Three big questions

"Big questions are like a GPS for your brain. Sure, you might end up in the middle of nowhere, but at least you'll have an adventure!"

Marsha and I had a friend over for dinner just after the New Year. As a discussion topic, she surprised both me and the friend (also male) by starting a discussion topic, selecting the first three “big questions” from a recent Time magazine article titled “10 Questions to Ask Yourself at the Start of a New Year.”

I’ll paste in the motivation from the article below.

“When we stop and stand and look back at where we’ve been, and how we felt when we were there, it can serve as a blueprint for where we want to go forward,” says Caroline Fenkel, chief clinical officer with the virtual mental-health platform Charlie Health. By asking yourself a series of probing questions, you’ll become more self-aware and figure out how to make changes that can boost your happiness and well-being in the New Year. Think of it as a “gentle inventory, rather than a high-stakes self-assessment,” she adds.

As we progressed on answering these questions and exploring these topics, I noticed we kept going deeper into the woods!

What brought me genuine joy last year? And what took it away?

This question seemed pretty straightforward. Bringing joy was sort of like gratitude journaling, and I just started listing things!

1. Our kids’ investing in us. Right now, our older daughter is 27, and our younger daughter is 24. At those ages, my parents weren’t really a big part of my life. I’d say that my parents likely didn’t really know me as a young adult and they didn’t know my friends. At the same time, I now recognize a big reason is that I didn’t make the investments in my parents to let them know me or my friends. Our kids have taken a very different approach. Perhaps it’s a sign of a different generation. Perhaps it’s reciprocity for a different kind of investment we put into our kids. Either way, we have appreciated the investment that the kids have put back into us.

   This past year, our younger daughter invited us to spend spring break with her in Spain this year while she was studying in the UK. Our older daughter invited us to the East Coast where she organized time for us with her community of friends in Princeton and in New York City! To avoid brutally expensive hotel costs there, she even let us live in her studio apartment while she stayed with her partner! We had a lot of fun!
   
   All of this was on top of the normal “family stuff” (also fun!) where we took a pilgrimage together to Japan over the summer to see Marsha’s Japanese relatives, and we got together at New Year’s for the annual celebration with extended family.
   

2. Portland city living. I’ve written about this in the past. In addition to the convenience of being able to walk everywhere, I love the social aspect of urban life. It’s fun to have friends in the building and in nearby buildings where we can meet ad hoc! It’s not that we didn’t get together with friends in suburban life, but it tended to work best with (a) a very set schedule (e.g., “let’s meet every Sunday at 7am for a run”) or (b) a lot of planning. The friend we had over for dinner that night of this discussion lives in a nearby building, and we invited him to dinner at the spur of the moment after having coffee with him earlier that morning (also impromptu) knowing he didn’t have plans that night!
   
   This friend also has a fun expression “Avengers Unite!” to describe when the group text message goes out to have a small group of friends to get together. My favorite go-to spot for get-togethers is Abigail Hall. Great vibe, good smash burgers, and decent drinks!
   
   It’s not that I don’t do regular things on a set schedule (e.g., beers every Thursday afternoon) or with advanced planning (e.g., looking forward to a couples dinner date on the calendar to L’Orange later this month!), but I really like the ability to just text a neighbor on a whim to go for a walk on Sunday morning!
   

3. People from my past. This Substack has helped to spark contact from people who live in other places that I have really high regard for! I’ve found it to be a great catalyst to reconnect with people that I didn’t make enough past efforts to keep in touch with. Hearing from old friends and colleagues has been really energizing, and it makes writing this Substack worth it for me! Thank you!
   

4. Marsha. I have written about my therapy burnout. What I don’t write about is that I had a partner all throughout the way that was taking much of our emotional load over the past 30 years, and it’s all this work I am doing on myself that really gives me appreciation for the work she’s been having to do all along to live with me and support me!
   

5. Seeing Depeche Mode live. It’s funny that my Spotify Wrapped this year totally revealed Depeche Mode to be my favorite band. Even better, we had a friend treat us to see the group live! Sure, Dave Gahan and Martin Gore are really old now, but it was super fun to finally see them in person and get treated to great seats!

What took joy away? Some of the otherwise joyful experiences came as the result of loss. In my example above of enjoying people from my past, I acknowledged that many of these opportunities to reconnect came not only from my Substack but also from the large number of memorial services we attended this past year. (These trips for memorial services contributed in large part to my TripIt count this past year.)

Which relationships felt nourishing and which depleted me?

This question dug a little deeper, as it really touched on much of what I've been doing in getting in touch with my feelings, as well as developing my own practice of empathy.

Depletion — balancing love and boundaries

I started answering this question on the subject of depletion with a reference to Shrinking, a favorite show on Apple TV+. The season 2 finale was great, and I still remember what Sean said to Alice (repeating what he heard from Paul).

“If you only love someone hoping they’ll change one day, that’s not love. Real love is when you accept someone, limitations and all.”

Alice’s reply back to Sean was also fitting.

“Fuck you for being emotionally healthy right now.”

If you haven’t watched the show, you should watch it from the beginning. It’s so well written.

The writing here played into my evolving practice of empathy and trying to understand the other person's perspective. Empathy hopefully can help me find a balance between loving people for who they are and maintaining my own boundaries to keep me from being depleted.

Nourishment

I reflected on the daily nourishment with relationships I get from Marsha, my family, and my friends here in Portland.

I also reflected on the very substantive nourishment that I get, albeit less frequently, from people from my past. I won’t write much here this time about these relationships because I like to be able to talk to people first before I just put their stories out on the Internet. I did this, for example, regarding a conversation I had with a childhood friend in my post “There is no magic number.” Watch this space for future reflections as I continue to have these conversations!

How balanced did my time feel between work, family time, social commitments, and rest?

Moving even deeper, this question really started to hit at the core of life’s meaning. I’ve written about this topic of juggling the five balls of life (work, family, health, friends and spirit) and how I wasn’t as successful at juggling them as I could have been.

Truthfully, I am not sure what balance looks like in retirement. I explored this topic in a previous post (“Exploring Meaning in Retirement”). While I have the “agency” to rest, and I have the “belonging” to engage in social commitments, I am not sure I yet have a “cause”.

I don't believe I need more “work” per se, but I do feel that I could accomplish more. This is why I set a New Year’s resolution to open myself up to another project (resolution #3).

I have also been exploring a bit more what “family” time means in this context. What does the right investment in “family” mean right now?

• Can I do more to expand the energy to put in my kids’ lives?

• Should I be devoting more focused time to my marriage?

• What about extended family? Not just family-of-origin, but cousins, Marsha’s family, etc.?

I don’t think I have the answers yet, but this is a space for exploration!

Conclusion?

Perhaps this was deeper than a dinnertime conversation should have gone. We went from straightforward gratitude (like saying “grace”), toward topics of psychology and emotional development, and then later to some of the basic questions around the meaning of life.

Just as the quotation I opened this post with, these big questions were like a GPS for the brain. They have helped me map out many of the topics I’ve been exploring. I’m not sure where I’ve gotten yet. But it’s been an adventure!