As I ushered the little boys (as JDP and SSP have been termed in our family) out onto the church playground after collecting them from the nursery we approached two much older boys (probably nine or ten) who were playing some sort of game with a disconnected tether ball.  While we waited briefly for a break in their game to walk through I heard Boy #1 say to Boy #2, “You can be a skin doctor, or you can be a heart doctor.  You make a lot of money as a heart doctor.  You can buy a Rolls Royce if you’re a heart doctor.”  I cringed when I heard it and we quickly traipsed through their game. 

I find it sad to hear grade school kids already vying for careers that will put them in a particular tax bracket.  And yet, I know that by age ten I was well aware of who had money, who didn’t, and how its presence or lack thereof shook out in the playground pecking order.  So I don’t suppose I should have been surprised that these two boys (one of whose father is in fact a physician) would be just as aware of it as I was at the same age.  Money is an easy way for kids to measure the merits of a career.  Things like whether a job is engaging, challenging, rewarding, satisfying, or meaningful to the greater good are much harder to evaluate for yourself and to communicate to other people.  It’s much simpler just to make a lot of money and drive around in your Rolls Royce, isn’t it?

I thought about this moment again yesterday morning as my buddies at NPR told me that there is now a course in China for the offspring of billionaires and other very wealthy parents.  It is run by China Britain Financial Education, has been dubbed a “mini-MBA” and focuses on teaching these kids – who will likely never have to work – how to do things like raise money for charity.*  These children are clearly very aware of their privileged circumstances, as evidenced by one girl’s response to the question of what her ideal future would be.  She responded, “I want to become a princess. I want to have a castle, and I will have lots of servants. I won’t do anything, because I’ve got lots of money, so I just buy whatever I want.”

The NPR piece goes on to explain that large scale wealth (China now has the world’s second-highest number of billionaires after the U.S.) is a relatively new phenomenon, and that the incredible focus on money (described as the “be all and end all in modern day China”) has created something of a morality vacuum which is present at all points along the socioeconomic spectrum.    Paul Huang, head of R&D at China Britain Financial Education comments that “For the wealthy family, their problem is they don’t know and don’t care where money comes from, and they spend money in a disgusting way to other people.  For children from poor families, when they grow up, they try to do anything to get money. They don’t think it’s right or wrong. That’s another problem.” 

Presumably if you’re reading this blog you’re an adult.  And if you’re adult you probably know someone who is wealthy and miserable.  You probably also know someone who is scraping by and yet lives a full and happy life.  If you’re an adult you probably know well enough that money is not a one-way ticket to happiness.  I do not begin to deny that money can accomplish all sorts of wonderful things.  It can eliminate the incredible stress brought on by things like unpaid bills, cars that break down, lack of health insurance, or untended home repairs.  It can also add immense pleasure to life by enabling things like vacations, date nights, pedicures, or a new tube of lipstick even though you don’t need it.  So yes, money is certainly a big contributor to happiness.  But it is only one component of a happy life.  Other factors include meaningful work, physical health, satisfying friendships, a strong support network, and enriching interests and hobbies.  In actuality, this is a much taller order than mere wealth.   Kids don’t see that, though.  They see castles and servants and Rolls Royces. 

I would be lying if I said that earning potential wasn’t a factor in my choice of career.  (If it weren’t I’d probably be a horse trainer of some kind.)  But it wasn’t the only factor.  I also wanted a career that would allow me to help people in some way.  I wanted a career that would be intellectually stimulating.  And I wanted a career that would be compatible with my family life.  I have a career that meets all of those needs and I am grateful that I wake up every day in a life that makes me very happy.  I wouldn’t take a Rolls Royce today if one were parked in my driveway because I couldn’t fit all of my kids in it.    

Back to the boys on the church playground.  Someday my boys will be in that same position, bouncing a ball on a playground and puffing up their little chests about what they want to be when they grow up.  Right now they are four, two, and one.  The little boys have no concept of money whatsoever.  IEP’s conception of it is vague at best.  But I know that window is closing, and probably by first grade he will be well aware of the markers of money.  And when that day comes I will work to impart upon him (and the little boys in time) that money is just money, and the only thing that matters is what you do with it.  By and large, you will be happy when you decide to be, not when you have a Rolls Royce. 

