Author: letterstoleland

April 1, 2024

Dear Leland and Everett,

Yesterday was Easter. We had a wonderful day together. The two of you woke up early to find Easter baskets ready for you. Your mom organized and Easter egg treasure hunt, the treasure being she gifted you each some Legos. You worked on your Legos until it was time to go to church. You and your mom joined me for Sunday worship service for the first time. After church, we feasted on dim sum, perhaps our favorite brunch meal (and one we haven’t had in awhile thanks to my dietary restriction, which I loosened for the special occasion). Back at home, you guys enjoyed some boba, finished your Legos, played outside, and watched some basketball. It was just a wonderful day all the way around, but there were a few highlights I wanted to highlight and savor.

I always enjoy watching your mom fuss over you two, and I enjoyed watching her pick out the items for and prep your Easter baskets. As is usually the case, you both really, really enjoyed what she got (and did) for you.

You wore the new (collared) shirts your Gran got you for Easter. You both (and Leland especially) resist dressing up, so it was great to see you in nicer clothes. You both just looked great.

You approached the worship service with openness and curiosity. Worship services are never going to be a kid’s favorite activity (too much talking!), but you both behaved wonderfully. I really appreciated your behavior, and how it enabled Mom and Dad to take in what turned out to be a wonderful worship service.

At lunch Leland asked, “Dad, why do you believe in God?”. I responded, “Well, I find that God talks to me in my meditations”. I proceeded to explain the visions I get in my meditations, how those visions are interactive (I’m a participant, but some apparently separate entity appears to participate as well), and how some of those visions have been predictive. Leland you responded by saying “I don’t think God is real”, which didn’t totally surprise me. You are a very logical, linear thinker, so it makes sense to me that you see no obvious need for God. And so I simply responded by saying that 1) we can’t prove God is real; 2) everyone has to decide for themselves; but that 3) in my experience, when we talk to God, God talks back. This was easily my favorite part of the day, I was so grateful you asked such a sincere and thoughtful and important question, and then listened patiently and earnestly to my response. I’ll be curious to see how (or if) you remember that conversation in adulthood.

[This morning on the way to school Leland even followed up on the conversation, asking me about the predictive nature of my meditations. I explained that they mostly predict things that eventually happen to me. You remembered me saying that I don’t always understand what my visions mean, and asked how long it takes me to understand. I responded that it’s usually within a few days, but can often take weeks and sometimes takes months. I am still learning from my earliest visions, which are now approaching two-and-a-half years old. Again, I had great fun with this discussion, and was thrilled you took such an interest.]

After lunch what struck me most was how agreeably you played together. You didn’t fight all afternoon, and rarely sought adult interaction. At one point I noticed Leland’s energy level rising (you were getting loud) and so I asked if you wanted to go outside and play. When I came out to join you, Leland said “You can go back inside, Dad. We found a game to play”. This NEVER happens; you guys always want me to come out and join you. This time I just went back inside to read a book until, about half an hour later, you came back and said cheerfully “Okay Dad, we’re ready for you”.

Few days go by as ease-fully as yesterday did. For me, some of this was undoubtedly the relief of Easter and what it marks in terms of the end of Jesus’ suffering and replacing the grieving of his death with the promise of resurrection. I’ll forever be grateful that your mom helped me honor the occasion with significance and intention. And I’ll forever remember how the two of you helped me appreciate how much joy you bring me, and how much I enjoy seeing the two of you enjoying yourselves.

Happy Easter. I love you.

Χριστός ἀνέστη!

Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη!

Love,

Dad

March 25, 2024

Dear Leland and Everett,

Yesterday was Palm Sunday. On Palm Sunday Christians celebrate Jesus’ procession into Jerusalem, where the Gospels tell us Jesus rode into town on a donkey while people lined the street with their cloaks and palm branches and cheered Jesus’ arrival. Christians today treat Palm Sunday as a time for celebration, and are invited to celebrate Jesus’ procession as if alongside those who attended.

