What I Want For You

An open letter to my son on the occasion of his 21st birthday.

Today is your birthday. Twenty one years since the first time I held you. People will say that it seems like only yesterday that their grown children were babies. I do not feel that way. It feels like a lifetime to me. I did not have much of a life before you. Being your father made me raise every standard and I owe the man that I am to it. In a lot of ways my life began when yours did.

Being a father to a son is like watching every mistake you ever made replayed in slow motion. If you are lucky you can help them avoid a few. If I did it was by avoiding the mistakes of my own father and not putting all that on you. Regardless of how it felt at times I have always been proud of you. I look at the man you are and see someone who is strong and kind. Who has the courage to look around at the state of the world and to want something different. So there are a few things I want for you, that can help you live a good life, that I learned about the hard way.

I want for you to start thinking long term. At your age you feel young and invulnerable. People love to say that things will catch up with you. But they will not. Time is on your side right now and you have the health and the runway to bounce back from most anything. Which is why you have to look out for things you cannot. Start asking whether 50 year old you would thank you for the decision you are making or be angry. Would you tell your great grandchildren about it someday, or pretend that it never happened? Which brings me to the next thing.

I want for you to be a family man. I want you to find a good woman. Get married too young. Have one more kid than you think you can afford. Then stay married forever. These things are far and away the most important decisions to your future happiness. When it comes to friends keep your circle tight. Two or three people around you that you can count on is a lot. With six you could do anything. Most people will come and go. But when you find people who are at the same stage of life as you, and all continue to grow and progress together, those are the relationships that last a lifetime. Those people become family too.

I want for you to chase your dream. But never to chase money. Which is not to say that you should be poor, because a man needs to be able to support his family. But if you focus on doing cool work, and being good at it, people will value it and money will follow. But if you make career decisions only on money you wind up selling pieces of yourself. Push yourself as hard as you can now before you have a family. That does not always mean working long hours, as you have to have time to build a life, and then it needs to come before work. And tell people about your dream. Communicating the vision in your head to others makes the steps to achieve it more clear.

I want for you to know that the peace you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding. We gave you a world filled with uncertainty. Where the rules are always changing, and wonder why your generation is anxious. But when we do not take action on things we know we could that creates more uncertainty in our lives. Whether in your personal or professional life you need to have a preference for action. Stepping up and taking responsibility will make you someone that others can count on. It will also create more certainty in your life. Things are still going to be difficult. But just because you are struggling, does not mean that you are failing.

I want for you to know God. The existence of religion is an anthropological constant across all ecologies, cultures, and time periods. Humans are creatures who worship. If you do not center the divine you will glorify something. Be it wealth, power, celebrity or the self. At the same time there are a lot of "spiritual, not religious" people. For whom God is a placeholder for what they already believe. Which demands nothing of them and means whatever they want it to. Know that you are a beloved son of God, The Bible is nonfiction, and Christ died for your sins.

I still hope that you will move to New England. Things are more human scale here, and I know that you would thrive. But it has to be the right thing for you. Because it is not an unselfish desire on my part. I miss you every day and that hurts when I dwell on it. But I moved away from Iowa not you. Though it still feels like the right thing I want you to know that am sorry for it anyway. I have things I want to be for you too. To be there when you need me wherever it is. To be around for a long time so you know that it is not all on you. To be a jacked grandpa who runs grandchildren ragged, and everyone admonishes to slow down. To make a place you can visit which is close to the natural world and you can see things grow. Where you will always have a home.

I wish I was a better writer. My words feel inadequate. I love you. I am proud of you. You mean everything to me. You know if you go to a cemetery and look at the headstones, besides a name, you will find roles that person fulfilled in life. Husband, brother, soldier, priest. It will not say how they felt about themselves. It is their actions that people remember. Mine could say "Father." Because you are the best thing I ever did.