*The great irony of this is, of course, that it bears absolutely no resemblance, even on a kiddie scale, to an actual MBA.

I am finicky when it comes to chocolates.  I’m a big dessert person, but not a big candy person.  If I’m going to indulge in something so unabashedly rich and indulgent, I want to really love it.  If I bite into a chocolate and discover orange crème (ugh…) I throw it out.  Not worth it.  (Also, orange crème is kind of gross.)  My favorites are Russell Stover’s Roman Nougat and Teuscher Champagne Truffles.  Those I will eat until I hate myself.  Anything else gets a lukewarm response out of me.

IEP’s approach differs greatly from my own.  In his world it’s quite simple.  There are no duds.  Period.  All chocolates are wonderful.  All chocolates are treats.  No filling – not cherry caramel, not coconut, not even orange crème – yields disappointment.   

I first noticed this back in December when my mother included a one-pound box of assorted chocolates amongst IEP’s other Christmas gifts.  (And I was reminded of it again when she gave him a much smaller box on a recent visit.)  He eagerly made his way through the box (with some help, of course) without expressing a single concern about what he would find inside.  I’d never seen anyone pick chocolates out of a box without even asking about the filling.  It was a complete nonissue.  I was astounded.  Perhaps it was because in my family growing up finding sneaky (and always unsuccessful) ways to investigate fillings before committing to a chocolate was at least common practice if not full-throttle sport.  You did not want to bite into something without knowing first whether it was going to be good.  But in IEP’s brain there’s no reason to even ask what’s inside.  It’s candy.  Of course it’s going to be good.

It’s a mindset that many of us would do well to apply to our lives more often.  Many of us struggle to maintain such a strong sense of positivity and we too easily find what went wrong in a given situation, rather than what went right.  To a great extent we choose how we experience the world arround us.  Choosing to see the good can go a long way in our enjoyment of many things.  Sitting down to read a book is always a treat (even if we get interrupted).  Going out to a movie is always a treat (even if the show wasn’t that great).  Eating food that someone else prepared is always a treat (even if it wasn’t precisely what you were in the mood for).  Getting out for a nice long run is always a treat (even if you take more walk breaks than you wish you had).  And eating a chocolate is always a treat, even if there’s orange crème on the inside.

Optimism and positivity can also run amok.  When we constantly proclaim that everything is good, nothing is ever wrong, and we only see joy and happiness everywhere we look we cease to see the world honestly.  We must allow space for the real and genuine admissions of the things we find disappointing, hurtful, or lacking in some way.  But given how easy it is to go down the rabbit hole of all that goes wrong, I think that for many of us (myself included), a course correction to IEP’s “there are no duds” philosophy could be a very good thing.

I expect that someday my son’s approach to chocolates may become more conventional.  Someday he may develop preferences that lead him to poke a hole in the bottom, bite off a corner, or slice a chocolate completely in half before popping it into his mouth.  But in the meantime I will applaud his open-mindedness and optimism.  And I will try to adopt it myself.

Happiness has been on my mind a great deal lately.  It was one of Momalom’s Five for Ten themes.  It is the sole subject matter of Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project, which I’m currently devouring.  And it comes up on track 12 of the soundtrack from Wicked which has gotten significant airtime in my car since we returned from New York nearly three weeks ago.  While all three of these venues have addressed the topic admirably, it is the last one which has crawled into my mind and been poking at me with irritating regularity.

I’ll spare you the context for track 12 (which is properly entitled “Thank Goodness”) because for the purposes of this discussion it really doesn’t matter.  What matters is that Glinda (“the good witch” as most of us know her) hits on an uncomfortable truth.  Gretchen Rubin would probably tell us that these lyrics address the “arrival fallacy” of happiness (p. 84 in THP, for those of you following along at home).  And she would be right.  But for me these lyrics hit me at more of a gut level than an academic one.  I care less about why they scare me, and more about the fact that they do so in the first place.