I struggled with the apparent juxtaposition between the celebration of Palm Sunday and challenges we know are to come just within a few days in Holy Week: Jesus agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, the various stages of trial, and the horror of the crucifixion. After worship I spoke with a friend struggling with the same idea. He pointed out that for most of those present for Jesus’ procession, they would have had no awareness of Jesus’ difficulties to come; therefore, they would be free to enjoy the procession in peaceful oblivion. He contrasted this with his own awareness, and therefore struggle, to partake in and celebrate the day. I sensed that he was highlighting some underlying truth about the stages of spiritual development. Early in our spiritual development, naiveté enables a kind of blissful ignorance. Later, we become aware how faith isn’t enough to prevent struggle, and our belief in some ways becomes a burden, as we become increasingly aware of our limitations and corresponding challenges. My sense is that our invitation is to continue the journey, and find a place where we can be aware of the struggles to come, but still somehow remain present to and in celebration of the gifts available to us now.

To give a tangible example, permit a story. Several months ago, as I was coming into awareness of how my dad’s struggles with alcohol had impacted me into adulthood, I realized that I was still clinging to the idea of my family as a little boy (before my dad started drinking to excess). I had a charmed upbringing, and my early years were particularly loving and joyous. During a meditation I discovered I was still holding onto an idea of my family when we were all that age, as if wishing we could all go back to that time and be that family again. Of course, we cannot go back, and so holding onto that idea was more harmful than helpful. And so I wept bitterly as I sat lovingly watching that era of my family, with us sitting around a table together. I sat appreciating our time together, and how much joy and love that time brought me. Once ready I announced my intention to let go, to let that family go so that each of us could grow up and grow into the people we were meant to become. And so I watched as we aged, as my sister and I grew larger. My sister and I physically moved, as if floating, away from my parents.

What happened next surprised me. I turned away from my sister and parents and saw the two of you and your mom sitting with me at a table, just like the prior image with my parents and sister. This was present day, and I was struck for the first time how the two of you were roughly the age I was before my dad started drinking. I sat watching us sit together, appreciating our family and how much love and joy the two of you bring me.

And then it hit me: the two of you will grow up. You will depend on me less as you mature. Eventually you will move out and start your own lives and families, and we will slowly grow apart. I hated this idea more than I can possibly express. And yet, the inevitability of the path was inescapable; there was no sense in my fighting what would happen anyway. And so I resolved to replicate what I had just done with my childhood family: appreciate our time together and let you go so that you might grow into the people you are meant to become. This was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

I sat in gratitude for what seemed like an eternity. I sat appreciating how much joy and love the two of you have brought into my life. I appreciated how much I love being your dad. I appreciated how much I love you, right now, at this age, and how I can’t possibly imagine enjoying another age more than this one (because you are old enough to be playful and fun and learn rapidly, but still young enough that you really enjoy playing with your dad). Finally I resolved to say goodbye and let go. What happened next was a tension I struggle to describe. I felt as if every cell in my body was holding onto the idea of keeping the two of you young, and that letting go meant having the idea ripped out of each cell individually. Every fiber of my being felt physical agony in resistance to my call to let go. I writhed for several minutes, feeling the agony peak in different parts of my body in different times. I literally screamed into a pillow to help me facilitate the process of letting go.

Eventually, I felt ready to let go, and I watched the two of you float away in different directions. After a moment we were sitting far apart, as if 3 disparate celestial bodies (Leland, Everett, and your mom and I remaining together), beings of light surrounded by the darkness of deep space. I looked out and saw my sister and parents, further away. In that moment I sensed I had learned something about love and attachment.

Since that time, I think it fair to say I’ve stopped subconsciously fighting the idea of the two of you growing up. Not that I could tell you how that idea was affecting me before, but I am sure that it was (or was about to if it wasn’t already). What I have noticed instead is more presence and flow when I am with you both. Rather than resent the idea of the two of you growing up, I feel tremendous gratitude for the time I still get to spend with you. I notice myself more equipped to let go of whatever distractions and be with you guys. Don’t get me wrong, I still get distracted, but far less than I used to.

