Seek The Substantial

Last weekend I had the opportunity to visit my brother in Seattle (Kent actually) and he has a 4-year and a 2-year old, he’s basically the same age when I had Fitsum and Youssouf (althought Youssouf had not come home yet when he was 2), he’s 40 now and I would have been 40 then when Fits was 4.

Because they are small, they make messes and their house is kid-messy because they play and pretend and there’s always something out. Whether it be, toys on the floor, or books all around and on couches and blanket forts were in a permanent install mode rather than temporary. The older that your kids get the more that those messes disappear and without a doubt, those messes made me nostalgic for the boys to be younger once again. I wish I had known now that I’d miss the Legos being constantly out and there being a constant state of some sort of build. Those days are gone and the only Legos that are out are confined to a small table in the office that Fitsum has had for such a long time.

And the awareness of that, the toy messes that are now all cleaned up and will likely no longer be there make me wish for those things again. It was David Foster Wallace who had said that the most important type of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort. The awareness part is what hit me when I saw the toy flowers, and learning about a new show and figures that I had never heard of because life moves faster than you want it to. And this comes full circle because as my brother’s best man, I quoted David Foster Wallace after his wedding.

“The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.”

So that means putting down your phone and understanding that the messes will not always be there. They will disappear, but you should be aware of those things because they are fleeting and sensing those things and understanding that they will not always be there because your kids’ messes will involve tough situations and a girlfriend or a boyfriend and broken hearts. Those are still messes and they will still need cleaning up, but even those things will fade away too.

“The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.
That is real freedom.
That is being taught how to think.
The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the “rat race” — the constant, gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.”

As parents, enjoy those messes no matter what they are because your kids need you for all of them.

Fitsum had his first dance where he asked a girl to go with him and we picked her up, and met her parents, and did all of those things, so we are on the wrong side of childhood and it makes me certainly wistful for those messes now more than ever. Luckily, when he came home from the dance he spent the next 3 hours building mini-figs so maybe we are in that gray area between adulthood and childhood and I’m not sure that I’m ready to let go.