That’s why I couldn’t be happier
No, I couldn’t be happier
Though it is, I admit
The tiniest bit
Unlike I anticipated
But I couldn’t be happier
Simply couldn’t be happier
(spoken) Well – not “simply”:
’Cause getting your dreams
It’s strange, but it seems
A little – well – complicated
There’s a kind of a sort of… cost
There’s a couple of things get… lost
There are bridges you cross
You didn’t know you crossed
Until you’ve crossed
And if that joy, that thrill
Doesn’t thrill you like you think it will
Still – With this perfect finale
The cheers and ballyhoo
Who wouldn’t be happier?
So I couldn’t be happier
Because happy is what happens
When all your dreams come true
Well, isn’t it?
Happy is what happens
When your dreams come true!

So there you have it: the one minute of a four-ish-minute song that I’ve listened to over and over and over again for three weeks, trying to understand why it’s plaguing me.  After much head scratching I’ve come to the conclusion that these lyrics bother me because they are true.  Glinda addresses the fact that when we get what it is that we think we want, we may be surprised at how the experience isn’t just as we pictured it.  More bothersome still, Glinda’s approach to this truth – skittish and furtive – almost says more than the words themselves.  She almost goes there – to that place of full-bore disappointment – but stops short of it, not treading past the allusion.

This is a frightening truth to broach.  We want to believe that when we achieve whatever goal we have set for ourselves that happiness, pure and unadulterated, will pour forth into our lives.  Yet rarely is this the case.  My friend Aidan touched on this very phenomenon in a post of hers just last week, causing me to contemplate it further.  This whole premise feels much more frightening when someone you know personally (rather than a witch in a musical…) is experiencing it in real time.

I have goals and dreams and ideas about my future.  Naturally, in my head the attainment of said goals and dreams comes equipped with clouds parting, angels singing, cartoon birds sitting on my shoulder (a la (500) Days of Summer), and sickeningly sweet bliss at every turn.  With a finish line like that on the horizon, why wouldn’t I run full speed ahead toward my goals?  But understanding that actual finish line may be something more bittersweet I pause to think carefully about the goals I have set.

I turn back to Gretchen Rubin for a life-line.  She writes:

The challenge, therefore, is to take pleasure in the “atmosphere of growth,” in the gradual progress made toward a goal, in the present.  … the arrival fallacy doesn’t mean that pursuing goals isn’t a route to happiness.  To the contrary.  The goal is necessary, just as is the process toward the goal.  Friedrich Nietzshce explained it well: “The end of a melody is not its goal; but nonetheless, if the meolody had not reached its end it would not have reached its goal either.  A parable.”

And so it turns out that the means is the end.  Leave it to Nietzsche and Gretchen Rubin to explain this fearful premise in a way that makes me feel as though I’ve been handed a gift with a bow on top.  Now someone just needs to explain this to Glinda.  Perhaps it is the kind of philosophy that would resonate better with Elphaba.

——

GAP and I saw a traveling production of Wicked last night which got me thinking about this post which was originally published in June 2010.  Amidst all of the stress I’ve intermittently mentioned lately I’ve been giving thought to my goals and dreams, and thought this post was worth revisiting.  I will have one more new post to cap off the year sometime between now and Christmas, and will then take a bit of a break for the holidays.

My laziness was an end in itself: to relax.

I’ve had stress on the brain a lot lately.*  (See posts here and here.)  Work has been crazy for the past few weeks.  The holidays are wonderful, but they don’t exactly create an abundance of spare time.  And various other aspects of daily life don’t suddenly evaporate just because work and holidays have made grand entrances.  I’ve been feeling the stress of it all pretty acutely these days, and not always doing a bang up job of managing it.  I could feel it in my upper back.  I could sense it in the hateful thoughts that silently passed through my mind when someone “stole” the elliptical machine I’d been planning to use at the gym.  I could hear it in my tone of voice when the dogs got underfoot.  Something needed to change.

In the past I believed that genuine, productive relaxation could only be mine once the final item on the day’s To-Do list was crossed off; that any attempts to unwind while chores and errands awaited me would always be undermined by the stress of things left undone.  And up until this past weekend that belief had proven true.  But something in me reached a breaking point.  That list, at least for now, is not getting any shorter.  For every item that I check off I add another one or two.  I could sense that this likely isn’t going to change until at least mid-January, and I wasn’t willing to go through the next four weeks feeling tense and acerbic.