My learning from that experience: when we find ourselves resistant to the idea of something to come, we have an opportunity to sit in gratitude and appreciate the joy and love that thing brings us. And then we let can go of our attachment to the thing. In the place of attachment, we create space to sit in appreciation for our remaining time with that thing instead of resistance to the idea of losing it. As a result, we are able to enjoy and maximize our remaining time together, rather than losing our remaining time together in a misguided attempt to protect ourselves from getting hurt.

Coming back to today: today I meditated with this tension between what negative things are to come (the crucifixion, you two growing up) and the opportunity to celebrate today (the procession into Jerusalem, my time with you now). When I attempted to allow or even embrace that tension, I felt an energy surge as if I were being plugged in a source of electricity somehow. I could make the sensation going away by resisting the tension, but at the cost of feeling an underlying pressure that felt artificial and unnecessary. My takeaway: when negative situations arise, the underlying emotions or physical sensations exist whether we resist or not. We get to choose whether we resist and feel the pressure of resistance and later experience the cost of getting those emotions stuck in our bodies and our memories; or we can allow, and let the energy flow through us in ways that might create discomfort, but keep us in harmony with ourselves, with the world around us, and with God.

I’ll let the two of you decide what these lessons mean for you, if anything. For me, I’m still very much working through something (or things). I sense learnings coming this Holy Week, and sense that today was the start. Today felt like a visceral teaching of what it means to step into full awareness and aliveness. Being fully alive isn’t always easy, but over the long term almost certainly beats the alternative of living a life artificially stunted by fear.

I love you both. Happy Holy Week.

Love,

Dad

March 19, 2024

Dear Leland and Everett,

Today I need to wrestle with a couple ideas floating around in my head. My hope is that the process of writing will help me break through and understand something. I’m not entirely sure what, but here goes.

I’ve been experiencing a general sense of anxiety recently. Nothing too painful or difficult, but a general baseline of anxiety nonetheless. Over the course of the last year I’ve generally learned how to handle my emotional ebbs and flows. I’m optimistic that this phase will pass, ideally with some new learning. But I’ll admit I’ve found these last few weeks to be challenging.

Is it seasonal?

One idea that I’ve been wrestling with recently: life is more seasonal and cyclical than we recognize. Western society in particular has adopted an idea that time is linear: we work toward something, life progresses. In this view, time builds upon itself via human effort, and things generally improve over time (albeit chaotically).

What I am coming to appreciate is the cyclical nature of time. We do experience seasons, and these seasons do carry meaning in them. Winter is a time of death while spring is a time for birth and renewal, for example.

The seasonal nature of time hit me particularly this winter. I found myself grieving this winter, feeling sadness and a sense of loss as the days got shorter and darker. I remembered how Christmas replaced a pagan holiday meant to celebrate the days finally getting longer; for millennia people have experienced an onset of sadness and grief with winter, to the degree that we set a holiday specifically meant to give folks hope and a reminder that the days would get longer, brighter, and warmer, and that we would experience life and joy and abundance again.

And then I noticed, with some remove for the first time, how Americans work ourselves into a frenzy during the Christmas holidays. Work invariably increases as folks prepare to take time off, school effort increases as we finish a semester not only with exams, but also with performances and other forms of celebration. And of course, for the Christmas holiday itself we either plan travel or hosting responsibilities. We decorate. We plan and execute a large feast. We buy and wrap presents. Watching it all this year, I couldn’t help but wonder: to what degree do we work ourselves into this frenzy to avoid feeling sadness and grief during this season of darkness and death? Don’t get me wrong: celebrating holidays together are wonderful. Giving presents, feasting together, decorating, singing, and performing are all critical rituals to the human experience. But I sense Americans so obsess over Christmas precisely because we have a shared cultural aversion to sadness, grief, and death.

Spring, of course, is a time for rebirth and renewal. What I’m noticing is that the transition from winter (darkness, sadness, grief, death) to spring (birth, renewal) is not instantaneous. I sense at least some of my anxiety is wanting to accelerate the end of winter and firmly reach spring.

