Category: Philosophy

A Grandpa Aged Dad with Child

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“Are you out with the grandson for the day?” is a question we hear when we take our children out for the day. Children are more direct, “Are you his grandpa or his dad?” 

I can see how the questions from adults might bother people, but they don’t bother me because I know how close I came to never having a child. It’s always tough to imagine oneself on different timeline, but I cannot imagine where I’d be, or who I’d be, if I never met my son. When I play ball with him, bike or swim with him, or just sit and chat about how we view life, I think about how close I came missing it all.  

One of the other reasons I’m unmoved by the grandpa questions is that I stood on the precipice of disaster. I was nineteen-years-old, holding my girlfriend’s hand, while a nurse read the results of a sonogram, “You’re not pregnant,” the nurse said. In the moments preceding those three glorious words, my life as a nineteen-year-old father flashed before my eyes, and an exaggerated “whoosh” of relief escaped me after she said them.   

“There is no being ready for a child,” a co-worker named Don informed me in the days before the sonogram, when I confided to him that I was not ready to be a parent. “When you have a child, you get ready.”  

“That’s great advice … if you’re a mature, well-adjusted person,” I responded, “but some of us are anything but.”  

“I was just as foolish and immature as you are when I became a father for the first time,” he said. “If I can learn anyone can.” 

“Okay, but were you angry?” I asked Don. “Were you a little angry about … everything, because some of us were. Some of us think we were cheated in life, and some of us think that everyone has it so much better and easier, and to be honest we’re pretty ticked off about it. What are the chances that we’ll pass that on to our kids?” Don argued that I was probably underestimating myself and being over-analytical. He maintained that he knew me pretty well, and he thought I was a pretty good kid who would ramp up when that special gift of a child graced my life.  

“Let’s put this way,” I said. “If I can somehow manage to mess up my life without harming or affecting anyone else, no one will care, but if I have a child how can I avoid effecting them with every malady I have swimming around in my head?” 

“When you hold that boy, or that girl, in your arms, it changes you.” 

“I’ve heard that,” I said, “but when that honeymoon period ends? We go back to who we are.”   

Thankfully, we never found out if Don was right, because my girlfriend was not pregnant, and I escaped that youthful relationship, I was in for all the wrong reasons, unscathed. No matter how generous Don was with his assessments, I knew I was unfit for fatherhood, but the question I now have is was I the exception to the rule?

I wouldn’t be able to answer that question until I began working at a hotel where I met hundreds to thousands of parents over the course of a decade. Most of the young parents I met were broke, stressed out, and at their wits end. They appeared as frustrated with the direction of their lives as I was, and they were dealing with the various pressures of life just as poorly. They were screaming as loud as their children were. They were screaming to get their screaming children to stop screaming, and I suspected they were on their best behavior in front of me. As we talked, I found myself identifying with their plight, but I didn’t have the added pressure of raising a child. In the brief window I had into their life, they appeared to parent as poorly as I feared I might.   

The older parents I met appeared to have answered so many of the “What am I going to do with my life?” questions answered, and they appeared more settled. They appeared happier, more satisfied, and they appeared to appreciate their children more. They appeared more financially secure, and they didn’t appear to take their frustrations out on their child. Their method of parenting was more reasoned, and more psychological. They corrected their children in a calm, more psychological manner, and their children responded well to that. These encounters provided anecdotal examples to bolster my argument, but I met so many of them that I no longer felt like an exception to the rule.

Not too long ago, people had kids to create cheap labor to help them out on the farm. Most people don’t farm anymore, so why do we have kids so young? Federal government statistics title national childbirth rates as the replacement rates. If they’re here to replace us, what are they replacing? If they’re here to pass on our legacy, what legacy are we passing on?

