Almost 2 years ago, I was kissing the boys good night and about to leave the bedroom when Noah said, “Daddy, can you hold my hand?”
Well, sure, I thought.
My brain also sent up a little alert:
What about all the parenting advice you’ve followed to help these two become independent sleepers? You hold their hand one time, they’re going to start depending on it.
And then I thought — one thing I’ll never say is, “I wish I’d hugged or held my boys’ hands a little less.”
Never going to happen.
So, I plopped between their twin beds and held both their sweet little paws while they flopped around, taught me about dinosaurs, and eventually conked out.
Two years later, I still hold their hands while they fall asleep.
Mind you, I’ve gamed the system.
Now that their bedtimes are different, the process takes longer, but I carpe the end of the diem to listen to audio books, play the NY Times word games, and catch up on my YouTube Watch Later list.
Melissa and I also flirt via Instagram messenger.
She’s curated a quality menagerie there, and she shares the riches.
There are some FUNNY folks on the socials. I’m grateful for the yuk yuks.
I’m always like, “Look at them, making the videos and putting it out there. Go ahead.”
And then I’m like, “How LONG did it take to conceive, shoot, and edit that video? How much of their life is devoted to, throat catch, ahmhmhmhmmmm, content creation?”
Con’-tent. A noun. Meaning the stuff that’s inside a container. I guess that’d be contents.
Con-tent’. Adjective. Being peacefully balanced, fulfilled, and grateful.
An irony, noooo?
These brilliant folks make content and contribute it to a technological platform that’s designed never to be content.
Especially with Instagram and its cousins, you’re talking about a 48-hour life span before everyone’s moved on to the next hot take on “Can I pet that daaawwwg?”
(That’s exactly how I talked growing up, PS.)
Stresses me out for them.
I’ve got an ambivalent relationship with the socials.
I’ve paused my accounts, read Cal Newport’s books and listened to lectures about digital minimalism, fired my accounts up again and scheduled more than a year’s worth of, hmhmhmhmmm, content, in a spread sheet, been elated that something I posted helped someone else, and spent many more hours than I wanted to recovering from snark slime slung my way in the comments section.
I also dislike the window it opens on my human susceptibility to all the Vegas-y scroll-scroll-scroll dopamine drip manipulation brain grab techniques they wield.
I’m also not a fan of how the platforms puff oxygen on the fires of surface knee-jerk statements on complicated, nuanced, both-and situations.
And as soon as you click a button in favor of such statements, it’ll serve you more to confirm the bias it just detected.
But I was thinking about something walking into work the other day.
When I write this email to you, and you write me back and say something like, “Thank you. This is exactly what I needed to read this week.” That alone makes it worth it.
If I know I lightened someone’s load for the day, that’s worth it to me.
And it occurred to me — that’s a great standard for decisions. “Will the thing I’m sharing lighten someone’s load? Will it encourage someone? Will it give them something that helps in any way?” Worth doing.
I think this is a great way to think about sharing stories and songs, too.
Is this ringing true in me? Is this wholehearted and honest? And will this make someone’s day better in some way?
It reframes our work because we’re seeing the world rather than worrying about how the world sees us. (A HUGE trap with the socials and life in general now. How do you not consider that when part of your brain may very well have merged with the phone camera?)
I’m remembering what Betty Buckley used to say in class in NYC 20 years ago: Be the seer, not the seen.
Made no sense to me at the time.
But now I get it. If you focus on what and who you’re seeing, your very observation can change the atmosphere around you. Quantum mechanics has been telling us that for years now.
If you turn the critical lens toward yourself, you collapse your love waves into picky particles, and I don’t think that’s how humans are designed to thrive.
How you see someone affects them, I’m convinced of this.
Think of one instance when someone saw a possibility in you that you were blind to, and how that probably changed your life. You and I have that very consequential ability right in the eyes of our heart.
“Will it lighten a load? Will it encourage? Will it offer something that helps? And does it ring true in me?” Then yes, go ahead.
We’re so inundated by choice, that’s a specific yet generous rubric to guide us. Spans from complimenting the cashier’s earrings to getting that one-person show on its feet for your trusted friends in your living room.
Just like hugs and holding hands, if it’s something you’ll never wish you did less of, go ahead. Do more of that.
And always remember there’s only one you, and folks need to hear the story only you can sing.
Love much,
Dan
PS Great podcast interview with Betty Buckley that reminded me about the seer not the seen. https://open.spotify.com/episode/4yPahxBIqsRKqAFce81i3o?si=5168d2f9265c49c5
PPS Three people worth following —
Justfrogetaboutit — (links to IG)