Should is the essence of being human.  Animals live in the present but people don’t.  We live in imagination, the future, and we ask how things should be.  Everything should be a certain way.  People should be a certain way.  I should be a certain way. 

 

I should be more than I am.  But what more? Who should I become and what path should I take?  I ended my last essay, Start at the End, with that question.  When we’re young, our job is to develop and become more, but I’ve never figured out how we figure it out.  I think of my oldest daughter, who did college at the U.S. Naval Academy and who’s now a Captain in the Marines.  We’re not a military family, so she had no models in taking that path.  She wanted to become someone better, someone strong and disciplined.  She believed, based on no evidence whatsoever, that the military would deliver on this.  And the military has delivered.  I often wonder how she made that decision that was so beyond her ability to make.

 

For that matter, I wonder how I got married.  I was young and it just kind of happened once my wife (then girlfriend) told me it was going to happen.  I had no models in taking that path because I was raised by a single mom in the 1970’s when the institution of marriage wasn’t much admired.  I recall thinking through a pro/con list about getting married, but I knew the bullet points had no meaning.  Marriage was a leap of ignorance, and it’s only now, 30 years later and still married, that I can give semi-sensical reasons.  I got married because I wanted to be that man and live that way.   

 

I don’t know how me and my daughter did it.  It’s like something deep inside us had a vision of who we wanted to be.  It’s only years later, after the fact, that we can put the vision into words.  I think that, when we made our big decisions, we relied on traditions and institutions that embodied the vision.  The military helped my daughter become that vision of herself, and marriage did the same for me. 

 

Traditional structures were good to us because they guided us to good decisions when we were too ignorant to do it alone.  I think that’s the key.  I’m too ignorant to make good decisions for myself, so navel gazing won’t help.  When I look inside, I end up talking to myself and deceiving myself.  Instead, I should look outside and follow my eyes to what attracts them.  My eyes gravitate to the people who embody what I want to become.  I should go to them because I become like the people I spend time with.  I should go to the traditional institutions that embody that thing that calls to me, like a football or wrestling team, like marriage, like church, like the Stoicism practiced by the U.S. military, like a trade or profession.  I should accept the structure they give to my path.

 

It feels good to be in a structure that’s going where my heart would go, and that demands what I want to give.  A martial arts gym does that for me.  When I step on the mats, I need to be my best because they’re coming for me.  They are my friends and we train and fight together.  I don’t have to hide or dissemble with them because I’m already known.  There’s no hiding when rolling on the mats or sparring in the ring.  I see directly into the hearts of the people with whom I spar, and they see into mine.  The only person I can hide from is myself, and for sure, I have my little excuses, but everyone else sees right through me.  What we see in each other is good, and with my fight friends, I become worthy of respect.

 

To sum up so far: my heart desires a better way of being, so I ask how I become this, and I answer by stepping into the river that’s going in the direction that calls to me.  Wherever my heart would go, there’s a river of traditional institutions and people that will take me there.  My freedom is to get in that river and swim with the current, with my friends.  Later on, I’ll articulate the reasons why.