On Saturday morning GAP did what he always does on the weekends – he told me to relax, and for the first time maybe ever, I did it.  He took IEP with him to the gym just as SSP went down for his morning nap.  And I, still jammie-clad, curled up under a blanket on the sofa and watched two Tivo’d episodes of Parenthood. Our fondue pot sat in the kitchen sink with cheese still scorched to the bottom of it from the prior night’s holiday party with my girlfriends.  Dog hair billowed around my baseboards.  The beds were left unmade.  And I successfully ignored all of it!  It was the best decision I’ve made in weeks.

By the end of two episodes of my show SSP was starting to wake up.  After the credits rolled I walked upstairs to collect him, feeling as refreshed as if I’d gone for a two-hour massage.  I felt relaxed.  I felt on top of things.  I felt HAPPY!  Starting the day with my batteries charged made it infinitely easier to face the items on my list.  SSP pitter-pattered around while I got dressed, made the bed, and tackled the fondue pot.  My other guys returned home as I was cheerily sweeping the baseboards.  I almost didn’t recognize myself.

I don’ t want to go back to the level of unreleased stress I felt prior to Saturday.  At some level, though, I’m glad that I found myself there once.  It triggered a change in me that I’m not sure I could have made otherwise.  It forced me to experience for myself that sometimes relaxation best preceeds productivity.  It smooths down our splintered edges.  It buoys us against choppy waters.  It fuels our tanks for the work that lies ahead.

As of Monday morning the sheets hadn’t been changed and the laundry hadn’t been done.  I had, however, gone out for pizza with my boys, taken a nap on the couch,  walked the dogs and gazed at Christmas lights, and  gone out to dinner with good friends and seen a movie with GAP.  In some way, it was absolutely the most valuable use of my time.

*Yes, I realize that thinking repeatedly about stress likely does nothing to lower my feelings of it.  I like to be ironic.

“Learn to wait.”

They are words my grandfather is famous for, though I most often heard them from my mother.  “You remember what Granddaddy always says, ‘Learn to wait,’” she would remind us.  In these instances waiting was almost certainly some brand of drudgery.  It was what we had to do on long car trips, in long amusement park ride lines, or in the lead-ups to birthdays or Christmas or the last day of school.  Waiting felt like paying dues – something we had to endure before we could make our way to whatever prize lay in the distance.

I thought about all of this as I listened to the sermon in church this past Sunday.  As many priests do this time of year she reminded us that Advent is a time of waiting.  She commented that for many of us the most commonplace forms of waiting – for tables at restaurants, for meetings to start, for a coffee date to arrive, etc., have recently been supplanted by the most commonplace form of mindless occupation – the smartphone.  I am not here to curse the evils of the iPhone, the digital camera, or the internet.  I believe that by and large they are all significant boons to modern life and that we are better off with them than we were without them.  Nevertheless, the fact remains that simple, undistracted waiting is becoming increasingly unfamiliar to many of us; so much so that I would guess most of us view it with the same intolerance that a five-year-old views the 30-ish days that clutter the path from Thanksgiving to Christmas.

I’m here to turn that thinking on its head.  I say that waiting is a blessing.  I say that waiting is a gift.*

Esperar is the Spanish word for “to wait.”  It is also the Spanish word for “to hope.”  I’m sure I’m not the first person to wax philosphical about this coincidence.  That, however, makes it no less relevant here.  When we hope for something it is because we are facing an unknown.  We must then wait to discover whether or not our hope will come to be.  Does this mean then, that a life without waiting is a life without hope?  I don’t think so.  But I think that for the most part hope is implicit in waiting.  Waiting means expectation.  It means we are looking ahead to something.  It means we have something worth our excitement and anticipation.

This is true in my own life beyond the Christmas season.  We are in the middle of a very long wait in our adoption process.  Referral wait times for Korean placements are currently running ten months.  Every time someone asks me how the adoption process is going I shrug my shoulders and sigh.  “We’re still waiting.”  And yes, the waiting is hard.  But we have a child to wait for.  We are so lucky to be waiting; so lucky to know that at the end of these many months we will have another wonderful little boy in our family.

For adults, December is an easy time of year to view waiting with relief, since many of us have a hard enough time as it is getting everything done before footed pajamas scamper out of bed on Christmas morning.  But muttering to yourself, “Thank goodness I still have a week left before Christmas,” is not the same thing as embracing the wait.