I’ve also seen people, young and old, who never should’ve had kids. I’ve seen parents who had personal, emotional, and spiritual issues, and I saw their kids bring out worst of them. I’ve seen unavailable narcissists who produced unavailable narcissists. I’ve also been a witness to some awful people who were great to their kids. They took great pride in their children, and they taught them that family is everything. That’s laudable of course, but they taught their kids to be awful to everyone else, under the dog-eat-dog philosophical umbrella. I’ve seen some of these kids relay awful stories about what they did to others, and I saw those parents celebrate the misdeeds. Celebrations of doing awful things to people are hilarious in thirty-minute Married with Children sitcoms, but when we reward children for being awful, there are going to be ramifications. I’ve even witnessed grandparents chastise their children for parenting their grandchildren in such a manner, and the first thing that comes to my mind is, “Where you do you think they got it?”   

The best way to raise children is to learn from the mistakes other parents make, including our own. The best way to learn how to parent is to learn what not to do, and that takes time. It takes time to see the harmful effects of parenting. Why did I turn out the way I did, and how can I correct it? Why does my friend’s kid do the things he does, and what is the antidote to that? We also need to shore up our own character in ways that are all but impossible when we’re young, because we don’t know who we are yet. Then, we need to be objective enough to recognize that we’re going to make mistakes, and that the best way to recover from them is to spend more time with our kid. Long story short, I probably learned more about what not to do from watching my friends, my friends’ parents, and others I encountered than I could ever learn from books or anything else. I also learned who not to marry and share the parenting responsibilities.  

That’s the best piece of advice I would offer anyone who wants a child. Make sure you pick the best, other parent you can find. Make sure you have a steady, unselfish, and patient spouse who is willing to hold your hand through the most difficult times. Make sure you have someone to consult on the most pressing issues, and try to find someone who can talk you off the proverbial cliff when the difficult times worsen.   

I’ve had friends who chose to go it alone. Before I became a parent, I found that surprising. “Why would you choose to do it alone?” I asked them. As a parent who has survived eight years of raising one child, I now find that decision incomprehensible. Why would anyone choose to do all of this alone? I know most people have it more together than I do, or ever will, but the idea of choosing to do it alone is just beyond my comprehension.  

Other than having a wife help me through the stresses, strains, and some of the madness involved in raising an infant, the best solution for me was to have enough age, experience, and maturity to deal with it all, and that took me longer than most to achieve. I didn’t recognize the totality of it at the time, but when I was younger, dating a woman with a child, I resented my girlfriend’s two-year-old girl for taking so much of my time and attention. I also resented her for taking away my free time, and my money. We can call this greedy, but I was nineteen-years-old, and I worked hard. It was my money that my employer gave me for working hard, and when I got off work I wanted to sit back and chill. Anyone who knows anything about raising a two-year-old knows, there’s no such thing as sitting back and chilling. The minute you’re chilling, it’s thrilling to them to break your stuff, and if you get mad, “She’s just a kid.” She doesn’t understand the value of your property. So, we yell and calm on our emotional roller coaster. I screamed at the dumbest things back then. I’m calmer now, and I’m far more rational, psychological, and objective than I was in my teens. I have no resentment for the child I now have. In fact, I spend a lot of time with him.   

I don’t blame my teenage girlfriend for my inability to parent her child effectively, and I don’t give my wife 100% of the credit for my current ability. In the space between the two, I became a different, better man. I lived the life of freedom I always wanted, and I got a lot out of my system. I also enjoy my life now, and I’m no longer as frustrated about how my life turned out. I wouldn’t say I have everything figured out, but I like myself now. You could say I should’ve striven for more, and I should’ve, I’m not denying that, but I like myself more now, warts, failures, missed opportunities, and all. I like myself, with that sad little ‘as is’ sign on it, better than I ever have, and that has made me an exponentially better parent. 

Some seasoned parents might regret the fact that they didn’t start a family sooner. They might regret that they don’t have the energy to keep up with their kids, and they might fear that the generation gap between them might result in them not being able to relate to their kids down the line. These are all noteworthy concerns that are relative to the person, but when I input all this data, in my personal computer, the little yellow slip comes out saying that no matter what the plusses and minuses of waiting as long as I did might be, I ended up making the best choice for me. Maybe choice is the wrong word, because the choices others made to not date me may have delayed my eventual parenting, but it all ending up working out for the best, and I do mean best.   

