My “Why”

Another Day, Another Dollar

As a working, single father of two my life feels like it is not my own. Let’s take a look at what a typical day used to look like for me. I am curious if you can relate. 6:15am wake up to the extremely loud alarm needed to draw a sleep-deprived single parent out of a comatose hibernation. First, I get myself ready then I get my two kids up. After they whine and fight about not wanting to wear the few clean clothes scattered on the bottom of their dresser drawer, they finally give in and get dressed. I pour them a bowl of cereal and take the dogs out and pack a quick bag lunch. They brush teeth and pile in the car to be dropped off at school at 7:15.

I stress over if I will make it to work on time despite the morning commute traffic and road construction.  Late nights watching “Talladega Nights” proved to offer more utility than just entertainment. I Log a long day eat a quick lunch at the desk to save some time. Stay to 5:30 to satisfy that inevitable end of the day request the boss man always seems to leave me with as he walks out the door. Rip it out as fast as I can to please him and race out the door wondering if I will conquer traffic and make it to daycare before the $2 per minute per kid fees begin to accrue at 6:00.

Thanks to some Fast and the Furious moves I power slide into a parking spot at 5:59 and race inside. The kids look depressed and complain about how hungry they are all the way home. Let’s pretend that there are no extracurricular evening activities although that is far more conservative than the norm. 6: 15 I get home take the dogs out and throw together a quick dinner of macaroni, fish sticks, and brussel sprouts. 6:30 the kids eat and I am not feeling the macaroni so I clean up the dishes and kitchen while they eat. 7:00 pull out homework and help the kids and fill out permission slips  I swear I get more homework, permission slips and school worksheets than they do. 7:30, Bath, PJs and brush teeth. 8:00 story time, prayers and lights out.

Deflated and defeated by the rat race, all I want to do is crack a cold beer, put my feet up on the table and watch Fast and the Furious XVII on Netflix. Instead, I muster up the last scraps of motivation hiding deep down inside behind the shadows of fleeting hope of a better life. I get up and do a little laundry, paperwork, open some bills and tidy up the house. Look up at the time, see the tall, bright green numbers on my alarm clock glowing from across the room, 10:30. Realize how unproductive I am getting as I fall over the drop off of the curve or diminishing returns. I pull myself onto my feet one more time. I get up to let the dogs out, shower, prep. the coffee pot. 11:00 Realize I forgot to eat dinner. Debate in my mind if I am more hungry or more tired? I surrender my last bit of strength and emotional energy as I collapse into the unmade pile of sheets and blankets covering my bed. Decide I will lay therefore a minute before I get up to make myself some dinner or straighten out the covers and crawl under them. What feels like a matter of seconds pass before I hear the piercing sound of an alarm screeching through the dark room. “Crap!” …I think to myself, “not another day already….did I even sleep?”

The Gut-Punch of a Lifetime

One particular lackluster week of mediocrity, three days into this mental, emotional and spiritually defeating routine of monotony, something different caught my attention.

At approximately 5:59 and 59 seconds… I drifted into a parking lot at daycare, pulled the e-brake in my car, gracefully slid a power-slide into the parking spot nearest the front door of daycare. As the car was skidding to rest, I cast the door open, tucked and rolled lengthwise through to a power stride jaunt to the front door.

As I got to the door I saw my son inside sitting alone. My son looked completely heartbroken. As I exclaimed, “Hi little buddy! How was your day?!” my then 7-year-old son didn’t answer me. He didn’t make eye contact. He didn’t even raise his head from staring at his shoes as he walked past me. Not a word. Not even a look.

You have to understand, my son is only in the second percentile for weight and height. He has a heart of gold but is barely knee high on a grasshopper. He puts himself in timeout if he feels he has broken a rule. He asks me not to pay him allowance if he forgets to do a chore at some point during the week. He is very sensitive. I am worried that this pure unadulterated innocence will be smashed one day by this harsh world we live in and I am very protective of him. I know the day is right around the corner when bigger kids are going to target him.

My mind was racing to fill in the story with any clues I could find. Did he have a black eye? No. Did he lose a fight? Are his clothes torn? No, that wasn’t it. I berated him this a chain gun of consecutive questions, asked so fast that he didn’t have a chance to answer even if he could fight back the lump in his throat and muster the strength to utter a single word. Did you forget your homework? Fail a test? I will forgive you for that, just tell me what is wrong. Were you picked on at school? Were older kids making fun of you big ears again?

Son, I love you more than life itself! Everything I do, I do for you! Tell me, please just tell your father what is wrong and I will fix it. I promise! I said with a tightened fist. I will set any kid straight for you. What has got you down son, what is it?

Without being able to make eye contact or even raise his head a single inch he slowly drew a breath in…. And finally, in a broken voice, he softly uttered…

“Dad…it is just….that… I hate being the last one at daycare, all alone. Always the last one to get picked up.”

