Last night, my wife was holding our baby and she said “happy.” The baby replied “happy.” They just kept saying “happy” back and forth; this was baby’s first time saying the word, and I hope everyone smiling gave her a clue about its meaning.
I got a brief video of the “happy” exchange, and sent it both to a coparents chat and a chat for my wife’s extended family, and heart reacts resounded.
Nate Soares has an essay called “On Caring.” In it, he argues that it’s difficult to appreciate large numbers emotionally, that it’s impossible to care about saving a hundred lives a hundred times more than saving one life.
Likewise, it’s hard to appreciate this time enough. It is inarguably a golden age; sometimes I feel the eyes of my future self, if I am lucky enough to have one, looking back. Wishing I’d just been a little more present. And in fact, I imagine wishing this no matter how present I manage to be! It is an unattainable ideal, a mirage, a dream.
Yet I must try.
How To Love Life
There’s a style of relationship advice that’s something like:
Actively choose to be in love with your partner, year after year and day after day. Pay attention to what you appreciate about them, and endeavor to be kind to them on purpose. Love is, after all, a habit and a choice.
Pretty good advice! I think loving one’s life is similar. No life is perfect, and the architecture of the human brain means we’re sensitive to threats and quickly adapt to boons. To keep the spark alive, we have to direct our attention, on purpose, to what’s good. In practice, I do this a few ways:
Every night, I privately list three things I’m thankful for, and one thing I want for the next day, like a prayer
I try not to miss sentimental occasions, and do things like fill out my baby’s baby book which chronicles her months. I’m not sure we’ll look back at it much in later years, and probably baby won’t care about it, but the very act of (say) writing my baby a letter at one year old reminds me that this time is special
I seem to be slowly metamorphosing from an AI-understanding-striver to an aesthetic mommy blogger
I also try not to focus much on bad stuff. I’d like to think of the world as neat, and pay much more attention to things going well than things going badly. The drive-thru keeps messing up my order? Great, the economy must be doing well, such that few people are desperate for such jobs! Road work near my house is annoying, but it’s a sign of local state capacity that very few human beings have enjoyed throughout history. And so on.
Cheat Code: Baby Grows Fast
A wacky thing about being human is that despite good feelings being obviously desirable, it helps to be motivated to have them. For instance, sometimes I think it’s easier to be optimistic when there’s a lot of general pessimism around me, out of contrariness.
One thing that helps me appreciate each phase of raising a little baby is that every month is so different. Today at a park, there was a 7-month-old. Her dad played a little “dancing baby” game with her, moving her arms to both their delight. I used to do this, but now my baby is far too old and sophisticated for that.
If you don’t have a baby, I guess you could instead play some competitive online game that has frequent balance patches, some of which you dislike. This, too, will remind you about the fleeting nature of all things.
And Yet…
I spent most of yesterday worried that I was somehow failing to emotionally process recent life events, using my precious non-busy moments lamenting how few non-busy moments there were to sit with myself and scan my feelings. I am aware that this is very stupid. I was aware at the time! But the mind does what it does.
When I am playing some stupid game and baby stirs on my chest, I am often momentarily annoyed. Sometimes I am stressed out or overwhelmed and baby enters my field of view, and I have a vague negative feeling, and then that startles and frightens me so much that I spiral into guilt and shame. Sometimes I am overwhelmed by life’s burdens, then doubly overwhelmed because I have chosen so many of them, and nonetheless malinger.
Wasted effort can’t be helped, I find. Even meta-wasted effort, that foolish indulgence, is hard to do without. I dig my fingernails into my forearms when I die in a video game, my unconscious mind using the levers at its disposal to translate pain into goal into reward. Can I unlearn this? Should I?
It doesn’t matter. Baby is happy. She says so.
All I can do is my best.