This, of course, doesn’t mean parenthood is the right answer for you, the reader, and I don’t think any article can answer the question for another, but I did find an interesting quote that swerves into the truth in a roundabout way. It comes from an episode of Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm. In one particular episode of that series, Larry David is arguing with a fifteen-year-old. The fifteen-year-old claims (due to the particulars of the plot of that episode) that Larry owes it to him to fulfill his wish of seeing a woman naked. “I just don’t want to die without seeing a woman naked,” the fifteen-year-old says.  

“I almost did,” Larry David confesses.  

‘That’s it,’ I thought when Larry said that, ‘right there.’ One of the primary reasons most seasoned parents appreciate their children more than most young parents is that those of us who didn’t have any children when we were younger now live with this notion that we almost missed it. We can all discuss the relative definition of that idea, but it describes how I react to others thinking I’m a grandfather and any idea that I might be too old. I might be, but it frames my enjoyment of this time in my life to think it could’ve and probably should’ve been different.

The Seemingly Insignificant Lego: A Philosophy of the Obvious

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“We don’t need no stinking instructions!” I said to the enjoyment of my son. “A trained chimpanzee could figure this thing out. Right? Give me some!” I said slapping skin with my son after we ripped the cellophane away and cracked open the little package inside to begin our Lego adventure. We felt like pioneer adventurers going it alone, because that’s just what we do. We’re the types who venture into dark forests without a map just for the adventure and just to say we did it.  

For those of us who aren’t great at building things, putting big blocks together correctly provides a sense of satisfaction so complete that it just feels so me and so right. “It looks just like it does on the cover,” we say, sharing a smile.

This idea, and I’ll say it, the fun of this adventure all comes crashing down about a fourth of the way through when one of the other large constructs doesn’t snap into another quite right. It makes no sense. It makes so little sense that we drop the ego and consult the instructions. The instructions inform us that we will now have to tear all of our hard work apart to insert a crucial tiny, seemingly insignificant, yellow, transparent Lego. In our frustration, we wondered why the Lego designer didn’t just include a little extension on the larger piece to render the little, yellow Lego unnecessary. 

After we complete the reassembly, and our frustration subsides, those of us who seek philosophical nuggets wherever we can find them, think there might be some sort of philosophical nugget in the requirement of the seemingly insignificant Lego. Some call these moments Eureka moments, or epiphanies, but we prefer to call them “Holy Crud!” moments. “Holy Crud, there might be a philosophical component behind the Lego designers making the tiny, yellow piece so mandatory for completion.” Movies might depict this as the lightning strikes moment, or they might put a cartoonish lightbulb above the head of the main character that leads them to look at the camera and say something to viewers at home that break down the fourth wall. 

The little philosophical nugget we thought we discovered, or imagined, that day was that in most real-world constructs, little parts are as important as the big ones, and sometimes they’re more important. The spark plug might be one of the smallest parts on a car, for instance, but if it’s not firing properly in a spark ignition system, proper combustion is not possible, and our car won’t run properly. Do Lego designers have an unspoken philosophy that they want to share with their customer base that some of the times, the seemingly insignificant is just as relevant and more vital at times?

“The unapparent connection,” Heraclitus said, “is more powerful than the apparent one.”  

“Life is filled with trivial examples,” Dennis Prager once wrote. “Most of life is not major moments.”

When developing a personal philosophy, some of us prefer to go it alone. We don’t want to follow instructions from our parents, or any of the other authority figures in our lives. We prefer the adventure of going it alone for the philosophical purity of it that often leads to greater definition on the other side. “We don’t need no stinking instruction manuals.” We enjoy putting large concepts and constructs together to figure various situations and matters out, and we want to design our own philosophies that discount the need for tiny, seemingly insignificant ideas. Do we make mistakes, of course, but they only provide lessons we can learn and greater philosophical purity and the resultant definition. This can also lead to individualistic ideas that might not be earth-shattering to you, but they lead us down paths we never considered before, and we take great pride in informing anyone who will listen that we arrived there all on our own. 

