Plenty has changed in my household while I was away from blogging. The kids are now young adults, and the focus of their development has shifted accordingly.
One of the lenses that has been most helpful in viewing the kids' development is that provided by the psychologist Erik Erikson. I was first exposed to his theories as an undergraduate Human Biology major at Stanford in the early 1990s, and over the course of my life I've come back time and again to his insightful encapsulation of key tasks
A quick recap of those stages:
- Trust vs. Mistrust
- Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt
- Initiative vs. Guilt
- Industry vs. Inferiority
- Identity vs. Confusion
- Intimacy vs. Isolation
- Generativity vs. Stagnation
- Integrity vs. Despair
Stage 5 above typically occurs during the early teen years and defines the tasks that the kids are struggling to resolve.
Stage 7 is where my wife and I are living, and I am grateful to Erikson for his insights in understanding my own motivations.
Contrast and Boundary Testing
Identity vs. Confusion refers to the act of figuring out who you are and where you fit in the world. You try on different personas for goodness of fit. You distinguish your identity by continually contrasting yourself to those around you.
Detached and clinical as I sound in recounting this, it's a bear to experience firsthand. Among the many boundaries that get tested are truthfulness, hygiene, responsibility and accountability. Many sentences that are not pleasant to hear aloud begin with, "I'm not like you..."
The key to enduring this stage as a parent is to identify small victories and allow their memory to sustain you through the worst of it.
Our most recent victory began when we sent one kid on a youth program last summer where she was entrusted with enormous independence and granted more freedom than she'd ever experienced at home. We took a calculated risk.
We connected often by phone during that program, and a funny thing happened. Once the family was not around to compare herself against, my kid began looking around at her peers and realized that she was a lot less like them and a lot more like us.
She was very candid during our calls, describing the hook-up culture all around her and how she just didn't get it. (Skeptics out there might consider that she was conning us and we were buying it - but that's not how it felt on an intuitive level.)
That moral compass we'd been working on building over her lifetime? It kicked in just when it most needed to, and we were extremely proud of what she identified as her true north.
Leave It Better Than You Found It
Whereas the kids are figuring out who they are becoming, my wife and I are looking to define who we'll have been when our final years are behind us.
Generativity vs. Stagnation describes the deepening of relationships and commitments, transmission of values, desire for healthy living (we've seen enough bodies wrecked in the ER to know that health is a limited time offer), and need to feel of being part of something greater than just ourselves.
One element of this can mean a desire to feel productive; most folks who become physicians are highly (pathologically?) productive by conventional measures.
The way I perceive this when I superimpose Erikson's lens on the superpowers conferred by financial independence is that I get to choose new metrics for productivity.
I lost my father three months ago. His was a long goodbye over a protracted period of physical decline while retaining mental acuity throughout.
For a guy like me, prone to introspection, this prompted further evaluation of where I am and whether my current trajectory (personal and professional) aligned with my stated values.
Memento Mori
My wife and I also see the writing on the wall: the kids are going to leave home, and we will someday die.
That could strike a depressing note for some. For me, it's a call to arms.
The kids are going to leave:
- I want to say yes when they ask me to engage
- I want to be home more often immediately after they return from school, which is usually the golden half hour when they will speak unfiltered about what happened in their day
- I want to cheer them on in sports, theatre, and any place a parent can be in the bleachers
- I want to take them out on daddy dates as much as they'll let me, six dollar coffees be damned
- I want to double down on those shared travel experiences that they'll still remember with fondness when they leave home
We will someday die:
- My body aches more than it used to, but I can still hike, ride a bicycle and bodyboard. I need to pursue those activities while my health holds up.
- I have a wonderful wife. I need to let her know it as often as possible, and to enjoy her company apart from the kids so our relationship does not exist solely in relation to their needs or crises.
- The world is calling. I'd like to experience more of it before I lose the ability, opportunity and desire to travel.
- Work in my early years caused me to occasionally miss milestone events with family and friends. It's time for financial independence to empower me to do a bit more reverse-engineering. What would I like my life to look like? How can I build a career that enables that lifestyle?
- What are my sources of pleasure out of proportion? How can I sprinkle more of those throughout my week?
The Head Fake
Returning to write on this blog meets two of my revised list of life goals.
First, I realized during my sabbatical that my relationship with you, dear reader, enhances my life. I enjoy our interactions, both heavy and light. I've made a handful of close friendships through blogging (with readers and writers alike). These are folks I've yet to meet in person but whose words I continue to cherish. Deepening my connection to our self-selected tribe is important to me.
I also realized that I enjoy writing this blog is a form of artistic expression and an outlet for what limited creativity I possess. Not availing myself of that outlet leaves me hungry in ways I cannot feed through other means.
So the head fake, as Randy Pausch might put it, is that I'm returning to blogging because, just as it was when I began in 2016, it's a continuing vehicle for my ongoing mid-life crisis.
So grateful to have you along for the ride.