Tag Archives: Believing

Time

Posted on by under Memoir, The Edison Project Blog

Fatherhood in my generation presents an interesting case study for those generations that follow.  I believe fatherhood at any point in time is an interesting topic to explore, but especially now, with the strain most families experience when both parents have to work; fatherhood presents both joys and pitfalls unique to this moment in time.  Daycare is a necessity for most.  This means that a man’s responsibility to earn enough to support his family has to include weekly costs that, when put together for all three children, surpass the value of my rent, car payment and nearly half of my grocery bill.  Included in that responsibility is the time needed by my wife, and really everyone’s wives, to perform her job properly.  This means a split, or near split, in pick-up duty.  This alone puts a strain on life, as I’m sure I could do my job better if I could put in more time at work.  Future goals and opportunities are often put on hold and pass fathers by, as those without this responsibility can more fully devote themselves to their professional passions.  Fatherhood is a complex and layered enigma.  Even when we seem to be able to balance all of the above, there still rests the question of ‘Am I doing this right?’

EdisonProject70

My children, 4, 3 and 5 months old, are the life-blood of any and all effort I am able to muster.  They complete the cycle that returns me to work, focused on strengthening my skills and earning increased pay and opportunities.  While they push me out the door in the spirit of improving our quality of life, it is that same desire for quality of life that pulls me home.  As we find ourselves taking on responsibility, we hope the curve of improvement is not far behind.  That we can learn to balance to needs of one infant, and then add to that a year later with one walking shakily about the house, while the other infant sleeps, is a testament to what we are capable of.  That we can find ourselves just a few years later, with two children intent on their nightly dance parties while the other is soothed to sleep further displays that flexibility.  We are perfectly capable of adapting to the requirements of our life.  It is quite often solely the confidence that we lack to possess.

As part of adding our third, one of the daily routines passed solely to me is the bathing, readying of pajamas, teeth, hair and multiple trips to fill a cup with water, and prayers.  My wife established the order of prayers a few years back.  If we veer from that order even slightly, both “big kids” quickly alert us to our sin and urge us back on to the path of the familiar.  As it has become my duty, it has transformed into my pleasure.  I’ve incorporated a few additional items to the end of the night-time routine.  A few times a week, we do “video songs.”  These are merely songs from various Disney movies shuffled through YouTube from which my children each choose one.  Sometimes, the songs are old and familiar: Cinderella, Tangled, Tarzan, Hercules, and on down the line.  My son has a much greater penchant for songs he’s never heard.  He doesn’t even know he hasn’t heard them.  He just likes the image displayed on the screen, and says, “Daddy, that one.”  I shake my head, confused.  I never wanted the unfamiliar as a child.  Give me the tried and true.  Nevertheless, we select the song from Lion King 2, or from the Hunchback of Notre Dame, etc.  Video songs also give me a key negotiating chip, ensuring good behavior during all of bedtime preparations.

As an aside, yesterday I completed Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project.  While I would have done it differently, the reporting on a year of striving to maintain resolutions each month, picking up new tasks as she went, all while keeping an eye on each one from the past months struck a chord with me.  Similarly, at the end of the book, she describes a process where occasionally, she and her husband enter their children’s rooms and “gaze lovingly” at them while they sleep.  While my wife and I do not do this together, but have each done that at times, there is a part of our routine that took on new meaning for me as a result.  In the last few months, my two children have taken on the custom of laying with me on the floor as we say prayers.  There is a body pillow between their two beds that I rest on as we say prayers, and enough room for each of them to snuggle against me.  Rubin described an exchange she held with her husband during one of these loving gazes.  She commented that one day they would look back on the occurrence of this tradition with fondness.  To which her husband replied, “We will say ‘they were such happy times.”

EdisonProject71

Last night, as my children cuddled up against me, the hour later than I’d hoped for, I recalled this passage and spent some time during our prayers thinking about this happy time.  There will come a time when cuddling is no longer accepted.  When they’ll want to spend their last few minutes reading a book, or watching a video, or talking on the phone to a friend.  While I will be granted back some of my individual freedom, I will lose the chance to experience moments of true dependence.  I’ll be glad to have my time back.  I’ll be sad that it is so.

