📖 21 Lessons From My Father
When I was 21, my father called me.
"Listen, Ryan," he began, using his signature line to transition from small talk to the real reason for any given conversation. "Enjoy this period of life. You'll never have another like it."
I heard him, at least enough to store this conversation in my brain until it would surge into relevance many years later, but I didn't really hear him. As a dad now myself, I'm all too familiar without how kids hear without listening.
That call came in 2010. I had just returned from my second Iraq deployment, coming home bitter and jaded, frustrated that I had spent so much of my time and energy in a war that I now knew to be meritless.
I returned home to a listless set of assignments, as I didn't have enough time left on my contract for my command to care much about what I did. My fellow short timers and I weren't worth the investment of additional training, and the nature of our work as translators made it so that we couldn't really perform our jobs without a very particular type of stateside infrastructure. We lacked the infrastructure, and so we idled.
Every day, we'd drive in from the beach house we had rented under questionably permissive circumstances, complaining as we waved to the gate guards at the back gate of Camp Lejeune on our way to PT. We'd warm up, do some type of physical training, and then get ready to more or less waste away in the office (though I did manage to sneak off for some on-base community college classes).
We'd always somehow find a way to head out early. We'd speed home, strip off cammies, slip on bathing suits, and sprint to the nearby ocean to slam into the waves. I remember the pull of more than a few riptides, which kept us honest while losing ourselves in the water's embrace.
In the evening, drinks in hand, we'd scrounge for dinner and watch America's Next Top Model. Invariably, we'd end up at a local bar. Somebody would get mad at somebody and we'd close out the night.
Rinse and repeat.
My dad didn't know the ins and outs of those days, but he didn't have to. He was able to recognize that I had an enviable amount of liberty, even while still under the yoke of the Marine Corps.
And he knew that I wasn't likely to experience quite that same situation again in life. I was single. I had a steady job that was paying me decent money to do very little work. I was on the path to college. I had friends and a nice place to live. I had plenty of recreational activities to occupy my time.
Yet I didn't have the presence of mind to fully enjoy it.
--
When my father died four years ago, my mom and I went through a lot of stuff. That seems to be a universal experience of the death of a loved one: encountering stuff.
There was frustration and anger and sorrow, punctuated by moments of joy and laughter. There were tears, long hugs, and long silences.
And there were discoveries. I saw for the first time photos, documents, and trinkets that I had never before come across, stored in some type of memory box of his or another. Most of it just got a quick glance, as I didn't have the capacity to do much more with it at the time.
On a melancholic night earlier this year, I found myself on the basement floor, taking out those boxes and actually looking through them.
I found a striking photo album with winding floral print:
The pictures inside showed parts of my dad's personality that I had never before seen. Yes, there was the skiing and hiking, but there was also the rugby, the ballroom dancing, the sailing, the brief military service, the mountain climbing, and the relationships built along the way. There was stoicism and silliness, sincerity and sarcasm.
And, there was a date range: 1955-1956.
My father, born in 1934, was 21 when these photos were taken.
When, in 2010, my father told 21-year-old Ryan to enjoy that unique phase of post-deployment life, he wasn't speaking in the abstract. He was channeling his own experience as a 21-year-old young man, transitioning from one phase of life into the next, surrounded by genuine friends and experiencing a freedom that only an older, wiser man could actually appreciate.
He was speaking as somebody who knows what it's like to never have something again.
--
Be here now.
Infinitely — maddeningly — easier said than done. Yet unequivocally important to fulfilled living.
Distractions pull relentlessly at our attention. Products and practices that promise peace create dissatisfaction with the present and longing for what could be. Just one more hill to climb until you've reached the top. "And then what?" we'd be wise to ask.
Yes, short of monk-like enlightenment, we're unlikely to fully embrace the present. But I think we can all move towards living a bit more now, letting the mind wander and process instead of pulling out the phone at every interval, and pausing to practice some gratitude for what we have instead of plummeting into the pit of comparison to others, or to what we once had, or to what we want to have in the future.
Recall those times in life when things were good, but not to fixate on whether they are comparatively bad right now. Do so as a reminder that good is subjective, and that if you take some time to reflect, you can probably find a few things you have going for you right now, in this very moment. Things that are worth noticing, celebrating, and remembering.
Along the way, consider taking some pictures. Future you, and perhaps your progeny, may be thankful you did.
Happy Father’s Day, Dad.
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