Welcome

How did you get to be you? From time to time, I’ve been asked, and asked myself that question. I typically started the answer with my father leaving when I was one year old, followed somewhere in the story by his nearly complete absence in my life. But my, and your story began long before that. Scientists tell us that we have more than 95% of our DNA in common with other animals. There is a lesson to be learned from watching other animals. On my drive home, I often see wild rabbits on the side of the road, and the routine that follows is familiar. You are going to see the word familiar a lot in this book. I’m pointing it out now, so you don’t miss the significance…it’s not an accident…it’s very intentional. The interaction between the rabbits and my car follows a familiar pattern. A rabbit is peacefully grazing for whatever rabbits graze for along the side of the road, when it notices a large metal object traveling toward it. It freezes and waits to see if the large metal object will notice it. When the object appears to continue toward the rabbit, the fluffy rodent makes some kind of decision that it’s not safe, and if the rabbit’s underground burrow happens to be across the road, it will inevitably dash into harm’s way, directly in the path of the rolling tires. I know this pattern, of course, and so I intentionally slow down to give the innocent creature time to run from safety to safety, which reinforces to the rabbit that this was a wise course…until it isn’t. Next time, the operator of these heavy metal objects might not see the rabbit, and that’s the end of the rabbit’s story. The point here, while subtle, is everything this book is about.

The rabbit experiences a fear that it is not safe, when it actually is. Its instinctive and habitual response is what motivated it to run into a danger that was not present. If it could only understand that cars stay on the road, then it would never have run across to its demise in the first place. In aviation, this is called “normalization of deviation”, and it describes a pilot who repeatedly breaks the rules of safety until it becomes a habit to operate the aircraft that way, until this habit eventually kills him, everyone on board, and perhaps people on the ground. By responding to fear of a danger that was not present and getting away with it for the time being, the rabbit has become so used to this behavior that it is now genetic. As near as we can tell, rabbits don’t “think” like we do. That is to say, they don’t plan for their future and remember their past. They are only present in the moment. It’s not a criticism of the furry little animal. In fact, there are lots of valuable lessons it can teach us if we are willing to be open minded.

The simple fact is then when you and I were born, we weren’t done yet. When you were born, you couldn’t even lift your own head. It took you a year to learn to walk, while a horse can do that in sixty seconds. Our brains have evolved to the point where if we waited another 3 months, the time when a baby seems to actually look you in the eye with some kind of understanding, our heads wouldn’t fit out the birth canal. As it is, it’s quite a feat. The newborn skull has movable sections that squish just enough so that it fits out, and then it takes several months to fuse, which is why you need to be careful not to push on the soft spot at the crown of a newborn’s head. We just aren’t done in 9 months, and this is evolution’s solution. In fact, so much of our brain’s growth happens in our first 4 years of life that this is key to understanding how we got to be who we are. We didn’t have rational thought yet, a lot like the rabbits on the side of the road. Our only need was to be and feel safe, and there is a critical distinction between the two…if you don’t believe that, ask the rabbit. It was safe until it ran at the tires it was afraid of.

The very young and growing child without rational thought, makes three critical errors in logic, and it’s these errors that we need to clearly understand. Behavioral science tells about this, but in all honesty, it’s been inferred from behavior and observation…we can’t ask very young children what they are experiencing because they don’t have rational thought yet, any more than that rabbit. Rational thought is learned behavior. At the same time, hear me out and see if this explanation doesn’t resonate with you. My guess is that it will. If not, you are likely not a parent yet. I’ve seen this process in each of my children and in each of the young children who have touched my life in some way. I’m sure it was true in my case. Even now, I see these logic errors in my thinking all the time, and despite the fact that I can now recognize them with conscious thought, I still feel them, and I can’t think them away. They are familiar. These critical errors in logic that the very young child makes are: 1) it believes that it is the cause of everything that happens to it. 2) if its needs are not being met, it is unloved, and 3) the reason that it is unloved is because on some level, it is unlovable…something is wrong with it. As a helpless child, when mom leaves the room, we experience fear. We also feel that we are the cause of mom leaving the room. While this is patently false, the challenge is that the child is certainly the cause of some things that happen to it, and while you and I can often tell the difference, the very inexperienced brain cannot. It just doesn’t have that yet. As we slowly grow and start to walk and talk, we still don’t have it, although we are good at fooling both ourselves and the adults around us. When we experience fear, we often believe that we are the cause, that we are not safe, that we are not loved, and on some level, that is because we are not lovable. Or at the very least, in order to be liked and loved, we need to start behaving differently. This conflicts with the other information that we receive. How can mom love us and also be angry at us? Something must be wrong with us. We must be inherently unlovable on some degree. It’s a feeling, not a thought…remember that logical thought is still developing, and it develops with some measure of these wrong assumptions. These wrong assumptions get cemented into our mental circuitry. These base errors in understanding are the root of those events in our lives where we run at the tires of the things we fear, figuratively speaking. It’s not our fault, and it’s not even an issue of fault in the first place. It’s just how we got to be us. It’s the beginning of our story. It’s the beginning of our world view. It’s not a thinking thing…it’s a feeling thing, and until we recognize and accept that it’s present to some degree in our paradigm, it will drive us to run at the tires just like that rabbit. Some rabbits get away with it for their whole lives, while others get squished. Those assumptions that we all make as we mature affect us to different degrees. Our results may not be so drastic as that rabbit, but they show up in broken marriages, children and parents who are estranged, addictive behaviors, failed dreams, the acceptance of mediocre lives, poor habits toward money, unhealthy lifestyles…if you just look around you, and perhaps even at yourself, I’m sure you can add to the list. What if there was a way to manage this fundamental premise that we all started with in a way that helped us toward the life we want, rather than scaring us into the path of undesirable results? There is, and it starts in the beginning.