Fatherhood is tricky.  Constantly blending and balancing personal and professional desires and requirements with the requirements of parenting creates a great many opportunities to learn from failure.  The nuances of all of these facets of my life require constant examination.  In my toughest moments, caught between the three largest portions of myself, I struggle to remind myself that when my children are grown, or even just a bit older, my salary, drive to succeed, plans to write and to read will all still exist.  It is the innocence of children that wipes away quickest.  So for the time being, I resolve to let those other things call to me from the back of my brain, in hopes that I’ll continue to be granted one more night to be called to that body pillow, to pray and sing and cuddle – one more time.

Yours in the Pursuit of Happiness,

Will O’Connor

Mom

Posted on by under Memoir, The Edison Project Blog

 

January 18th is likely an ordinary day in the lives of many as they shuffle through the doldrums of what feels like the epicenter of dreary winter.  Harsh winds, low temperatures, often snow and ice abound.  Our routes are restricted, or slowed, to and from work.  The effort to get to the grocery store feels and looks like an f(x)=x² algebraic equation.  Once there, milk and toilet paper and bread have already experienced a run.  In short, you’d trade January 18th for nearly any other day.  Not this family.  For on January 18th, some years ago, my mother was born into the world.

EdisonProject67

We’re often guilty of under-planning her birthday as a family, precisely due to the fact that we aren’t graced with her effort to help.  Some things in life are regrettable truths. Yet that takes nothing away from the indescribable gratitude we feel for being so fortunate to have such an invaluable asset in our mother, or in my father’s case – wife,  and friend; Doni O’Connor.

My mother, born into a Catholic household in western Michigan seems to me to fit perfectly into the narrative of JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy.  Not because my extended family are hillbillies.  Far from it.  But midwestern culture and industry began to recede before its collapse during my mother’s birth and upbringing – heaping on her and her family challenges not every area of the country has had to face.  As a result, my mother’s driven nature was sharpened by its raw existence within her as necessity in order to escape its cycle, or down-ward shift.  Basketball, oddly was her ticket aboard the train out-of-town.  Earning a scholarship to Purdue University, she was able to educate herself in trade.  In a serendipitous moment, my father’s family uprooted from Long Island, NY around the same time my mother was of college age.  Meeting on a court, they aptly began a courtship.

Marriage followed, and then the three of us.  My mother stayed at home during the first 9 years of my life, until my brother was of school age.  Never having departed from her competitive drive, she returned to the workforce and changed the trajectory of her family through consistent effort you typically only see in Hollywood heroes.  Her children bore witness to her perseverance.  We are thus outfitted by such as a tool of measurement.  If nothing else, my mother’s fortitude speaks to me, in moments of doubt, to assure me that there is no summit unreachable, unless I preclude myself from its height by refusing to will myself to it.  Its byproduct has been an innate understanding within myself, that those pursuits I’ve failed at have been a result of my own refusal to get there.  Conversely, I know that everything I desire to attain is within my grasp.  And therein lies the potency of my mother.  Many claim to expound the theory of the American Dream.  My mother, in her way, has lived it.  There is no greater example a person can set than by their actions.  I am, in this way, privileged.

EdisonProject69

Among other things, my mother has also taught me how to cook, how to shoot a basketball, how to approach everyone on equal footing with regard to dignity and agency.  My mother has taught me about the immeasurable value of family, and dedication to it.  Her partnership with my father has taught me about respect for my wife.  All of these things have been done through action first, words second.  While she took time to explain the value of these things for me, they were always easier to grasp because she displayed them first; and displayed them still further after the verbal lesson.  For a child, even for an adult, the consistency between words and actions sets a foundation unbreakable by external forces.

So on her birthday, I bid you join me in wishing my silent and tireless foundation a wonderful day filled with all of the joys she’s earned.  That she’ll be able to head south from Northern Virginia to her house on Lake Anna is no small testament to the potential we all posses to create our own destiny – through family, faith and a stubborn unwillingness to ever be told not to fight like a girl.

 

Happy Birthday, Mom.