Embracing the wait means that we reflect on what is coming.  We prepare ourselves for it.  Whether we are waiting for the Christ child or a Korean child, when we do it right we are better off for it.

————————————-

*I understand that there are exceptions to this.  Waiting for a loved one to come home from a military deployment.  Waiting for the results of a medical test.  This is not the kind of waiting I’m talking about.

I had to fill out a questionnaire about my health for work.  Do I smoke?  Do I exercise?  Do I get regular check-ups?  That sort of thing.  These types of questions usually leave me feeling a smidge proud because my truthful answers are almost always the “right” ones.  When it comes to matters of health, I play it pretty much by the book.

The end of the survey threw me for a loop, though.  It asked you to indicate within what timeframe (one month, three months, etc.) you intend to make a change in various aspects of your life.  The lifestyle issues in question were to quit smoking, exercise more, eat better, get more sleep, and handle stress better.  For the first four I was able to happily mark the “I already do this” box.  But for stress… I did a double take.  I don’t remember which box I ended up checking, but in my heart of hearts I know I have some work to do there.

Lots of fellow bloggers have written lately about Gretchen Rubin’s new book “Happier at Home.”  I’m also in the middle of it, and have found myself doing some good but hard thinking in response.  Rubin’s aim with this most recent happiness project was to make her home into a place that fosters her happiness.  This effort speaks to me because it is my home that I find to be my biggest source of stress.

It is not my home itself that causes me stress.  Yes, it is an old house with a handful of ongoing maintenance to-dos, but nothing too significant (last spring’s pipe replacement nightmare notwithstanding).  Rather, it is the rotation of weekly chores and obligations that wear on me the most.  For the past two consecutive weekends I have literally sat down to relax only for as long as it takes me to eat a meal.  By Sunday evening I’ve found myself satisfied with my level of industry, but utterly and completely spent.  And while I crave a hyper-productive weekend every now and then, the prospect of gearing up for one every single week leaves me cold.  I’m not sure how to get the equation of my weekend back into balance, though.  The tactical elements of it are not interesting enough to discuss here – I’ll get it figured out – but the existential elements are.

Why is the impact of these stressors at home so much greater than stressors in other areas of my life?  When my job leaves me feeling unraveled I don’t take it to heart nearly as much.  When I get stuck in traffic I don’t assume that it’s a personal failing.  Yet when I feel stressed out at home the stress itself is compounded by the belief that I’m to blame for it.  It’s not a happy feeling.

In a recent post over at Motherese Kristen cited a NYT blog article about how American’s pursuit of happiness has left us statistically more anxiety-riddled than any other nation.  The piece was interesting from a cultural point of view, written by a recent British transplant who noted that Brits find discussion of happiness to be a bit crude and desperate.  The numbers about our rates of anxiety are compelling, and I understand how idealism about happiness can leave us comparatively disappointed, but somehow I still find myself opposed to the implicit premise that this means we should stop seeking it.

I know what I want.  I want each weekend to be filled with a balance of productivity and pleasure.  When Sunday evening rolls around I want to feel that I have been fortified by two days off and am ready to face the week.  Knowing what I want – and acknowledging it – is the only way to make any sort of progress toward it.  Keeping myself blissfully unaware of my desires may prevent disappointment, but it is also a sure path to continued frustration and stress.

Reading “Happier at Home” has been a wake up call, of sorts.  I want to be happier at home.  Specifically, I want to be happier on weekends.  Unlike getting stuck in traffic or being handed a monster project at work, this one is completely within my control.  That makes it both worse (because only I am to blame for any unhappiness I feel) and better (because in the long run I believe in my ability to change things).  I will not hold up some fictitious ideal and compare myself to it until I have no choice but sheer misery.  But neither will I avoid the topic altogether just to keep myself out of the emotional muck.

I will take it one task at a time until I’ve shuffled the deck of my life at home into a configuration that is better suited to support my happiness.  My first task?  Keeping it all in perspective.  This will work itself out in time.  Stressing over stress is not the first step in any happiness solution.

It started as it always does, with some permutation of the question, “What if we moved to New York?”  It happens every time we are there.  Without fail.

