If you’ve never seen the movie Spaceballs, this next part might be lost on you, but otherwise, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.
Our future is constantly in the process of arriving to become our present. And, since this is true, it also means that our present is constantly in the process of becoming our past. The question of “When will ‘then’ be ‘now’?” is always easily answered with, “Soon.”
But, for as many people as have laughed at that scene in that movie, I’d be surprised if there aren’t a whole slew of people out there who are constantly being surprised by the arrival on their future in the ‘now’.
I seem to be realizing this most as a parent, because I am watching my kids, as they grow, arriving at milestones in their development that I guess I never really expected them to get to. Now, this isn’t to say that I didn’t think that they would live to get to these stages; what I mean to say is that I wasn’t paying attention, and then these things arrived.
To put it another way, I don’t know that I have ever fully understood this truth: part of the equation of being a parent is watching your kids slip away, toward their own independence.
I’m not sure I’m okay with this equation.
* * *
When I got home from work today, the house was empty, because my wife was at work –which isn’t a ground-breaking development– and because my children had gone to a friend’s house –which wasn’t a ground-breaking event, either.
When I got home from work today, two of my three vehicles were not at home –again, not a ground-breaking event.
What was ground-breaking about my kids being gone when I got home, and for two of my three vehicles to be gone at the same time, was that one of my three cars had been piloted away from my house with my children inside it, BY ONE OF MY CHILDREN.
Pretty ground-breaking.
That had never happened before today.
So, when they were due to get home, I waited for them out in the driveway. I wanted to capture the memory of this ground-breaking development. I have to tell you, the look of a car that you own, driving toward you, with a child of yours driving the car, with your other two children in the car –> seeing that for the first time is quite the experience.
* * *
I don’t suspect that it is ever the case that a person can be sitting in the bed-side chair in a recovery room in a childbirth ward in a hospital, next to the bed where the mother is resting after the labor of child birth, I can’t imagine that it has ever been the case that a person has been sitting in that bed-side chair thinking, “When this newborn baby starts driving, I think I am going to have to move the level of coverage on that vehicle down just to be able to afford a teenage driver.”
And yet, it comes. Sooner than you would imagine.
Maybe it’s just part of the experience of life that we tend to deal with what’s in front of us, or –if we are feeling ambitious– with what’s not too far off.
Can you imagine having to deal with the totality of a thing, from beginning to end, whatever that thing might be, once you’ve begun it? It would drive you crazy, sitting in that chair next to the recovery bed, with the baby in your arms, considering its first steps and first words and first date and first act of rebellion and first college class and the name of that child’s first child. So, rather, we do our best just to live in the joy of the moment.
But, even as we do that –for the sake of our own sanity– we get lulled into a state of mind that allows for us to eventually be surprised when that baby grows up.
* * *
The first time you do something that’s a little scary, you get a little scared. But then, the next time, maybe less so. Imagine how scary it would be to go sky-diving for the first time.
How about how scary it would be doing it for the tenth time? Or the fiftieth time?
Less so.
As we start to let go of our kids, as they grow up and venture out more and more often, it’s scary at first, but then maybe later, not so much.
Maybe that’s what parenting is, really; you spend a certain number of years preparing your children to be ready to be independent, and then you spend a certain number of years getting used to the idea that they are going to be independent.
* * *
The title of the post is The Horizon. When I got my driver’s license, my parents had a car available for me to use; it was a 1986 Plymouth Horizon. This link should give you a sense of the vehicle. As I’ve been writing this post, and I’ve been thinking about the fact that I once was a kid, just learning to drive, and now I am a father with a kid, just learning to drive, the historically circular nature of life isn’t lost on this old man.
I still miss that car, sometimes.
But, that car isn’t the reason that I called this post The Horizon. I decided on the title because I realize that, as we look at the horizon that we’ve all pointed our ships toward, and we think about the fact that we are hoping to make it to that horizon, the truth of the matter is that we already have. The place where we are now is the place where we intended be in the past.
We are –RIGHT NOW– on the horizon that we were looking toward in the past.
The horizon is coming, so prepare, but it has also already come, so enjoy.
It Occurred To Me Today 