About a fourth of the way down that path, we make other mistakes, and those mistakes begin to compile, until we realize with frustration that we might need to consult our instruction manuals. At some point, we realize we might have to tear our big ideas apart to allow for the crucial, unapparent connections we failed to make the first time through. The frustrating part is that when we learn the solution to what ails us, it was so obvious that it was staring us in the face all along. We then wonder how much easier our lives might have been if we discovered it sooner.

The Philosophy of the Obvious

The philosophy of the tiny, seemingly insignificant, yellow, transparent Lego suggests that while big philosophical ideas and profound psychological thoughts often lead to big accolades, the philosophy of the obvious states that those advancements may not have been possible without the “Well, Duh!” or “I can’t believe you didn’t know that!” ideas that litter philosophy.

We can’t believe we didn’t know these ideas either, so we compensate by convincing ourselves that we knew them all along, and we make such a clever presentation that not only do we convince ourselves we always knew this, we can’t remember ever thinking otherwise. Yet, we lived a chunk of our lives without knowing anything about the tiny bricks in our foundation, and our mind somehow adjusted to those deficiencies.

How often do we subconsciously adjust to limitations or deficiencies? To answer that question, we ask ourselves another question, how many of us didn’t know we were colorblind, until our eighth grade science teacher instructed us to complete her colorblind test? Our eighth grade teacher gave us images and asked us to whisper to her what colors existed in the photo, and some of us failed it. Some of us learned we were incapable of properly distinguishing the color red for example, and we adjusted to that new reality going forward. We all talked about this test later and Pat Murray informed us that he failed the red portion of the test. Prior to that test, he admitted, he didn’t know he was colorblind. I heard him say this, but the full import of it didn’t register initially. As I gnawed on what this test revealed, I could not maintain a polite, sensitive stance.

“You had no idea that you were colorblind until today?” I asked. He answered that question and the string of questions that followed. He grew defensive the more I questioned him, but he did not grow angry. I don’t know if he thought I was making fun of him in some way, but I wasn’t. I was stunned that he had no idea he was color-blind for fourteen years prior to that day. My questions alluded to the idea that if I just learned, as Pat had, that I had been unable to distinguish red for fourteen years, it would rock my world. “Now that you know you’re colorblind, do you think back on all the adjustments you’ve made through the years?” How often did he adjust to his inability to distinguish red for fourteen years without knowing he was adjusting? What kind of adaptations did he make, in his daily life, to compensate for something about himself that he didn’t know. How many times did he leave his bedroom with mismatching colors on, only to have his mom say, “Um, no, you are not wearing that today, Pat, it doesn’t match.” How many times was he surprised? How many times did he say, “I thought it did.” Were there so many arguments on this topic that he just learned to concede, or did he always concede? We might say Pat figured he was just a dumb kid who didn’t know any better, and his mom always forced him to check with her before going out, but how did the mom not know? Did she just think he was a dumb kid who didn’t know any better? I know Pat had, at least, two brothers. Did she have to do the same with them, was there a pattern with her sons on this topic, or was Pat an aberration in the family? Either way, she probably should’ve noticed something. On that note, how long do some suffer through school before discovering that they suffer from some level of dyslexia? As one who was fortunate to have never suffered such deficiencies, I think it might find it earth shattering to learn such things after suffering in the dark for so long.  

The mind-blowing reactions I’ve witnessed from people like Pat is that they don’t have much of a reaction. Our instant assessment must be that the reason they act blasé about it, or attempt to downplay the news is to avoid any teasing or condemnation. I can tell you that with Pat, and the others I later met, who experienced what I would consider mind-altering information is a quiet and unassuming acceptance. They treat it like a person might when finding out they’re one of those who can’t roll their tongues.

“It makes sense now that the reason I was having trouble reading,” they say, “or the reason I couldn’t match my clothes well … was based of a deficiency.” I would’ve been so flabbergasted by the findings that I would’ve asked for a retake. I would’ve considered the tests flawed, but my personal and anecdotal experiences with sufferers is that they  don’t think about all the struggles they’ve endured, and they don’t think about how learning the diagnosis would’ve made their lives easier if they learned it earlier. They don’t consider the information impossible, flawed, or earth shattering, they just move onto the next phase of life that involves them approaching such matters with the diagnosis in mind.

