To my incredible, observant, kind-hearted, sensitive daughter, on your 15th birthday:
“I believe in you my soul…the other I am must not abase itself to you, And you must not be abased to the other.”
– Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
Being a parent means every day I get to think about not just what I’m doing, but what you’re going to do today. Will you face challenging decisions? And how will you decide what to do? This crazy-making love inside my soul says any super challenging decisions you face are probably just plain evil, so I want to tell you to forget school and stay here safe with me forever, never leave, and don’t grow up ever. Because I said so, that’s why.
But yes, I know there’s a reason “evil” is just “live” spelled backward. And you don’t need to remind me again.
The heater broke this weekend so it’s a bit nippy in the home office today. That’s not “evil” either, it’s just life. But the fact that the heater repairman can’t come until tomorrow and this little space heater can’t contend with old man winter slipping through these old walls certainly feels evil.
I could go down the rabbit hole of trying to diagnose and fix it myself. Or I could preserve my time for other matters. If I didn’t have a clear idea of where I’m needed today and why that’s a rabbit hole for me, I might try to level up in my handyman game. But on a Monday morning, that would be a clear violation of my saner self and my knowledge of my core operating instructions.
Ask anyone who studies or writes about these things and they’ll tell you these rabbit holes are proliferating. Like rabbits. And with cell phones, video games, Youtube, and the myriad entertainments, our new national pastime is quickly becoming a global pandemic.
Why are we so desperate for diversions? We seem to crave being distracted. It begs the question of whether there’s anything more intriguing than a rabbit hole. I mean, we know Lewis Carroll didn’t think so.
When you were little, you had a mobile. I had one when I was a baby too. I think it was rabbits chasing carrots or something, but it was a long time ago. The genius behind mobiles lies in distracting a baby and occupying their mind just enough to get them to fall asleep, sleep being the Holy Grail of all new parents. Simple, repetitive movement combined with a calming lullaby helped the fatigue from all that growing catch up with you.
Seems like everything these days is a potential rabbit hole. And maybe that’s always been true. But the attraction is greater–both the need and the distractions are stronger. I think there are good reasons for this, but maybe chiefly, our existential anxiety has never been stronger.
Believe what you like about the course of human progress, but as much as things continually get better, they also get worse. Much of the trade-off it seems happens between the exterior and the interior worlds. Maybe it’s our wiring, but our experience is dictated by this relationship between the physical and the conceptual. And the balancing of the two occupies a huge portion of life, whether we ever recognize it or not.
Every time you find a rabbit hole, there’s the experience of it, and there’s your thinking about and feeling your experience of it. Your experience of the world gets paused every night, but your thoughts and feelings never sleep. Clearly, one is more important than the other, given the amount of time we spend experiencing reality versus thinking, feeling, and processing experiences.
This, too, could be a rabbit hole. Nothing’s technically “wrong,” but it could be, potentially. Impulses and cravings themselves aren’t evil. They arise from the depths, like baby rabbits blinking in the sunlight. And what you do with them, how you decide to direct them is what you have to figure out–both before they arise, and then rabbit by rabbit.
Sorry, it’s sort of a thematic metaphor, I guess.
Last night as I was chopping kindling and feeling manly, I took a too-long piece to snap against my thigh and this morning it took me a few seconds to realize why my leg’s sore. At the time, I barely noticed. It felt like living. But today it feels evil. I don’t know, maybe it’s both.
What you do will come from what you decide is best, and like Whitman says, you can’t “abase” your life or your experience of it. Both simply are, and naming them something else like “evil” does no good. What you decide to do about them, that’s where moral codes come in. And that’s where you have to realize everything but everything is a rabbit hole, and all your thoughts and feelings are baby rabbits.
And if you want to do what’s right for them, you’ve first got to decide to love them and want what’s best for all of them. They’re worth it and they’ll guide you. You’re their parent, like I’m yours and God is ours, so their safety and purpose are secure.
And all you’ve got to do is decide what’s helpful. But no one, even a parent who loves you, can decide for you. So don’t let anything distract you from doing what you must.
I love you, I’m with you, and you’ve got this because of who’s got you.
“All things are lawful, but not all things are helpful.”
– The Apostle Paul (1 Cor 10:23)
Dad
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