EL’s Dribble

I always crave to hear about my parents’ history… how they ended up where they are at. And whenever I ask them questions like, “How did you get together?” or “Why did you make this decision?” it’s always followed by a very short and undescriptive response. Did they not want to share the foibles and failures it took to get to where they were? Were they just tired? Maybe it wasn’t the right time for a long story?

So whenever I get to hear the inner workings of how things came to be in my family, I get very intrigued. It happened more with my Mom as I grew older – she was willing to share her mistakes, her reasoning for things, the things she learned along the way. And I’m so grateful for that… so much of what she shared continues to pour life into me today.

But my Dad is a different story – not so much that he doesn’t want to share, but that he likes phrasing everything into a lesson. Which is good in some cases, but belaboring in others. And often we remember and learn the most when we’re able to peer into the heart and mind of the person who’s sharing, learn from where they went wrong or right and begin to live that out in our own lives. We just don’t learn as much from static propositional statements [note to preachers].

So Dad and I were talking and the topic was his decision to go into the food science – he studied at UC Davis at the urging of my grandfather to prepare to take over the family fishery business. It’s funny, but my life would be very different right now had my Dad been in the fish business and thus moved back to Taiwan. I would definitely be a Chien-Ming Wang fan for sure.

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The longer I’m here and the more I get to know myself and our generation, the more I realize that our biggest obstacle is fear. We’re crippled by it in ways that are deeply rooted. And it’s disheartening in so many ways.

And I think it is exasperated by the fact that so many of us [and I have to speak primarily as a child of a middle class home] had it easy growing up. Things came to us easy, we didn’t need to work [hard] for our education, we didn’t need to wait too long to satiate our selfish/material hunger attacks. I wish I could exclude myself from this, but that would be disingenuous.

It’s the stuff that our parents would tell us all along – “You’ve got it easy.” or “You don’t know what hardship is.” or “You don’t know what it means to work hard.” And the truth is that they’re right. Sure we work hard if we have to wait in line for an X-BOX or an iPhone. But when things come fairly easy, what does it really matter?

I think the issue is multifaceted – in that we are also children of broken homes, dysfunctional relationships and workaholic parents. And there is a bit of that in play… why work so hard at the expense of our families and a happy life?

But I feel like the most negative by-product of all this is that we’re a generation crippled by fear. We always feel like we have something to lose – and if we take any risks, our biggest fear is whether we’ll lose what we have. We end up making choices that perpetuate the fear. Choosing careers for money, choosing relationships that are easy. Never facing up to issues in our lives because we’re afraid of the horrible truth that we might not have it all together. That we might not have what it takes.

I think our generation of men are chickens. And I say that because I wrestle with the big chicken in myself. Wanting the easy route, always wanting to escape… maybe that’s why our generation is so enslaved by porn. Or so attention deficit or so commitment phobic or never really following through on things. I think that’s why our generation has so many people who are in their 30’s and 40’s who act like their 20. And 20 year old’s who act like their 14. It seems like a mass deterioration of maturity.

We’re afraid of wearing clothes that are uncoordinated. We’re afraid of saying how we really feel [we say what we think people want to hear]. We’re afraid of letting anyone get too close because what if they see who we really are? We’re afraid of giving our best effort… because if we do we’d have no excuse if we failed.

And I think if I were to pinpoint one specific fear… it would be the fear of failure. Failure in whatever endeavor [career, relationships, family, spiritual, etc.] means rejection. Sort of like sailing in for a beautiful layup to quickly find Dikembe Mutombo airmailing your shot 10 rows up into the stands. Rejection means that you had to eat your dreams. Rejection means that you might need to deal with the fact that you’re not invincible. Rejection also means rejection from the people that we long to impress. And we can’t take the rejection… we can’t.

And in the end we’re handcuffed. We have our toys, we eat well… but very few of us are men. We live crippled lives of fear and never really live free.

This is not necessarily a rant but an observation. And I think that’s why the Gospel still makes sense in this generation. It’s why the Gospel still makes sense to me, if not more so now. That’s it for this one… I’m now afraid that I’ve written too much.