The empty table

A while ago—maybe it was last week—I subscribed to The Daily Dad emails, from Ryan Holiday. It's not like I thought I was going to get advice I could use in a practical sense, since the boys both moved out years ago. But fatherhood is a subject that I acquired a lot of opinions about over the years, so I thought I'd like to see what Holiday had to say about it.

Last Tuesday—when I started writing this post that was still "yesterday" but I see it is now after midnight so let's call it "the day before yesterday"—the Daily Dad email was on the subject "This Is How To Hold Them To You." The idea was that you should be encouraging and supportive while your children are young, not an asshole or a martinet, so that when they are adults they'll still want to spend time around you. Fine, that makes sense. And while I certainly didn't hit 100% on that scale, I think I did OK. Is that all? 

But then he introduced another concept (one that linked to another essay, in fact) and it made me think about the topic in a little more depth.

You say you don’t want to lose them, that you want to see them, that you want the crowded table. But what do your actions say? How are they making your kids feel? Are they making your table an inviting place they can be themselves? If not, then maybe it’s time to let things go. Admit you’re wrong. Apologize. Otherwise you will have no one to blame but yourself for your empty table.

A crowded table. Is that what I want? Well sure it is. I've written before about my sense of the "spirituality of the dinner table" (see especially here, for example). And I don't want to lose touch with them, heaven knows. So yes, The Crowded Table sounds just about right. Not every day, of course, but from time to time.

But what do your actions say? Damn, you had to follow up with that question, didn't you?

There's one answer that I gave … gosh, exactly seven years ago today. How's that for a coincidence? It went like this:

You know, my love, your place is really bare:
No love seat, armchair, wifi, or TV.
A kitchen -- table -- bed -- that's all that's there.
No place to house your boys -- no place for me. 

Do you suppose that's why they'd rather stay
With your ex-wife, when back this way they roam?
She's sick and bat-shit crazy, so you say.
But maybe her place looks more like a home. 

For thirty years, weighed down by all her hoard
Of heirloom trash, we "made a home," you see.
I finally broke out, and -- oh my Lord! --
I want to travel light and travel free. 

But do you now? Take care. For it's well known,
You travel fastest traveling alone.

All that is still true. What do your actions say? They say that I want to live like a damned graduate student and not have to think about my physical environment except when I want to eat or drink or sleep. They say that I don't want to have to think about anybody else's comfort.

And so of course, if that's the case, why should anybody want to congregate around my table? That's a no-brainer!

So I need to throw away some of the empty boxes that I've allowed to collect in the corners from old Amazon shipments, and then buy some furniture. Is that it? That's surely part of it. Maybe not enough, though.

What do I talk about, when other people are around? I've already identified that I'm "bad at parties," meaning bad at a lot of the chit-chat and small-talk that strangers use to lubricate the gears of social interaction. This is why even in the best of times I don't really have a lot of friends. (I talk about this phenomenon at great length here, too.)

What I don't talk about is anything that particularly matters to me. 

• I don't talk about any of the political thoughts that I sketched out for you in my "End of the World" posts a little over a month ago. (They started here, but I discussed the fact that I feel I can't talk about them here in particular.) 
• I don't talk about any of the philosophical ideas I've posted over on the Patio, nor the ones I still want to get to. 
• I sure as hell don't tell anyone that I pray every morning; most people I know thought it weird enough when I started meditating (which I guess I first reference here). 
• Only Marie knows that I read Tarot, and I haven't introduced her to John Michael Greer's extensive corpus (both magical and political) because I fear she will react badly to the political side of it. 
• I gave Son 2 one of Greer's "tentacle books" as a gift one year because he (that's Son 2) used to like H.P. Lovecraft back when he was a teenager; but he thought Greer's book was silly, so I won't try any more in that direction. 

Do I have to discuss these things with other people? Of course it depends. Some people would be profoundly uncomfortable with some topics. But if I want people to come closer I have to stop pushing them away. And sometimes when I am talking to people—even people I love—I can feel something inside me pushing them away. 

I think I have more to say about this, but it's late and long past time for bed. At the very least I'm kind of impressed that I stayed up this late without using spirits to make it happen. So that's good, I guess. But now it's time for sleep.