Is it spiritual?

I also wonder how my involvement in my spiritual direction group (which started in September, and runs to May) impacts my experience of the seasons, and this season in particular. We’re less than two weeks from Easter. Easter itself is a time for celebration, as we honor Jesus’ resurrection and celebrate the new relationship with God the resurrection brings us. But Lent, the season that immediately proceeds Easter, is solemn. For me, one inescapable conclusion is that, in order to get to Easter (the resurrection), we must first experience all of the elements that preceded the resurrection: the trial, hanging on the cross, and even the sense of dread Jesus felt at his impending betrayal and death. We are reminded of humanity’s worst impulses, how we could mock and betray and torment and kill a source of almost unimaginable light and love and joy and healing. I’d never previously observed Lent with purpose or intention. This year I read scripture and pray, which I find brings a sense of unease, a desire for Lent to end quickly that I might experience the renewal of Easter.

Or is it relational?

For most of the past year, I’ve carried a visual image that I was going into a cave to heal myself, knowing that I would eventually come back out of the cave to reengage with the world. That image has correlates in some of my earliest visions. In the first I wrote about, after encountering Jesus I started on my path. I stepped into darkness and faced a demon representing my fear. Then I faced multiple demons representing others gripped in fear. Even my very first vision resembles a healing descent into the subconscious. What I didn’t capture in my notes from that day was a distinct sense that, on the return journey, I would heal relationships around me. This relationship healing loosely resembled healing concentric circles, with me at the center, your mom as the first ring, my parents as the second ring, proceeding to other loved ones (friends and family), then acquaintances, strangers, and even including ‘enemies’ (those folks with whom I carried a negative charge). I even recall continuing on to facilitate the healing of relationships between groups that didn’t include me.

This gets me to the part where I’m feeling a bit stuck at the moment. Yesterday I wrote about fear, and how fear keeps us turned away from our light, our path, our purpose, our wholeness. These days I encounter examples of people stuck in fear seemingly everywhere. Your mom, folks at church, friends I visit, on the news, in the podcasts I hear…I sense fear everywhere. We probably are more fearful than we used to be, but the bigger difference is I am now more aware when others are stuck in fear. Of course, no one stuck in fear wants to be told that they are fighting shadows; we would experience such admonition as infantilizing. So I am struggling with what to do with my newfound awareness of all the fear I encounter.

My sense is that this period of preparing for the resurrection, of following Jesus to the cross, gives me some clues for where to look. Sensing Jesus’ dread in the Garden of Gethsemane, empathizing with his plight at trial and on the cross, I find my capacity for empathy increasing. My ability to sit with unpleasant emotions and physical sensations remains limited, but improves slowly through my meditations. My sense is that I am called to engage those stuck in fear with empathy and compassion. To the degree I sense openness, I sense a calling to share my light, that others might discover their own internal connection to God. To the degree I sense others are committed to their fear and remain closed, I sense a calling to move on and proceed on my path. I feel when other are in pain, and find the experience deeply unpleasant to a degree that I feel compelled to try to help. Thus, I am deeply uncomfortable with the idea of moving on from someone stuck in fear. I must remember that God is available to everyone, always. Put differently: others will find the light when they are ready. And what if they are never ready? That is not for me to know. I wish it were, but it is not. Reluctantly, I must humbly stick to my path, and trust that others will find theirs at the appropriate time.

Forgive me if this has been a rambling note. Indeed, the act of writing has in fact helped me piece a few ideas together, and have given me a clearer sense of my path forward. I appreciate the two of you serving as my audience in these letters, and hope you find them useful in due time.

I love you both.

Love,

Dad

March 18, 2024

Dear Leland and Everett,

I mentioned previously that in one of my first visions, I found myself moving away from fear. That visual stays with me, and I’d like to explore some further and more recent learnings I’ve had on the topic.

Fear encourages us to move away from something we don’t want, instead of toward something we do.