Yours in the Pursuit and Growth of Happiness,

Will O’Connor

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Refining Happiness

Posted on by under Literature, Memoir, The Edison Project Blog

“Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that, but simply growth” – William Butler Yeats

Of late, I’ve found myself furiously taking notes while reading through Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project.  For those not acquainted, Rubin determined for herself a few year’s back that while she led a charmed life, she perhaps did not appreciate it enough.  For anyone who may feel that appreciation is something they lack for themselves or their situation (I do), especially in critical moments where things feel tight and we aren’t sure of important outcomes; this venture hits home.  Only part-way through her report on her findings, I am finding her structure to be something I believe I’d really benefit from.  I have augmented some of what she’s done, but plan to mimic several aspects, tweaking along the way.  I also have found the research she has included, as well as the quotes and stories to fill areas of my quest that I had not yet been able to define.

While The Edison Project is simply a continued experiment to determine a path towards many things; authorship, intentionality, documentation of my life for my children – it is also a probe into what makes me happy.  Striving for positivity and remaining focused on these objectives have led me down extremely intriguing paths.  I have set markers for myself at the beginnings of each of these forks, that I might – much like Hansel and Gretel – find my way back to probe each of these deeply as I move through life.  The timeline for this experiment is a long one.  Such a discovery has led to increased patience as I feel the need to understand these undiscovered aspects of my character before determining a singular course for anything as massive an undertaking as a book.  Where this time last year I was aimlessly creating characters and scenarios, I’ve pulled back to uncover the reasons for why this person might exist in my world – or that one might not necessarily need to be involved.  I’m working to understand how these people may behave in such a world – or worlds – as my ideas vary from month to month on where such an effort should most organically take place.

So here I find myself exploring the quote above.  That happiness is characterized as most likened to growth is the truest explanation I’ve ever felt.  When I read that passage, I looked up from the page, set my book down, and began to investigate that posit within my own life.  Indeed I have always been most happy when at the cusp of something new and important.  I’d add only that to Mr. Yeats’ deep and layered thesis.  That growth must be focused in ways true to our character is as important as the fact that growth is even happening.  Fortunately, there are many areas in which this young man can grow.  I intend to continue to believe that for as long as I draw breath.

At work, new building techniques, applications, building uses and challenges may create a large learning curve, but it is determination I already posses.  When arriving at the apex of the challenge, where the curve drops off and the production takes form, I am exhilarated beyond belief.  Such has been the case for the seven years I’ve now undertaken this industry.

At home, witnessing landmark events, exploring my children’s own unexplored territory with them provides a rush and sense of bonding that can’t come from the dinner table, not to dismiss the importance of a family eating dinner.  Working with them to create their own perceptions of what is good, what is worth exploring, I find myself inspired to look inward on my existing perceptions and alter, perhaps, some of them to include lessons they’ve just then taught me.  The adventure can be as simple as watching my infant daughter lay on the floor giggling.  It can be as trivial as observing the ways my son constructs duplo-blocks to portray, even if in a slightly ambiguous form, towers or castles or rocket ships.  It can be as superficial, yet layered, as interacting with my oldest while she’s holding and caring for one of her many baby dolls.  Watching how she loves these inanimate objects alerts me to what she’s learned through witness, and creates in me a heightened sense of my contributions to this formula.

With my wife, watching each other grow as we establish new roles while learning to balance all of our existing responsibilities as we balance our natural desire to grow with the weight that parenthood can sometimes add to focus and energy; I am bolstered by what the future promises.  I am emboldened to act now the way I want to feel later.  It is in these acts where the depth of our relationship is revealed; that although we have known each other for nearly ten years, we have merely skimmed off a fraction of what we are capable of – both individually and together.  Beginning to depart from old habits in order to create space for new goals makes me love her in a light I haven’t before held vantage of.

These are the aspects of my life that create my happiness.  It is not the thought of becoming happy, but the act of fulfilling happiness that compounds on itself.  And each and every day we are granted here on earth we have the opportunity to invest that effort into areas that will generate into something greater.  Refining that happiness towards growth in the foundation of our character reflects areas, yet undiscovered, where light can be found and happiness experienced in full.

