Letting Go Enough

I awoke in the wee hours of the morning to stoke the fire, something I’ve not done in many years. Our house is tight enough, our stove big enough, and our aversion to a warm bedroom stubborn enough that we rarely stoke the fire between about 8 p.m. and 5:30-ish a.m. Indeed, I cannot even remember the last time I did so. But after so many consecutive days and nights of being enveloped by arctic air, our humble shelter has bled away whatever warmth its mass of wood and insulation contained, and a wee hour stoking is needed to set things right.

Anyhow, during the short period of wakefulness following my bucknekkid antics with the woodstove (Ha! Try getting that image out of your mind!) I came to understand that yesterday’s post told only half the story. Consider for a moment if joyful dabbling – not merely in music, but in all aspects of learning -might, in some cases at least, be a greater thing than enforced expertise is what I wrote yesterday, and I am not here to refute myself. I believe it just as much today as I did yesterday, when I believed it just as much as I did the day before that and the… right. You get it.

Here’s where it gets interesting. Because the truth is that despite having been raised in the bosom of an ethos of dabbling, my sons are two of the most passionate little buggers I’ve met. I’m biased, I know, and furthermore I realize the risk I take in even writing such a thing. Bragging about one’s own children is perhaps as unflattering and immature as admitting to being a fan of David Lee Roth-era Van Halen. I mean, really: What sort of daft manchild would consider such divulgences in a public space? Oh, wait…

But the other truth is, well, it’s true. I recall a conversation I had recently with a neighbor who knows something of my boys’ proclivity for wildcraft and their fierce desire to know all there is to know of the wild creatures and places that surround us. “Your kids are so passionate,” she said. “There aren’t many kids like that these days.” It was not the first time I’ve heard such a sentiment. Not even close.

Look, let’s be real friggin’ clear. Fin and Rye are as imperfect as the world they inhabit and as the parents they were born to. They can be uncooperative, belligerent, and downright rude. They whine and complain and resist and in general provide us with plentiful opportunity to worry that we’ve done irreparable damage to their prospects for survival in this crazy and beautiful world. I suspect this worry is fairly universal to most parents, and in particular those parents who’ve chosen an atypical path, but that’s rather cold comfort, to be honest.

So my point is not that my children are perfect, or that we’ve got it all figured out, or that their future is guaranteed. Rather, my point is that granting children the freedom to dabble does not preclude them finding a passion. Or even many passions. In fact, I believe it is almost entirely the opposite: The more freedom we grant our children, the more likely they are to find passions. And not just any passions, but those that arise from someplace deep inside them, a place unsullied by praise and recognition and expectation. A place where they can love what they love for no other reason than their love of it.

It’s hard, I think, to let go like this. To not worry. To not fear. To not cling so tightly to our own expectations that we burden our children with them. I cannot say that Penny and I have absolved ourselves of these habits. Like all of you, we inhabit a culture that tells us letting go is dangerous. That if we do so, our boys won’t learn what they need to learn, won’t be disciplined, or rigorous, or perform to standard.

But I tell ya what: The longer we walk this path, the more completely we give ourselves over to this way of learning (and believe me, it is Penny and I that are learning just as much as the boys), the less scared we become. In fact, I would go so far as to say we no longer worry whether we’re letting go too much, but whether we’re letting go enough.