GAP and I spent the weekend in Manhattan.  He had business there on Sunday and Monday, so I tagged along and we made a weekend of it.  This being our fourth or fifth trip to the city together, we’d covered most of the “must see” tourist destinations, and were able to spend a decent chunk of time wandering the streets of Manhattan aimlessly.

This kind of aimless wandering is one of our favorite ways to experience almost any vacation spot.  Not only does it grant us the opportunity to get familiar with the character of a place, it provides the opportunity for us to exhaust all sorts of topics of conversation that get sidelined in a home life that is filled (happily) with our careers and children.

So as we wandered up Second Avenue on Saturday afternoon I think I asked him, “If we were to move here tomorrow – with the kids – which part of the city would you want to live in?”  This gave way to the clarification “Are we moving there just for a year to have the experience, or are we moving permanently?”  The answer, of course, changes in each context.  (One year?  The Village.  Permanently?  Upper East Side.)  The introduction of finite timing then led to the next version.  “If you were going to pick any city in the world to live in for one year, which would you pick?  What about three years?  What about five?”  There were more complicated and contingent versions of the question that followed these.

The answers to these questions* matter less than the exercise of asking them, I think.  It’s the conversation that comes from asking the “what if” questions that makes them interesting, and gives us insight into both ourselves and into the people talking with us.  We might surprise ourselves, as I did with my one-year answer.  We are forced to think about the calculus that factors into such decisions.  We come face to face with the very nature of our character and values:  Do we favor adventure or predictability?  Do we crave a challenge or something more relaxing?  What would we find exciting or stifling or alienating or fun?  How do our answers to these questions change when we consider making such jumps with our kids in tow versus without?

In some way the answers to these questions serve as proxies for greater statements about us.  The choices we make in our external lives are often quite crystalline reflections of what we believe and value internally.  Asking someone, “What do you value most in your life?” is bound to produce broad (and likely uninteresting) answers.  But more specific questions that might be the manifestation of those values can be much more telling.

For two working parents with two young children finding the time to get lost in conversation is sometimes hard to do.  But in my experience walking aimlessly through a city is almost always the right backdrop for just that.

*One year = Shanghai.  Three years = London (although Barcelona was a strong contender).  Five years = New York.

SSP takes in the view at Sprague Lake

As a rule we are on-the-go vacationers.  We pick destinations that offer a wide variety of things to do and see.  And, accordingly, we make the most of our time on each vacation getting an early jump on the day and making each day a full one.  With kids in tow we carve out time for naps, but other than that we schedule very little down time.  By and large this kind of vacation really suits us – we love feeling productive and stimulated at the end of a day whether home or away.  There are times, though, when I long for something slower and quieter.

Last month we spent six days in Colorado escaping the Midwestern heat and busying ourselves with museums, baseball games, picnics, and hikes.  On Day Two of the trip, as we drove from Denver to Boulder I reminisced to GAP about the Colorado vacations of my childhood; full weeks spent in mountain cabins and filled with little more than hiking, fishing, and many games of cards.  I pined for that magnitude of escape – allowing myself to deeply disengage from the details of daily life and fully surrender to an existence that is wholly leisure.  GAP couldn’t understand why.

“But why can’t you do that at home? GAP asked.  “If you want to take a step back and enjoy some deep relaxation more often, there’s no reason you can’t do it at home.”

I responded, “At home I’m too aware of all the things I could be doing – laundry, cleaning the house, bathing the dogs, making baby food.  You name it.  There’s something about being away from home and removed from that to-do list that allows me to relax more completely.”

“But you like being busy.  If you wanted to relax more, you would.  You could take it easier on the weekends if you really wanted to.”

IEP and GAP stop to look for fish.

I told him that it is precisely because I keep myself busy under regular circumstances that I find the idea of a snail-paced vacation appealing.  I explained that the mere presence of potential productivity often overpowers potential relaxation and that is why I sometimes want to escape to a destination of forced down time

“That just doesn’t sound like the kind of vacation you’d enjoy,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because you’re not that kind of person.  You keep yourself busy all the time.  I think you’d get bored after a couple of days.”