What a truth to explore!

Yours in the Pursuit and Growth of Happiness,

Will O’Connor

Listen Up, Son

Posted on by under Memoir, The Edison Project Blog

My wife and I were born to parents who were baptized into the Catholic Church as infants.  That I am aware of, all four of my grandparents and all four of my wife’s grandparents were also born into the church.  Tradition is our family’s thing.  Conversion has historically not.

It takes, I think, total submersion into a Catholic Parish in order to come away from church with more than two readings, a series of songs, a clear understanding of when to sit, stand and kneel and a murky sense of which prayers you may be able to one day convert in your brain to the new version they switched over to ten years ago, and which just are hopeless.  Connection on an individual level, during the process of the mass, is not the highest priority.  While I understand the reasons for why, I sometimes look to other friends, who attend other churches filled with a greater mission to praise through prayer, music, etc and feel a twinge of jealousy.  I have to remind myself that the Catholic Church believes its mass not only provides us with the nourishment of the body of Jesus Christ on Sunday, but sets us up to be good Christian people most every other day of the week.

So as my wife and I, throughout the course of an infrequently granted date night, occasionally danced in and out of what we might do to benefit our spiritual journeys, and those of our children one day, we found ourselves simultaneously upset by the failings of the church – and our inability to grasp some of the greater meanings, and the myriad of reasons we have achieved successful faith-filled blessings throughout our time together.

By all appearances, just as God intended we found ourselves that next morning at 11:15, listening to the sacred scripture for the first week in ordinary time.  The first reading was from the Book of Samuel.  Two prophets, Eli – an established church leader and teacher of students like Samuel, a boy who was one day to be another to foretell the coming of Jesus.  In the story, Samuel is woken many times to a voice saying only “Samuel”.  The logical choice being that Eli, his teacher, is calling him – Samuel goes to Eli three straight times before finally Eli arrives at what is happening – Eli is experiencing his own calling from God.  As Samuel answers Eli the 3rd time, Eli says to Samuel “Go and lie down, and if he calls you, say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”  Samuel does so.  When the Lord calls the final time, Samuel does as he is bid.  This results in Samuel knowing God, and God blessing Samuel’s words, that he be heard and believed for all of time.

For the rest of the mass, including the homily, I reflected on the church’s position relative to mine.  I sensed that I’d been thinking as those of old with respect to the earth and sun.  The earth, no matter its significance to us, does not hold the orbit of the sun.  Alternatively, the earth orbits the sun.  Just as I may wish the Catholic Church cater to what I believe I need, it is the centerpiece in this relationship.  Its constant in my life is what has allowed me to know God, even if only in a minor way.  Here I am, Lord!, should be my sentiments toward the possibility of a greater relationship with God, and yet I am worried about comparing the lifeblood of the Catholic Church to that of a non-denominational church that opened 5 years ago and probably won’t survive being handed down to another due to faith-based differences that naturally exist between to lives of faith.

My position within the church is one of many callings.  The trick is to call on those vocations at the proper times.  I am called to listen to those who might teach.  I am called to minister to my children and my friends.  I am called to promote the future of the church.  I am called to be a member of a flock.  I am called to be a shepherd in times in which a wolf presides.

It is hard to know which of these is needed at various times.  Right now I get the feeling that God, and Samuel, are trying to remind me that the parts of me that need to connect with my faith in all of the various ways needs me to listen.  Something that does not come easily, or naturally, to me.  For the time being, my happiness, or the expansion of it, seems to be calling me into the realm of “Speak, Lord.  Your servant is listening.” As I am called by my faith, church community, wife and children to fulfill various roles, I am to listen first.

I’m always amazed at the rate at which at least one amongst the readings specifically speaks to me or to an issue I’m having or concern I’m contemplating.  This Sunday’s was no different.  If we are to truly exist in happiness, then we must do so hand-in-hand with God.  Step one starts with listening.  But we can’t listen without truly first believing there is something to be gained by listening.  I think I’ll start there.  I’ll let you know where it leads.

Yours In the Pursuit of Happiness,

Will O’Connor