Fear relies on shadows. I am not sure I can describe the moment of becoming gripped by fear, that moment when we turn away from those things that we do want and begin to avoid the things we don’t want. The act of becoming gripped by fear is, for me anyway, still so subtle as to be unnoticeable.

What I do know is that the act of turning away from fear also turns us away from our source of light, strength, and life (or, said differently, our connection to God). Our fears sit between us and our light, and use the light to project shadows on the walls in front of us. We confuse those shadows with reality, and use our fight-or-flight tools to attempt to attack or run away from those shadows.

Over time we get so attuned to facing the shadows on the wall that we convince ourselves that the shadows are real, and that if we could just get the shadows to stop dancing on the walls in such menacing fashion, we could finally feel peace. Of course, the truth is that the shadows are just an illusion hiding the real pain, trauma, or fear.

The best method I have found for identifying when I am stuck in fear, confusing shadows for reality, is when I become convinced that my problems were created by someone else, and particularly when I start to obsess with how to make someone else change behavior. To be clear, I am not suggesting that others’ behavior never requires correction; setting boundaries is an important life skill. But setting boundaries is something I can control. Obsessing about how I am going to control or convince someone to do what I want, and then how I am going to police and enforce that behavior once I’ve established my imaginary control…is not a productive use of my time nor energy. I can control me, I do not and cannot control others. Confusing that simple fact is an almost surefire sign that I have become gripped by fear, turning away from the truth and my light, living my life avoiding or fighting shadows.

My Grandad told an entertaining story where he experienced terrible pain on one side of his mouth; he went to the dentist to discover that he, in fact, had a cavity. The twist was that the cavity was on the opposite side of his mouth from where he experienced the pain. Once the dentist addressed the cavity, the pain went away, effectively confirming that the cavity was the source of his pain, even if he experienced the pain in a completely different place from its source.

I tell this story partly because I’ve had similar experiences (both in my mouth and in other physical aliments), but mostly because identifying the root of our fears strikes me as metaphorically similar. The roots of our fears are often only loosely connected to the shadows that we so struggle to suppress, in much the same way that the root of my Grandad’s pain was observably connected to its source only insofar as both the cavity and the pain occurred in his mouth. For example, I identified virtually all of my personas when exploring my fears. None of them emerged from neatly parallel shadows, but all of them emerged from an exploration of the source of the shadows I experienced.

A secret to healing and growth, then, is to learn when to stop fighting shadows and turn around and face our fears. Our programming tells us not to do this, and so facing our fears is irrationally difficult. But facing our fears allows us to identify the roots of our fears, and thus address them in ways that solve the problems. Once we address the fear creating the shadows, we stop seeing the shadows; thus like my Grandad, we confirm that we’ve identified the root of a problem when the experience of pain and suffering go away.

So practically speaking, how does one turn around and face the source generating the shadows in our lives? The first step is to identify when we are fighting (or running away from) shadows. As I mentioned earlier, the best way to know you are fighting the shadows is when you are convinced that the solution resides with someone else, especially when you find yourself obsessed with establishing your ability to control or influence someone else. When you observe yourself attempting to control another instead of yourself, become aware. Become open to the possibility you are fighting a shadow and avoiding the underlying problem. From there, begin to ask yourself “what is really going on here?” If you are anything like me, you will find that you go through layers and iterations of wanting to control someone outside your control. This might represent progress, but means you have yet to identify the root of the problem. Keep looking, asking yourself, “okay, but why does this bother me so much?”.

Meditation helps. Exploring the physical sensations in bodies can lead us to the source of our fears. So can a higher power; indeed, just asking God’s help can dramatically accelerate understanding. Our rational brains cannot identify our fears, because our fears are not rational. Indeed, our rational brains compound the problem, in their ability to create more and more rational plans (and arguments for why!) to make the shadows go away. It is hard to shelve the crutch that has become our rational brains, but surrendering to our bodies, our spiritual beings, or God is precisely the act of turning around to face the underlying fear creating the shadow. Identifying the fear is usually not fun; we’ve been holding onto that fear for a reason. But once we see the fear for what it is (and it is usually far smaller in reality than the shadows we allow it to project), we are usually able to remain facing it until we learn from it and heal. And healing is far more rewarding than remaining stuck in our rumination, building structures in our mind out of shadows that keep us trapped and sap us of our vitality.

