Grateful For Being Human

 "...one day I feel I'm on top of the world
And the next it's falling in on me
I can get back on
I can get back on..."

–Rush, Far Cry

Sometimes I wish I was an algorithm. One that would quickly learn from its mistakes, adapt, and improve, all without monsoon emotional swings. Without attaching conspiratorial outcomes to change. Without second-guessing its decisions. Without feeling buried under the weight of circumstance. Without feeling momentarily hopeless because things break. 

But I'm not an artificially intelligent "it". I'm a sometimes intelligent human being whose synapses fire, and misfire, as regularly as the sun and moon rise. One day I feel I'm on top of the world and the next it's falling in on me. 

Everybody can feel that way, I know. But when it's you in that moment, especially when it's falling in on you, you feel like you're the only one in the world, the one you were once on top of. This complicates things being a parent of older kids, teen daughters who are more self-aware than there were as kids. They struggle even more because their brains and bodies are developing rapidly and their synaptic firing is like a rollercoaster ride the dives from the upper atmosphere to the center of the earth, then back again. 

And when things are fairly smooth for us the parents, it's easier to help them with the relationship struggles. their study struggles, their body development struggles (especially being females), and all the other things we remember from our own teen worlds. 

When things aren't very smooth, we still have to figure out how to deal and adapt ourselves in order to help them. We're supposed to be the adults in the room, and when things are seemingly rapid-fire change and circumstance, it can be a momentarily overwhelming ordeal just dealing with the ordinary and things that break. 

Our daughter Bryce's bike broke (which was my wife Amy's), which is a bummer because she's the only one willing to ride her bike to school at least once per week, which helps us with the transportation. It was under warranty and we got most of the money back for it, but now have to find a new bike that will definitely be more expensive. 

We had new flooring put in last year that included our staircase. But the very top one started to break and my wife Amy slipped and fell straight down the second one breaking it. She was bruised and sore but thankfully okay otherwise. That's when I checked the other stairs and noticed a few more were loose. That overwhelmed me as a safety problem for our family, although I know we'll get it all fixed.

Even with my default "no" setting, Amy and I were going to attempt to fix our trailer hitch connection on our SUV, and while we got a better understanding of how things work and connect on our car, with discovered that the main brake lights didn't work. The upper third brake light still worked and all the other lights worked, but not the main brake lights. We had no idea how long they'd been out, and immediately we ruled out the fuses and then narrowed it down to the light bulbs and the brake lock switch. But since the latter was above our pay grade, I was banking on the fact it was the bulbs. It was. Thank goodness.

All of these things – our daughter's bike breaking, the stairs breaking under Amy's poor butt, our car's brake lights breaking – combined with the fact that the work year's been tough and now my business has merged with another company (ultimately a great thing) – and all my synaptic misfiring commenced. "One day I feel I'm on top of the world and the next it's falling in on me. I can get back on, I can get back on."

And I do get back on. In the end, I really don't wish I was an algorithm. I wouldn't trade my ability to feel emotions and experience all that life brings for being artificially intelligent in a million years. No, this Thanksgiving, I'm grateful for being human – a fallible human who can feel buried under the weight of transitory circumstances. I'm grateful for a loving wife and partner, and two amazing daughters. I'm grateful for all my family and friends, my current employees and my new colleagues. I'm grateful for our health and our home. I'm grateful for my community, my state, my country, my world (no matter where it's burning). I'm even grateful that things break (sometimes). 

I'm also grateful for empathy, and this Thanksgiving, blessings to those living in war zones, in poverty, on the streets, with mental illness, with physical illness, with anything that compromises health and safety.

Actionable Blessings

For me, the hardest part has been mitigating the painful absurdity of purposeful misinformation and how it impacts the truth and our children. Cobbling truths together based on verifiable but fragmented facts isn't easy anyway, but when we mislead ourselves and our children due to our reactive beliefs and confirmation bias, we lead them down a dangerous path. The double-speak path of power, control, and suppression.  

Which is why we've always wanted our children to understand the realities of our country's history, our human history. From slavery to Indigenous people to the Civil War to civil rights to women's rights to the Holocaust to 9/11 to COVID-19 to the U.S. Capital insurrection to Russian invaded Ukraine and more -- we've talked about it all, especially when they've asked about it. 

Sure, we have our own political and ideological prejudices that taint our objectivity, but we try to give our children as much information that they can process that's age-appropriate. Because in the years to come, they'll begin to form their own ideologies and perspectives about the world around them and the people around them. 

What I really hope for our daughters is that they can perceive the double-speak of power and control when it discriminates against and suppresses others. That they can perceive the painful absurdity of equating pandemic public health safety mandates to making Jews wear stars during the Holocaust. 

That they can perceive the difference between the hateful violence at the U.S. Capitol and legitimate political discourse. 

That they can perceive the danger of praising of a relentless dictator with a murderous history as a talented and savvy leader. A leader who has now displaced over 360,000 Ukrainians by invading their homeland, a sovereign nation since 1990. 

Imagine that happening here in the U.S. Just thinking about all these things and the many other absurdities that continue to be perpetuated angers and exhausts me. 

We're not going to flee from history with our children's eyes and ears closed, or let them drown in Orwellian and Atwoodian double-speak of power, control, and suppression. We're going to talk about what's happened and what's happening around them in their city, their state, their country, and their world, with as many objective and verifiable facts we can find. We'll give them the opportunities to ask questions, understand as much as they can, and eventually formulate their own perspectives and world views. 

We don't want them to feel bad about being human, but we do want them to be better humans throughout their lives, always with more love, compassion, and actionable blessings.

Today, we send our actionable blessings to the people of Ukraine.