Obligation is the source of meaning
Holland, Italy, or somewhere in between
Yesterday was a big day for the Bonica family: our youngest daughter graduated from UNH. We are very proud of her accomplishments and also very proud that she has taken a job in the social services sector where she will be serving the community. It is also a big day for my wife and I because we no longer have to worry about our kids’ schooling. Our oldest daughter began kindergarten in 2003, so we have worried and fretted over our kids’ education for 20 years, and as of yesterday, that chapter of our life is over. It was never really a discussion in our household about whether we would push our kids to go to college - it was a given. We saw college as a necessary part of their preparation to go out into the world, and therefore part of our obligation as parents to make sure that they made it through that process. With the help of grandparents and great grandparents, we started saving from the time they were born to be able to fund their college. With some luck and discipline, each of our kids completed college debt free. Any education they pursue after that is up to them. We drew a boundary to our obligation there.
Having children creates an enormous obligation. It’s impossible to understand the significance of that obligation until you have them. As a father, I always saw my role as to prepare them for independence. I love the rocket launcher metaphor, as I talked about in a previous post, it’s what I strove for as a parent, and it’s what I have the privilege of doing for my students.
Being a parent is much harder than being a teacher, though they have a lot in common. Kids, whether they are yours or they are your students, always try to find the easy way. I joked on Friday when I spoke at our seniors’ farewell brunch, that I try to feed them spinach and they constantly try to find a cookie instead. The difference of course is that there are limits to my obligations to my students. I go as far as I can to help them succeed, but If they really don’t care, and don’t want to put their heart into the work, I eventually let them go. It makes me sad, but there is always another class waiting to start, so I move on. With your own children, the obligation is unbounded. The unbounded obligation shapes the relationship. There is no moving on. You may have had an idea of what your child will be like and what they will accomplish and who they will become, but those ideas pretty quickly get dashed, and the more specific, they more quickly. If you are lucky, they will show you other ways of being amazing and great, but they will be who they are going to be.
Emily Perl Kingsley is a writer and advocate for people with disabilities. She wrote a famous short piece called Welcome to Holland which is about finding out you have a child with a disability. Her child was born with Down’s syndrome. The short version (of a very short piece - do read it, it is beautiful) is that finding out you are going to have a child with Down’s syndrome is like planning a trip to Italy and finding out you are in Holland and you will never go to Italy. And yet, you persevere because you have an obligation to this child to give her or him the things they need - maybe not to ever live independently, but to have as meaningful of a life as possible. Kingsley says of this metaphorical Holland,
It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.
My children do not have disabilities. I am blessed to say they are all talented and smart and motivated. But they did have challenges, and they had their own thoughts on where they wanted to go and who they wanted to be. Some of being a parent is letting go of Italy and accepting Holland - or whatever other place you didn’t think you intended to go. Getting on the plane of parenthood means accepting wherever the plane lands. Because once you get on the plane, you incur an obligation to accept wherever the plane lands, and it is probably not going to land in Italy.
I was talking to a woman in a professional setting (I’m being intentionally vague to protect her identity) and in the course of making small talk, I mentioned my daughter was graduating from college. She mentioned her grandson was graduating from high school, and that she only had one more grandchild to get through high school. Then she told me that she was raising her three grandchildren because her daughter, the children’s mother, was an addict, and the grandmother had adopted them and been raising them since the youngest was only a few months old. This had happened just as she had finished raising the mother and her siblings, so just as the grandmother expected to be an empty nester, she found herself raising a second set of children. But this is the nature of the open-ended obligation of having a child. It goes on and on. I expressed to her that her grandchildren were very lucky to have her, but she sort of shrugged and said, “What else was I going to do?”
I learned a lot being a father. I learned it was a lot harder than it looked when I was a kid looking at my own parents. I learned a lot about my limits, and I learned that I would not have been able to do it on my own. I learned to hold on more loosely, if firmly. I also learned a lot about what it means to be a force of nature in another person’s life, and what that obligation means. And of course, I learned a lot about love. There’s a richness to my life that never would have existed had I not become a father, and taken on the unconditional obligations of parenthood.