In my experience, the alternative to healing is not fun. We have all developed tricks for getting away from the recurring shadows in our lives. But those shadows recur precisely because our souls long to heal; our fears project the same shadows over and over again because some part of us wants to heal, wants to accept the opportunity to turn around and face our fears. Otherwise we spend more and more of our lives fighting shadows, wasting our precious energy and time on earth trapped in a cage fight of our own making. I very much wish the two of you an adulthood filled with growth rather than constantly shrinking in the face of fears. Both options are challenging; one is rewarding and fulfilling, while the other constricts and slowly suffocates. I implore you: choose growth.

I love you both.

Love,

Dad

March 4, 2024

Dear Leland and Everett,

Today is our first day back at school and work after our two-week trip to Taiwan and Japan. I’m hopeful this is a trip you will both remember, though I anticipate Leland (because he’s 8) will remember it better than Everett (who’s 6). Regardless, it was a wonderful trip, and I’m thrilled we were able to pull it together.

The primary purpose of the trip was for your mom to visit her 94-year old grandfather. We last saw him pre-covid, and your mom rightly wonders how many more chances we will get to see him. Even better, we were able to time the trip to overlap with Ah Ma’s visit, and we were even able to convince your uncle to join us…so long as we agreed to visit Japan in addition to Taiwan. In sum, we were able to travel with your mom’s whole family, which makes this the first time we have all travelled to Taiwan together (the family visited Taiwan together in 2016, but Everett wasn’t born yet, and Leland won’t remember that trip because you were only 1).

Our first few days were primarily centered around family in Chiayi, where your grandfather and Ah Ma’s siblings live. From there, we made an overnight excursion to Alishan, a beautiful mountainous area (around 7,000 feet in elevation) with glorious forests, trees, and hiking. We finished the Taiwan portion of the trip with several days in Taipei, where we visited with friends (and you both made new friends), went to the top of Taipei 101, went to see the lights and decorations for the Lantern Festival, and made a day trip to Shifen (where we lit a lantern and set it off into the valley) and Jiufen, where we poked around and ate fabulous foods.

We said goodbye to Ah Ma (for a few days anyway, as she’s now back home with us) in Taipei, and flew to Tokyo with your uncle. We stayed in Ginza, which turned out to be wonderfully centrally located. We ate sushi, tonkatsu, ramen, and udon (all your favorites). We went up to the observatory at the Sky Tree, visited a wonderfully quirky museum called TeamLab Planets (a sort of interactive art exhibit meant to engage the senses), played arcade games, and poked around the neighborhoods of Shinjuku and Shibuya.

You both loved the trip. The beginning was a bit challenging: we were all jet lagged, and visiting elderly family members is not your (nor most kids’) idea of fun). But you enjoyed hiking around Alishan (though none of us enjoyed the bus ride home through the mountains and hair pin turns). You loved making new friends in Taipei. And you both loved Japan. Our room in Tokyo was too small to fit all four of us, so Leland stayed with Uncle; you thought you were big stuff. And of course Everett enjoyed having Mom and Dad to himself. Japan especially suits Leland: the cleanliness, the attention to detail (in seemingly everything), and the precision and predictability I think all resonate with Leland in particular. But Everett enjoyed Japan almost as much; by the end of the trip, Everett said “Next year when we come to Japan…”; your mom and I both started when he said that, because (at least as of now) we have no plans to come back next year, and haven’t discussed coming back. Despite all the fun, Leland was ready to come home (as were Mom and Dad); Everett claimed not be ready, and intimated he had forgotten our home and was starting to think of Japan and Taiwan as home (which I can’t believe to be true, my interpretation is that you were trying to impress upon us how much you enjoyed the trip and wanted to stay longer or do it again). Everett even said he wished we had missed our flight so that we could stay an extra day with Uncle (who came back a day after the rest of us).

