A letter to my son

In which I try to explain the personal philosophy we are building together

Today’s essay is part of a new series including me,

Joshua Doležal

,

Bowen Dwelle

,

Michael Mohr

,

Dee Rambeau

, and

Lyle McKeany

. Past essays were at Get Real, Man, but this series is too much a part of this project to separate it. This week, all of us explore the roots of our personal philosophies.

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My dear son,

There may yet come a day when the words which we speak, the ideas which they convey, and the decisions which flow naturally from those very same words will weigh down your shoulders as heavy as the sky does Atlas’. There may come that day when your intensity fixes upon those ideals as if trying to make out the barely spoken whispers set against the cosmic background radiation of life, and you wonder what exactly your future and your past are made of and why this path was chosen for you among so many geometrically exploding possibilities. Why you have been raised differently.

Because you are being raised differently.

The hours spent side by side discussing symbols and words and patterns which become days spent exploring ideas which will become years learning who we both can be, those moments are me bringing the best of myself to our time together. They’re the result of my ideals — a personal philosophy for living a good life. One I hope to offer you on your walk into the world.

It’s October 2002. I’m sitting in the back row of military history trying to keep my head upright when something catches my ear.

“Five years down there, at least. I’m leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epictetus.”

I had never heard of Epictetus. But I had heard of Admiral Stockdale. I knew the man who became the senior prisoner of war in the Hanoi Hilton, the man who had flown A-4 Skyhawks in combat and held himself with honor in the face of horrible adversity. I wanted to be a carrier pilot. I didn’t know if I could live up to his ideal. But I had a feeling Epictetus had something to teach me.

Over the years, I would read not just Epictetus, but Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Cicero, and others. The stoics were my introduction to philosophy. They would lead me to Whitehead, Charles Taylor, Bonhoeffer, and through the perennial non-dual philosophies of the east.

I’ve always loved philosophy as a guide to living life. The high-walled academia which houses philosophy proper never made sense to me; the stoics taught me that philosophy was supposed to be practical, practicable even. Along the way I learned to forge myself in the fires of meditations. I practiced for the moment when I would be tested. I desired to prove myself. I made myself.

That belief is why we converse so often about abstract ideas. It’s why I ask you questions which I know you can’t possibly answer. It’s why I ask again and again, and one more time after that. Because someday you will be tested. And I believe it’s worth preparing for that now, when the seas are calm.

My hardest trial occurred in February 2011, on a series of snowy cold days filled with the confusion that in other times would be called the fog of war. My stubble was still forming, barely old enough to feel confident in who I was, and I felt overwhelmed leading other young men and women as we risked our lives to save strangers far from home. Even with nine years of philosophy and training, of forging my mind into something more, I still felt unprepared. I still don’t know how anyone could feel prepared for such a moment.

But over the course of those nine years, I had collected some simple truths. Discipline, the pleasure of small wins that lead to a big win, the willingness to be uncomfortable, and the joy of doing hard things. The Navy taught me not how to change the world, but how to continue moving forward when it seems like the world is against you.¹ We use those same skills daily, with every rivet we pull and every part we assemble. Building our airplane is a practice, not a goal.

When I was your age, your grandparents used to offer me a reward for reading during the summer. $50 for 50 books read every summer. It was the easiest money I ever earned. Every summer break, I would close my door and for three days read the same books with an appetite that could never be satisfied any other way. I read of heroes, of faraway places, of daring adventures and triumphant returns and even of honorable failures. London, Scott, Shackleton, Keppler. These were my heroes.

Those stories taught me to love adventure. I saw myself in every new land discovered, every new idea and lesson stolen from the ether. The world I was born into seemed discovered. I didn’t believe there was any adventures left to be had on earth (I hope you don’t feel this way because this planet and this life are weird, wild, wonderful, and offer a canvas for greater adventures than even my heroes lived) so I looked to the stars. As a young boy I imagined myself as the first man to fly through a black hole and discover what was only theorized. It was a naive dream, especially now that I understand a little more what black holes are, but all young boys deserve to have their naive dreams. I hope you have yours.

I believe in adventure. I believe in showing up unprepared with an overstuffed passport and a few dollars and trying to muscle your way through the language enough to ask where I can use the bathroom and get a beer. I believe that doing difficult things that others might consider idiotic is a rite of passage for young boys and that the challenge is worth more than an easy success. It’s why I give you a pocket knife and a BB gun and send you off. I know where you are, but secretly I smile thinking you might ignore me just a little and test your own boundaries.

And though I’ve settled down a bit and no longer feel I need to challenge myself, I like to believe I’ve still got a spring in my step for a good adventure.

I can’t tell you where I picked up a love for truth above all else. Maybe it is a melancholy sadness for the scholarly life of study and devotion which I gave up on when I agreed to fly airplanes for the Navy. It could be a regret at not having pushed myself intellectually when I was a child and felt I was too smart and too cool for school. It could easily have found a home later when I knew only that something about the society around me felt like a lie and I didn’t know how to lie. It went against everything I’d been taught about what it means to be a man and what it takes to be a great man.

Wherever I picked it up, I believe in the truth. I believe we can find it and it’s worth seeking. That belief runs deeply through every fiber of my being. Which is why we spend so much time trying to understand. Our own personal strand of seeking runs through the Enlightenment, through the Scientific Revolution, inspired by great thinkers like Thomas Paine and Rene Descartes and even Socrates himself, but it’s not the only line to be followed. There are others.

We could look to the east as well, to the spiritual traditions of vedanta and shaivism. They hold ideals of truth as well. We could look to the great western spiritual traditions which have inspired and awed great men and women. There is as much truth in our inner lives as in our material ones.

Every time we play with mathematics, laugh at some joke in our history book, or read a great story, we’re following in the tradition of searching for truth. Not your truth or my truth, but a universal truth.

The truth of our humanity.

Living in Big Sky country forever changed me. The towering mountains remind me that they were here far before our hubris made us believe that we knew how to subjugate nature with our intellects and they will be here long after I have left this place. The rivers and skies and wildlife showed me how much wisdom lives outside of what I considered to be important. I went from admiring nature to being a part of nature.

It turns out that ideal I discovered by moving here isn’t original. It follows a line of thinkers extending back through Emerson and Thoreau and many who dared not write down what they had learned. They had a respect for the land for what it is. It’s the respect of the hunter, of the outdoorsman, of the native intelligence which seems out of touch with the modern world but which could possibly heal us if only we could remember how to listen. I want you to know that intelligence.

It’s why we walk through wild parks as often as we can. It’s why we camp every chance we get. Why our time together is spent outdoors as much as indoors, and our education invites us to think about what we can’t know as much as what we do know. I want to offer you my humility as much as my bravado.

If you read this, my only hope is that you find some truth in it. Like all philosophies and all desires, these are ideals. Ideals which I strive to bring home during our time together. They may not always be truths lived as much as truths strived for. But if I can offer you one last hope, it’s this. That you may come to learn that these ideals are worth striving for. That you may see why we strive to get closer to ourselves in every thing we do.

This, my son, is the essence of my personal philosophy. And it is the core of how I am trying to raise you.

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1. A few years later I found Admiral McRaven’s graduation speech to UT Austin. It encapsulates exactly what I would say, only said better than I could