Said my son

At once my heart sank like the anchor thrown over the bow of a ship lost at sea, plummeting down the empty abyss of the ocean. I have never felt so sick to my stomach so fast. You know that moment when you are riding on a roller coaster before the big drop when you go over the top and can’t see the track in front of you, then your stomach drops? I reeled back into my mind to try to summon a response. There has to be something I could say to comfort him. Dad’s always have the just right, just in time line of comfort. My thinker wasn’t thinking. I was overwhelmed by the realization that I was the problem. I was the reason he was so sad. I constructed this routine of loneliness for him. I was the only one to blame. My clenched fist loosened as a came to terms with the fact that I could not fight myself.

Cat’s in the Cradle

Did he understand my why? Didn’t he understand what I was trying to do for him and for this lonesome broken family? I was single-handedly trying to provide him with a nice home, in a good school district, with a big yard, fashionable and clean clothes, warm meals and more happiness than… I felt myself …about this… ‘existence.’ That’s is when I realized I was not providing him a life, I was providing an existence. I was providing the means to get from today to tomorrow not means to enjoy every moment of a happy life. ….perhaps all he really knew was that dad is always gone, always busy, always working, has no time to throw the football with me, has no time to talk or play. The song Cats in the Cradle started playing in my mind.

“My child arrived just the other day
He came to the world in the usual way
But there were planes to catch, and bills to pay
He learned to walk while I was away
And he was talking ‘fore I knew it, and as he grew
He’d say “I’m gonna be like you, dad”
“You know I’m gonna be like you”

And the cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and the man in the moon
“When you coming home, dad?” “I don’t know when”
But we’ll get together then
You know we’ll have a good time then

My son turned ten just the other day
He said, thanks for the ball, dad, come on let’s play
Can you teach me to throw, I said, not today
I got a lot to do, he said, that’s okay
And he walked away, but his smile never dimmed
It said, I’m gonna be like him, yeah
You know I’m gonna be like him…

Songwriters: Sandy Chapin / Harry F. Chapin Cat’s in the Cradle lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc

Seriously, play the song, listen to the words if you haven’t yet Cats in the Cradle.

I realized then that I didn’t want him to grow up to be ‘just like me.’ I didn’t want him to face this life, these struggles, these losses, this loneliness, this hopelessness, this grind. I didn’t want him to go the path that I suffered. I didn’t want him to not have the time for his son. I wanted more than anything at that moment to promise him a better future. I wanted him to have a dad that could throw him the ball. That could stop to “have a good then.”

I started this heading with a question, “Did he understand my why?” but the real question was, did I understand my son’s why?

My “Why”

My “why” is a picture of my kids with the quote “Dad, why do I always have to be the last one to get picked up from daycare?” It hurts a little every time I see it, but I will never waste a day that starts with me looking at it.

Hang a significant image of your “why” on your mirror in the bathroom beside your goals or in another conspicuous location so you see it every day when you wake up.

“He who has a ‘why’ to live for, can bear with almost any how.”

– Friedrich Nietzsche

What is your why?

Commitment

This was the day that I committed to change my situation, no matter what the cost or what sacrifices I had to make. I know I had to be the change to break this generational chain of bondage. The generational chain of being too busy to spend the quality time with your son or daughter that you wish you could but the world is nagging you to just do one more thing. The ‘one more thing’s’ of this world add up. The minutes add together, the hours add together, the days and years add together until one day when it is far too late, you look back and say, “Where has the time gone? My kids are grown and I didn’t get the chance to raise them.”

The night that I saw the heart-breaking look on my son’s face I committed to not working on my side hustles until the kids went down. I withdrew from several activities and volunteer opportunities that I was engaged in or leading. I became much more intentional about sitting down to eat dinner with my kids. I committed to waking up an hour earlier every workday to work on myself and my side hustles. I committed to reaching a saving rate of 50% and not relenting to cut expenses until I get there. I committed to blocking out the calendar space of Sunday afternoons for family time. I committed to showing the world where my priorities lay with the evidence in my calendar and checkbook. What does the evidence in your calendar and checkbook say about you? Does that evidence represent what you want your priorities to be?

We live in a world of opportunity where anything is possible but not everything is possible. We have limited resources of time and money but unlimited imagination and potential. If you want your tomorrow to filled with achievement, success, and productivity, be intentional about how you invest your time and money today. What are you willing to commit to?

Actionable Takeaways:

1. Mediate or pray for a while, a long while. What is your why? Formulate it in your mind. Make it concrete. Make it an image. Write it out. Print an image and write a quote on it.
2. Hang a significant image of your “why” on your mirror in the bathroom beside your goals or in another conspicuous location so you see it every day when you wake up.
3. Look over your checkbook, or credit card statement. Look over the last month of your calendar. Do these records represent what you would want people to think and say about your life and who you are after you are gone?
4. What are you willing to commit to, to make the rest of your life what you wish the beginning of your life demonstrated?
   
   

Keep the FIRE burning my friends.