a fight. That fight, without a doubt, is worth the effort.

It's no different with our thinking.  We can let age take its course, and very naturally take the easy path. We can refuse to adjust, refuse to question our conclusions, refuse to admit that just maybe we don’t always hold the perfect position or understand our foes perfectly. 

Or, we can do the hard work of fighting against our own natural tendencies.

We’ve talked before about “Doing Hard Stuff”.  Folks, that’s our life.  And we are about to get even more opportunities to do that exercise.  I don’t mean to simply frame our situation in a clever way. I’m saying “hard” is good for us.  “Hard” makes us grow. “Hard” separates those who are willing to progress from those who aren’t. We haven’t done “hard” very well in the past.  Just maybe we can do “hard” differently.  Maybe we can do it better.

Optimism.  We aren’t talking about a world where things are better in terms of our definition of “good”.  We’re talking about the opportunity to be changed, to grow, to be involuntarily placed in situations that will force us to decide who we are, what we represent, and whether, as an increasingly diverse people, if we can forge a better path forward.

Embracing “hard” isn’t natural for most of us.  I say let’s walk towards it, with enthusiasm, and with optimism, even if it results in nothing more than our own individual growth. We can’t control the response we receive, but we sure as heck can decide what we will do.