I offered up an analogy.  “That’s like you saying, ‘Gale, you’re a healthy eater.  You are the kind of person who pays close attention to diet and nutrition.  It just doesn’t make sense that you’d ever want to eat a cheeseburger.’  Of course I want to eat a cheeseburger.  It’s precisely because I’m so healthy most of the time that occasionally I really want to let myself enjoy the indulgence of a cheeseburger.”

Then he made me laugh at myself.  “No, that’s like saying, ‘I’m a healthy eater most of the time, but sometimes I have to go on vacation so that I can eat a cheeseburger.”  The boys were asleep in the back seat and I silently cracked up.  He had a point.

That conversation coursed through my mind several times over this past weekend.  We made the long weekend longer and headed to my in-laws’ house on Thursday for about four and a half days of utter and abject relaxation.   I did more sleeping and reading than I could ever manage at home.  Much of that was due the vast reduction in parenting responsibilities that comes with having two grandparents and multiple aunts and uncles on hand to help out with my kids.  But much of it was also due to the fact that I couldn’t have swept my baseboards even if I’d wanted to.  I was 200 miles away.

Does this little mini-break prove my point?  Is true relaxation is best done away from home.  And what role does willpower play?  Could I really disengage as much at home as I do when I’m gone?  Perhaps with some prep work.  If it’s the To-Do list that gets in the way then there a couple of ways to dispense with that.  Either I have to go far away from my To-Do list, or cross everything off of it.  These seem like extreme and impractical choices, but the other option – blowing off the To-Do list either in part or entirely – likely wouldn’t work for me.

I would like to be able to dial it down without leaving town.  It would probably be good for me.  And the fact that it rarely happens is nothing to be proud of.  I think I’d like to set a goal for myself of doing more relaxing at home.  I’d like to spend more time doing things that I find refreshing, rejuvenating, and not at all obligatory.  If this means that I do a better job of keeping the To-Do list short then all the better.

I was carrying two balls of dough and a salad out of our neighborhood pizza joint.  The boys and I were planning to have a Friday night pizza party at home so that IEP could sprinkle his own cheese, which is a favorite culinary activity of his.  As I walked out an older couple walked in.  He had grey hair and sunken eyes and walked with a cane.  Her whole body drooped to one side, giving the distinct impression of a mild stroke.  She wore the kind of sunglasses that are highly protective and not at all fashionable.  They walked slowly, but with slight smiles on their faces.  It’s hard to walk into our pizza place and not smile – it is filled with happy people and delicious food.  Nevertheless, they made me worry.

I walked to my car at a brisk pace, wanting to get home to the boys.  As I did I thought about that old saying, “Youth is wasted on the young.”  I’ve thought about it often since I had kids.  Children, of course, don’t realize how easy they have it.  They don’t understand how nice it is not to have to pay bills, or get cars serviced, or remember to give the dogs their flea medications each month.  They go through each day blissfully unaware of how unburdened they are.  I wondered if – even amongst the bridling responsibilities of adulthood – the same weren’t still true of me.

When you get right down to it, I too am blissfully unaware of how unburdened I am.  I can drive in heavy traffic without worrying about the acuity of my reflexes.  I can carry groceries in from the car.  I can open pickle jars with my non-arthritic hands.  I don’t have to worry about keeping medications straight or remembering to take them.  And I have the energy to work a full-time job and keep up with my two young sons. 

And I almost never stop to appreciate those facts.

“Youth is wasted on the young” is a relative statement.  To me kids, teenagers, and college students have no idea how easy they have it.  To someone whose knees are giving out or who can’t type anymore, I have no idea how good I have it.  The only difference between me and my kids is that I’ve lived long enough to have some perspective.  I know that wide, grassy path of the college years narrows and steepens with adulthood.  And I know that this path will continue to climb as I age. 

I suppose it could be depressing to think that life only gets harder, but I know that isn’t entirely true.  Perhaps I’ll never be as young and energetic as I am today.  But nor will I have to cut food into tiny pieces or travel with two car seats and a Pack N Play.  Some things will get harder, but others will get easier.  In the meantime, though, I want to do a better job of appreciating where I am today. 