That’s what this book is about. It’s about looking at our own personal story, not as an affair in self judgement, but as a respectful, caring exercise in self-evaluation. It will certainly push your buttons at times, both happy buttons and not-so-happy buttons, and the key here is that they are your buttons. The question is where did you get those buttons, the emotional triggers that can make you feel unsafe at your core, while leaving you unaware of why. When your ancient ancestors heard something rustle in the bushes, they experienced fear and looked. If they didn’t look, they weren’t your ancestors…they were someone else’s lunch. Fear was the emotion that the process of evolution developed to keep them safe. “Am I safe?” was the question they felt, not the question they asked…they didn’t have that conscious, self-introspective asking thing yet. We still all feel that question at our core, and it’s a feeling thing, not an asking thing. The simple fact is that there are very few instances in our modern world where we are actually at risk of being eaten, or in any danger at all for that matter. I’m not saying that we are never in danger, but it’s a very rare event for most of us, and by the time we realize that we are in danger, we’ve typically already acted to preserve ourselves. Think about the last time another car steered at you, requiring you to immediately act to avoid a collision. By the time you really are afraid, you’ve already acted, and it’s only then that most of us are inclined to honk the horn and make rude gestures at each other. The danger is past, yet only after the fact do we feel the fear. Ironically, now that the two drivers are angry at each other, it has actually become more dangerous. We are not unsafe, but we are reliving the memory of the recent past and re-creating a fear that simply isn’t needed. This book is not about avoiding the fear…it’s about acknowledging it, and then managing it effectively in our lives as a helpful tool, rather than a destructive one. “No Fear” was a popular advertising slogan from the Nike company years ago…that’s not possible. Yet it is certainly possible to understand it, to know fear. The challenge we have is to recognize when fear is present, because we are so clever at hiding it with other emotions and behaviors. That’s why we need to learn to “know” it.

This book is not a narrative, and if you were to read it that way, you’d likely find it repetitive. It’s a sample from my collection of notes to my children, musings from a father who is doing his very best to be present their lives, regarding whatever subject they need at the present time. Read them in any order and whenever it suits you. Notes that might not resonate with you today might be meaningful in the future, and that’s for you to decide. I have attempted to write each note to appeal to most age groups. I’ve also attempted to provide no answers here…only perspective to help my children ask themselves the right questions. We all have our own answers, and this is as it should be, for we are the ones who will have to live with the results of our choices.

Unless you are my children, this book was not written for you. It was written for that specific audience. At the same time, the very idea of a book like this seems to resonate well with so many people, that I invite you into my family to see part of our story, and I sincerely hope that it will help you to see your own story in a new light. I hope it will help you to challenge your story and ask where you got it. If it’s working for you, that’s great. If there are parts of your story that are creating results you don’t like, then it’s time to start rewriting. When I started writing this book, I had never really met my father. By the time I finished it, I had still never met him, yet I had met myself. I had also buried my father, who apparently died a COVID-related death months before I found out about it. I found him abandoned in Chicago in a giant overflow morgue with hundreds, if not thousands of unclaimed bodies. I don’t know the details of how he managed his abandonment story, but he clearly died with it. That was the thought that ran through my head as I stood there, looking at the box of his cremated remains, gently poking my finder at the thick, plastic bag, somehow both clear and opaque. I could see and feel the gray ash and small chunks of bone that were still present. Time’s up. His final gift to you and me was that we don’t have to die with a made-up story of abandonment. That story of not being worthy of love is simply not true. I proved that to him in death by claiming him and honoring a man I never knew with a respectful burial at sea. It’s time to look at your story and if necessary, challenge its validity. If this book helps you to do that, then I’m personally honored to have contributed to your life in a meaningful way.