My personal favorite experience: in Shibuya Leland found a ramen restaurant he waned to try (aside: three times Leland selected restaurants he really wanted to try as we walked past. Each time we honored the request, partly because no one had better plans and picking restaurants in Tokyo can be tricky to say the least. Each time the results were outstanding, and accounted for two of my three favorite meals in Tokyo, with this anecdote accounting for the third). Everett didn’t want ramen, so I agreed to walk around with Everett while Mom and Uncle joined Leland. After a few minutes of exploring, Everett exclaimed “sushi!” and pointed to a poster promoting a sushi restaurant nearby. So we went to find the restaurant, in the 12th floor of a mall. Everett confirmed he liked the restaurant, and picked what he wanted to eat, so we got a table. Inside, I noticed several other patrons were wearing suits; this appeared to be a restaurant catering to business folk. Nonetheless we were treated graciously and gracefully (as with seemingly all experiences in Japan). Everett loved his sushi (mostly tamago), as I did mine. I even splurged on a small bottle of sake (junmai ginjo – I decided to go for the good stuff; it’s relatively cheap in Japan vs imported here). Nothing particularly noteworthy happened during the meal, but I loved it and it remains one of the highlights of my trip; Everett and I haven’t had a lot of 1:1 time, so I cherished this outing.

As for my spiritual journey, that took a bit of a backseat during the trip. I meditated the first day…and then not again until today. Through the first week I felt…the word that keeps coming to me is “destabilized”. I felt distracted, like I was losing my connection to myself and the deeper truths I’ve been exploring. I did not enjoy that sensation.

Around the end of our time in Taiwan, the adults all noticed that you both were starting to misbehave. You started bickering, and were either running off of falling behind in crowded places. We adults started to get frustrated. And then I realized (remembered?) you guys were looking for attention. The adults were anxious (we were in a big city in a foreign country, after all), and were generally consulting phones or debating with each other on what to do or how to get there. You guys didn’t feel seen or noticed, and were acting out to get our attention. And so I set an intention to reset, and prioritize presence with the two of you. Of course, as we travelled to Tokyo (an even bigger city that’s even more challenging to navigate), I still at times got distracted or anxious, but less so. Generally I was able to keep my focus on the present (which, especially when traveling, often meant keeping my focus on the two of you), and when you guys started seeking attention I was able to quickly reset.

Overall my takeaways were that 1) I’m still a long way from being able to carry presence into all environments (I’m mostly confined to personal time, time at church or with my group, or sometimes when I interact with you or your mom); and 2) I’m still making a lot of progress. I was able to reset midway through the trip and maintain more presence through the end, and being able to maintain presence by myself or with you and your mom represents major progress. I have come a long way, but still have a long way to go.

One final anecdote: at the interactive museum in Tokyo, we found a room where we lay down on the floor and watched projections go across a screen overhead. You guys claimed to get bored, and started gently roughhousing with me. You weren’t so rough as to be searching for attention. Perhaps you were enjoying the exhibit, but needed to make it more entertaining. Or perhaps you just wanted some cuddle time with dad (I’m convinced roughhousing is how men show affection with each other). Regardless, I began to weep, overcome by the beauty of the moment. I was enjoying the visuals scrolling by overhead, but mostly I was enjoying your simultaneous affection. The thought occurred to me: “I don’t know how many more moments like this I have left”. We don’t roughhouse quite like that often (though we do roughhouse regularly, but it’s normally rougher and more involved; one can’t get lost savoring our typical roughhousing), and eventually you both will outgrow roughhousing with me. The visual stimulus really added to the experience. It was a beautiful moment that I genuinely cherished as it was happening.

I love you both, and I look forward to traveling with you (especially to foreign countries) again. In the meantime, I look forward to getting back into my meditations and writing letters to the two of you.

Love,

Dad