My 35th birthday is on the horizon and I’m not especially excited about it.  It sounds old to me.  It sounds so “mom jeans and sensible shoes.”  And that’s not at all how I see myself.  I see myself as young, and while I may not be compared to a college sophomore, in the grand scheme of things I still am.  I should enjoy it.  I’m sure there are lots of people who would love to have the strength and energy of a 35-year-old.  I don’t want my own youth to be wasted on me.

When she sat down she immediately pulled out her book.  She was relieved to see that the guy sitting next to her did the same.  She intended to fly to New Orleans quite happily without having to chit chat all the way there.  As it turned out, she married the guy about three years later.

The “she” I refer to?  One of my best friends from undergrad.  And yes, she married a guy she met on a flight.  Five years and two kids later, they are happy as can be.  Had they both kept their noses in their books as intended that likely wouldn’t be the case.

I got to thinking about my friend when I read this article about how Baltic Airlines intends to allow passengers to board planes according to their moods.  Worker bee travelers can tap away at their laptops in concert.  Those looking for networking opportunities can join up as well.  And those wanting to keep to themselves can select a “relax” option.  At first blush this strikes me as a genius idea.  We’ve all been stuck next to a Chatty Cathy when all we wanted was some peace and quiet.  I’ve also been in the inverse situation where after long and sometimes lonely business trips I’m looking for a conversation, only to get major nonverbal cues from my seatmates that they are not.  Nevertheless, there’s a part of me that bristles at this idea of mood-based seat assignments.

It seems that via social media and other electronic conveniences we are increasingly able to control what exposure we have to people around us.  We can use Facebook to “check in” at various locations and events, enabling us to find people we already know in the same place.  We can hunker down into our smartphones, iPads, and Kindles while waiting for restaurant tables.  We can chat on the phone while riding in taxis.  And now we can have some say in how we are seated on airplanes to ensure that we either are or aren’t disturbed, according to our mood.

It’s not that I mean to be a total grinch / luddite / hater.  I believe that all of these conveniences have real value.  But I also think there is real value in facing the unexpected.  For starters, the real world brings unexpected things our way all the time.  How are we to learn to deal with them if we never have to?  We read in parenting magazines and blogs that we have to allow our children the opportunity to fight and fail and resolve conflict because our interventions will ultimately prove counterproductive.  I can’t help but wonder if the same isn’t true at some level for adults.

Not every unexpected encounter is one for the history books.  Plenty of them come and go without lasting in our memories.  But I think that the more we minimize or narrowly select our human interactions the worse we become at interacting.  And then a cycle starts:  The worse we are the less we want to do it.  The less we do it the worse we get.  And so on.  And that is why I believe there is value in chatting up the bartender while you wait for your date.  There is value in smiling and nodding while a person tells a story that doesn’t particularly interest you.  There is value in sitting next to a person on an airline with whom you have nothing in common.  Relating to people is the only way we learn how to relate to people.  (How’s that for meta logic?)  I fear that this Darwinian selection process of only linking up within our existing cohorts will ultimately make us socially weaker.  We will never have to flex new and different interpersonal muscles.

The traveler who wants to work or network or sit silently may get more out of a flight by electing to sit next to someone just like him.  But  with that he loses the opportunity to find that he has something in common with a person who, on the surface, seems foreign to him.  The soccer mom and the tattoo artist who both have kids leaving for college.  The sales guy and the computer programmer who just finished the same book.  He also lose the opportunity to meet someone who is truly different.  The musician going out on tour.  The person who writes mobile phone apps.  The person who used to work for the Fed and now drives a cab.

When you get down to it, I suppose this is a post about being open minded.  Finding like-minded people quickly and easily via the vast electronic capabilities available to us today is an incredible thing.  The world can be an isolating place and I think it is often made better by the ability to seek out compadres we might otherwise not have found.  But I think we have to be careful not to let the pendulum of our interactions with the world swing too far in the other direction.  We can’t allow ourselves to only find like-minded people or we’ll lose the ability to relate to anyone who isn’t already a kindred spirit.

Back to my friend who met her husband on a plane.  The irony of it is that they both intended to avoid each other and ended up finding a connection in spite of themselves.  Sometimes life throws people at us and we must interact no matter how much we don’t want to.  Nevertheless, I think we have to beware the pitfalls of keeping our circles small.  There’s a whole world out there that is filled with people we might not want to miss.