Being there

The dharma reading in Sangha this evening started us talking about what would be important in our lives if we learned we were going to die soon. I didn't have anything profound to add, but it put me in mind of the time when Wife and I were still trying to hash out a Parenting Plan for the boys, as part of our legal separation.

Part of the Parenting Plan was an agreement about how much time the boys would spend with me each year, and how much time with her. In the end, we agreed that I got 50% +1 day, and she got 50% -1 day, so that I could claim them on my taxes. (Her income was small enough that the deduction would have made no difference.) But my initial proposal was that I should get a much larger fraction of time, because her mental health and parenting skills were both so poor. Naturally she disputed this. But during one of our discussions she said something very interesting.

Wife told me it was very important to her to be there for landmark events in the boys' lives: birthdays, graduations, that sort of thing. And I asked her, "Is it more important to you to be there for those events than for the regular in and out of daily life?" "Yes," she said. "Of course." Like this was obvious. Like anyone would feel the same way.

What struck me about her answer was that I felt exactly the opposite. Of course the landmark events are great, don't get me wrong. In the event we pretty much missed their birthdays because they were both away at boarding school; but we made sure to attend their high school graduations (here and here), and we were scrupulous about planning Thanksgiving and Christmas so that we each got a fair share of their time (for example here and here). And I guess it would have mattered more if they had been younger and still at home all the time. Boarding school made a big difference for both of them.

But fundamentally I thought that in any contest between Special Time and Normal Time, I would take Normal Time like a shot and let Special Time go. Partly that's because there's so much more of it. But partly I think that Normal Time matters most in our lives. 

Normal Time is unremarkable while it's happening. But for that very reason, Normal Time sets the parameters of our lives, the framework, the filters through which we see everything. Normal Time is the foundation of our lives at a very basic level. Personality, outlook, style—these things aren't formed in moments of high drama, or not usually. They aren't formed in our "Kodak moments," or indeed in any memorable moments at all. They are formed precisely in the moments that we don't remember, that we aren't especially conscious of … the moments that repeat, day in and day out, day after day—each settling down an insubstantial, gossamer layer of habit, layers that pile up one after another until they compress into the solid rock of Character. That's what matters most.

In the end, as I say, the boys spent most of their Normal Time away at boarding school, and then college. That was the best outcome I could have hoped for. I am confident that those schools did a better job of raising them to be honorable young men than I would have, even as I know that I would have done a far better job than Wife. But I still think that simply Being There in Normal Time is far more important and consequential than swooping in to celebrate Special Occasions.

I guess I'm not really surprised that Wife disagreed. In any event, in the end the distinction didn't matter much.