How many tiny adjustments did we make prior to discovering the philosophical equivalent of the tiny, seemingly insignificant, yellow, transparent block? How many things do we now view in hindsight thinking if I just knew that sooner, I could’ve saved myself a lot of heartache and headaches? How are we going to use this information going forward? Most of us just adjust, adapt, and move on. “Nothing to see here folks, just a fella doing what he does.”

Regardless how we arrive at this place, or exit it, we gradually move to the philosophy of the obvious. It can take a while to uncover what we’re trying to write about in an article, on a website, but some of us uncovered our whole modus operandi (M.O.), or our raison de’etre (our purpose) while trying to do something else, something as relatively trivial as cobbling a bunch of Legos together. This otherwise trivial experience in my life proved a humbling and illuminating experience, and it changed the manner in which we think about such matters.  

We all have these moments that some call epiphanies, and others call “Holy Crud!” moments, that change the way we approach situations, philosophical conundrums, and life in general. These moments don’t move most people, as they illustrate what an adaptive species we are, regardless the circumstances. Some of us, perhaps those of us who can be too introspective at times, can easily be shocked by a unique approach to a common dilemma, a fascinating outlook on life we never considered before, and people who just think different.

We’ve catalogued the weird individuals we’ve met in life, but where we started cataloguing these weird people, and their strange ideas, for immediate entertainment. The more we wrote on the topic, the less rewarding that theme became on every other level. There were too many tiny adjustments to log here, but suffice it to say that we went from weird for the sake of being weird to understanding that some people genuinely think so different from some of us that the greater question is why. To make such a progressions, we initially considered it natural to move to large philosophical concepts and profound philosophical constructs, but as the philosophy of the tiny, seemingly insignificant, yellow, transparent Lego taught us, some of the times these progressions require us to move downscale to the tiny, little nuggets found in the philosophy of the obvious.  

Guy no Logical Gibberish V

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We’ve discussed the idea that the human inferiority complex could drive our belief that aliens from another planet are intelligent beyond our comprehension, but we’ve never discussed the basis of our comprehension. The natural instinct when discussing intellect is to gauge it by comparing it to our own. We could achieve some level of comparative analysis by giving the aliens an I.Q. test, but we might consider that an unfair standard by which to judge someone or something from another planet, depending on the test. Another definition of intelligence might be the ability of a being to harness their surroundings to use them for a designed purpose. An example of this might be when humans use every natural and manmade element at their disposal to create a product. When an alien aircraft lands on earth will the product that transports them be born of greater intelligence or just different intelligence, based on different elements from their home planet?  

Abbot and Costello vs. The Alien Amazons

Are individual, modern comedians funnier than the comedians of, say, the 1930’s? Or are they just different? When we watch Abbot and Costello today, we probably don’t find them as hilarious as our grandparents did. A current teen, who has an altogether different frame of reference, might not even find them humorous. Some comedy is timeless, such as the Who’s on First? routine, but Abbot and Costello had a different frame of reference, a different base, and a different mainframe from which they operated.

When a radically new comedian, such as a George Carlin or Andy Kaufman took the stage, they were so different initially that we consider them brilliant and ingenious. Are they that brilliant and ingenious, or do they just change (sometimes radically) the landscape and language of comedy?

Is a Jimmy Fallon that much funnier than Jack Benny was, or is the comedy of a Jimmy Fallon more of a product of a different era that Jack Benny helped define in some ways? If we were able to flip them around on the timeline, and Jack Benny was everything the modern Jimmy Fallon is, would we regard Fallon as funnier than Benny? This switch would have to incorporate the time and place elements of comedy, the influences that led Fallon to the stage, and all of the prior comedians who changed the face of comedy prior to Fallon. If we incorporated all that into a more modern Jack Benny, would we regard him as funnier than a 1960’s Jimmy Fallon?

