Saturday, June 08, 2024
By Steven Ramey
An article I read frequently, perhaps one or two times a year, is titled "My Dead Dad's Journal." It is the story of three brothers whose father suddenly passes away, and the insights they gain into their father's personality and struggles that they never would have had if they had not found their Dead Dad's Journal:
My dad was a wonderful father. He also suffered from the disease of addiction. I wasn’t aware of this for most of my youth and if I’m being honest, I’ll never quite square these two versions of him. It’s like he had an alter ego that his old friends knew well but I only saw the aftereffects of: A divorce or a bankruptcy or a job that didn’t work out. But later in his life, I became more familiar with that alterego.
The reason this article impacted me so deeply is two-fold: (1) Now that I am a father I wonder about my own journals and if my son will ever come close to comprehending the struggles I've endured, the depth of love that I have for him, or the sacrifices I've made and continue to make for him; (2) The article made me really contemplate deeply, for the first time, not just my father as his own person but also the struggles faced by my father - both those struggles known to me and those that I'll likely never know about.
The article tells an amazing story about how millions of people around the globe are struggling to do the right thing every day and while sometimes we succeed there are many of us failing. It isn't that we humans don't know the difference between right and wrong. My opinion is that making good decisions is hard because of survival mechanisms and/or coping mechanisms we pick up in our lives. For example, if someone begins using painkillers to cover up the emotional pain they are feeling they get temporary relief from the pain but at the cost of long-term future happiness. Jonathan Heidt uses the analogy of the "elephant and the rider" in his book on the Happiness Hypothesis and I think it is apt here: Sometimes the rider knows what the good decision is but the elephant (read: our alligator brain) just does what it wants and overrides the rider. A few high-level opinions I have stemming from this that can amount to the seeds of some type of recommendation for how to live are:
I also believe in part that "Happiness is the absence of desire" and that, as Buddhism states, "all of life is suffering.""
Given this backdrop, it is easy to start to look at the article My Dead Dad's Journal in a slightly different light: the story of a man trying to do the right thing, sometimes succeeding, and sometimes failing:
The journal is a window to my dad’s inner workings. He kept that journal for four years writing on and off in both times of darkness and moments of clarity. The handwriting goes from illegible scribbles and back again often.
It was a window into the mind of a loving father. It was a look into the fraught thought process of a deeply analytical man. A religious man who knew he was sinning. An addict who was self-aware, and still couldn’t pull himself out from the abyss. It was Jekyll talking to Hyde. Bruce Banner talking to the Hulk. And, in honor of my dad I feel I must also include: It’s Data talking to Lore.
I think this can be read as a microcosm for all of us, all of humanity, I deeply believe. Making good decisions is hard. I want to live in a world where we make it easier to make the right decision.
I originally started writing this in November 2022. I am revisiting and publishing this in June 2024. I'll continue to edit this as I find the words to say what I feel more elegantly. However, there are two factors that I think have been preventing me from elucidating everything that I feel, or for holding back. First, my father is still alive and I worry, and a part of me fears what he would think if he were to read these words. Second, my emotions are extremely complicated on this subject. I love my father deeply. I yearn to make him proud. And at the same time, looking back at my upbringing at the age of 37, I am incredibly disappointed with some aspects of how I was raised in some regards. I can elaborate on the things I am disappointed about in my upbringing that more later - a quick example is not being encouraged to read by my father growing up (ever) - but I have never questioned a single day in my life whether or not my father loves me. He is an incredibly flawed man, as I am, and as most of us are. And I have come to believe that all we can do as parents is just try to do a little bit better than our parents did for us, and by that standard my father is a massive success. But I want to make it easier for parents to raise their children to be as successful as the possibly can be. My father has always been there for me, coached me in sports, taught me to be a good person, showed me by example how to help those in need less fortunate than us. But I can't help but feel like I've had to figure out an enormous amount of things that I wish that I'd had fatherly guidance on.
With father's day coming up on June 16 I don't want to sit here and complain. At 37 years old I feel I may be ready to contribute something to this space, but I've spent the past 15 years or so since getting out of university sorting out my own self. I'm not there yet, and I'm still a work in progress, but I'm hoping that if I can share some of the stuff that I learned I can help some others out there get from A to B a little bit quicker. I suppose my publishing this on the web is the first step in this direction.
As I said I want to live in a world where we make it easier to make the right decision. Rather than having gambling advertising legalized, sucking in new addicts at an alarming rate, I'd prefer to live in a world where the powers that be helped addicts avoid destroying their lives. Yes, we should all be free to gamble and spend our money as we please, and I value personal freedoms, but there is a reason that cigarette advertising is outlawed on television, for example. If we believe there is a connection between trauma and bad outcomes, and we can do more as a society to reduce the propensity of addiction to destroy lives, whether through education and understanding of the struggle of individuals, to better support networks for those recovering, then I think the outcome could be massively positive for the world as a whole. Thinking like this can quickly get intractable, so I'll continue working on myself one day at a time. An interesting thing I am questioning myself is whether I am undiagnosed either ADD/ADHD and/or on the autism spectrum (or both) and if some medication, or at least understanding of these potentialities, can't help me lead a better, happier, and more effective life. Socrates said that "the unexamined life is not worth living." I'll continue to examine my own without veering into hypochondria and I'll strive to share more of my thoughts publicly here on my blog as I finally figure some things out and feel like I have some good ideas worth sharing. If you think any of the above is nonsense, please do let me know directly.