I am writing about the obligations of parenthood in particular today because my wife and I have just crossed a particular threshold and been released from one, but I think there is something magical about obligations. An obligation, whether as a parent to a child, as a spouse, as a friend, as an employer or employee, creates a special circumstance that tests you. Once you agree that you will do something, the world will inevitably throw things at you to test your mettle. Will you live up to what you have agreed to do? Do you have the character to do what you have promised? And it is the effort to do what you have promised when faced with adversity that both forces you to grow and shows you what kind of person you are. Kingsley ends her essay with this line:
But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.
It is the unexpected outcomes of taking on obligations that are actually magical. You find out that there is this place called Holland and that, although you didn’t expect to be going there, it is the thing that defines you. How you deal with that unexpected destination determines whether you are admirable. Indeed, obligations are at the heart of being an adult, being a citizen, and being worthy of admiration.
As an adult, our first obligation is to take care of ourselves and not be a burden on others as much as possible. Second, we have an obligation to ourselves to make the most of our gifts and become something admirable, as I discussed two weeks ago. The source of admiration for people is almost always based on their exceptional performance of their obligations. Leaders, whether in the workplace, in politics, in churches, all take on tremendous obligations. We respect the leaders who can live up to the obligations they take on and exceed them. You could even argue that entertainers and sports figures are exceptional examples of people who exceed their obligation to themselves to make good use of their talents. There is little to be admired in a meaningful sense about something that has no obligation behind it. The pursuit of greatness means taking on great obligations.
In a paper with my grad school mentor Dan Klein, we defined justice as respect for persons, property, and promises due. As Dan explains it, don’t (physically) mess with people, don’t mess with their stuff (don’t take it, don’t damage it), and do what you promise. Everything else is details. Taking on an obligation means making a promise, even if that promise isn’t verbalized. Having a child is the ultimate non-verbal promise, but taking on employment also comes with an obligation. You have a duty to your employer to fully perform your duties as agreed. Failing to do so is theft. (I stand by what I said about so called “quiet quitting” a few months ago.) Are their exceptions to promises due? Sure. Just like there are exceptions to not messing with other persons - self defense is one example. But there is a general rule - you don’t cause anyone physical harm unless they intend the same to you, and likewise, you follow through on your obligations unless there is some unique exception.
In his Ethics, Aristotle introduces the idea of the Golden Mean. He argues that any virtue must be performed to the correct level the Golden Mean - too much is just as bad as too little. For example, courage is the midpoint between cowardice (too little courage) and recklessness (too much courage). Generosity is the midpoint between stinginess and profligacy. I would argue that taking on obligations is also a virtue (as long as they are pro-social), but subject to the Golden Mean test. One should take on the right amount - not more than one can handle, and not less. Too many obligations will cause you to fail, and you will violate justice by failing to fulfill your promises. Not taking on obligations will keep you from living up to your potential. Thus, the right level of commitment is the ethical and honorable position.
I’ve written before about my heuristic:
Meaning = Competence x Contribution x Connection
Obligations, and living up to them, is an important source of meaning, perhaps the most important, because it provides us a sense of each of these. Freedom, the lack of obligation, is fabulous, too, and I don’t mean to say that we should stack our lives so full of obligations that we have no space for enjoyment. My wife and I are thrilled not to have the obligation of writing any more tuition checks. We’re happy that we don’t have to change diapers any more. We don’t have the obligations of raising children anymore - we are done and free. We aren’t going to find meaning in going on more vacations together, even though it will be fun and we totally intend to do so. Meaning in life comes from doing hard things well. Reflective happiness, eudaemonia, comes from meaning. We will be looking to find other obligations to take on and make new contributions with our new freedom and maybe going out to dinner more often, in Holland, Italy, or somewhere in between.