When the aliens touchdown on our planet, will they be superior intellects, or will their knowledge be so different that we don’t know how to comprehend their intellect? Will they be carbon-based, as we are, or will they be silicon-based, as some science fiction films theorize? Some scientists deem that impossible, as a Scientific American piece suggests that “silicon oxidizes, and it cannot support life.” What if the aliens introduced us to their line of alien products, our intrigue would initially lead us to believe that they’re intelligent beyond our comprehension, but what if their home planet operated from an entirely different periodic table? We assume that all life, comes from the shared mainframe of the periodic table, but when we find out that’s not the case, it will shock us, and lead us to marvel at whatever they do outside human comprehension. When, and if, we find out our assumption that all life operates from a shared premise was incorrect, we’ll be shocked into believing that they’re better and superior, when it could be as simple as just being different.

***

If you’ve read as many interviews with musicians as I have, you’ve run across the one-more-song phenomenon. I’ve read numerous musicians say they sweat blood and tears to compile enough songs to complete an album, only to have some record executive say, “It’s great and all that, but there’s something missing. We need an oomph song to put it over the top. Do you have one more song in you? We want another song to help unify the album thematically. Put simply, we want a hit.”

The musicians greet this directive with resentment and disdain, as they regard the exec’s request as flippant, as if it’s so easy to just write another song, and a hit song at that. The idea that the record exec would approach the main songwriter in such a flippant manner builds resentment between the two, until the songwriter approaches the other musicians and the producer with the request, “It looks like we need to go back to write another song,” in tones that mimic and mock the record exec. “We need a hit, so let’s go back to the studio and write a hit, because we obviously didn’t do that the first time out.” If you’ve read as many interviews as I have, you know that this musician eventually reconvenes with the other players in the studio, and they resentfully write “another song to appease the masters of their universe” and they haphazardly, and almost accidentally, create a song that ends up defining their career.

The conditions of the creation of this throwaway song are such that the artists involved often end up despising it throughout their career. Almost every musician wants the deeper cuts they spent decades compiling to define them and their brand, yet every audience member wants to hear “the hit” that the band probably spent three days writing, composing, and singing. The song has no meaning to them, yet they’ll spend the next twenty years playing it in concert so the audience will feel like they got their money’s worth. 

I’ve read about this happening so often that I think there’s something to it. It can be as simple as the difference between writing a complicated song about the fall of the Roman Empire and a simple ditty they write about their walk to Burger King. For some reason the Burger King piece hits, and their artistic dissertation on the Fall of Rome falls by the wayside. I don’t think it’s breaking news that most silly, little ditties about love and rocking every day and partying every night sell well and the important pieces usually do not. It might have something to do with the fact that people work so hard in their daily lives that when they get off work, they don’t want to think anymore. It might have something to do with the messenger, as opposed to the message. “Who’s this guy, a rock star? I’m not going to take the views he develops between bong hits too seriously.” The difference might also have something to do with the artist, as they try so hard to write an important piece that they try too hard, and it shows.    

It’s so difficult to predict what will hit, and most of my favorite artists often say they don’t even try anymore. They probably started out trying to appeal to our interests, but they realized that the best course of action is to create the best art they can, and if the audience loves it that’s gravy. When it happens with a song, story, etc., that didn’t require any effort on their part, the artist can feel the frustration in their answer. The complicated, brilliant works required them to jump through all the hoops of creative expression, and it was as difficult for them to be covert as it is to be overt at times, so they seeded and spruced their creation through the gestation cycle, until they decided it was ready to enter the birth canal. Pffft. Nothing. Then they wrote that little ditty about something interesting that happened to them on a walk to the local Burger King, and everyone went crazy. Writing the former was hard, as the perspective changed six different times, and the artist went through as many as twenty-five edits before they finally reach some form of satisfaction. When they wrote the Burger King ditty, they did it in a day, and they didn’t care about it as much. They’re all their babies, of course, but the artist works so hard on some of their material that they find it depressing when no one recognizes them for how important, intelligent, and well-informed they are. What does any of this mean? No one knows, and fewer care. As I wrote, it might have something to do with an artist trying so hard to write important and meaningful art that their effort shows. It might also have something to do with the fact that these simple little ditties, filled with silly and stupid lines, are more pleasing to hear, and read, because all we really want in life is to do is dance.