B.A.M.! (Back and Motivated; or, Becoming a Mentor)

How’s your life going, NIP?

            Goodness gracious! I can’t believe it has been a full year and a half since I have written a letter to you. I knew that when I signed off temporarily back in January of 2014 I would always write again, but I figured it would be occasional at least. Time has a funny way of slipping by when we are highly engaged in other pursuits, and though I pondered topics for letters during my hiatus (many of which I will get to in the coming months), I never got around to them mainly because I have been so consumed with reading books during that time span. So there definitely has been much learning, loving and laughing over that 18 month gap, all of which has changed me for the better and which I hope to convey through these newer letters that I intend to write. And while there is too much ground to cover in a single letter, I guess I should begin with a few essential pieces of news that will set the tone for this and future letters. But the most critical point to know is that I am definitely back and motivated.

            I suppose the biggest reason I have taken the time to finally sit down and pen this electronic missive and send it off into the great unknown sea of anonymity (a.k.a the Internet) is two-fold: 1) primarily because I love writing and it has been a growing itch that I knew I would need to scratch at some point; 2) for the last few months L.U.G. (Life/Universe/God, an idea I will explain soon enough—perhaps in the next letter) has kept sending me signals that I needed to get back to this and that these letters have had some value in the lives of others. Take the last three of these instances, for example, all of which happened within a single week: Erin and I run into a friend from our yoga teacher training of four years ago while at Petsmart. One of the first things she asked was if I had planned on writing any more letters on my blog, and then went on to say that she still returns here every so often to gain some perspective and/or inspiration. To be honest, hearing this made my heart melt and ache at the same time because I felt good knowing I have made a difference to someone by writing these letters, and yet guilty for not having kept up with them. The second instance was when one of my best friends texted me to wish me a happy birthday, she began by saying “a wise man once said” and then proceeded to quote one of my earliest letters from 5 years ago. And the third instance was when my two brothers were here last weekend, and my youngest asked me out of the blue, “What’s up with LOETONIP? Are you ever going to write more letters?”

All right, L.U.G., I get the point.

            And BAM! Here I am. Back and motivated. I have a lot to say and the letters may get even more personal and slightly crazier from here on out, but I truly hope to write at least one per month, if only to help clarify my own thinking and perspective on weighty matters concerning life and living well. For the remainder of this epistle, though, I really want to focus on two reasons on why I feel this way and am ready to begin a new chapter in my life (and by extension, our life, as most of you long-time readers know, I am nothing without the presence and persistent love, support, and encouragement of my wonderful wife, Erin). The first impetus has to do with having recently turned 40 years old, and the second motive is directly due to my new career path.

            Last Saturday I turned 40. Leading up to this momentous milestone, I had been reflecting on the past decade, taking into perspective both my personal and professional growth over that time. Meeting, falling in love with, and marrying Erin is easily the biggest thing that happened to me thus far in my time and will undoubtedly be so for the rest of our lives together. I have a deep overwhelming sense of gratitude for her presence alone, as well as each and every experience we have shared together. I won’t recap much more than that because it’s in earlier letters and, without trying to sound like a reductionist (Heavens no!), everything else in many ways comes back to her. I love her with all my heart and mind, especially for pulling off one of the greatest birthday surprises in my life.

            After not having spent more than a single day alone with my two brothers in over seven years, Brad and Greg showed up last Friday afternoon, slowly rolling by in a rented Dodge Charger with Greg leaning out the window yelling, “Break yo self, fool!” I turned around with a huge grin on my face at hearing his voice, and quickly ran up the walk to drop my bags at the door. I was taken aback by them showing up, but deep down in my gut I had an intuition that it was going to happen. I had been thinking about it for some time, even mentioning to Erin that being with them was the one thing I wanted more than anything else for my 40^th birthday. As it so happened, she had been conspiring with the two of them to make it manifest.

My Brothers: Brad (on my left) and Greg (on my right)

            Much of the weekend was spent just hanging out like when we were kids, which was really nice. No stress, no pressure, we just let the moment come to us and enjoy it. We went to dinner at Ford’s Garage for the first time the night they arrived, followed by watching Straight Outta Compton the next day, and enjoyed an awesome steak dinner at Charley’s in the evening. Our final morning together we went to Top Golf and then kicked it back at the house. During all of this time we had a lot of laughs, much good conversation, and pleasant company in the shared silences. I really do wish we lived closer to each other, but we’ll be able to see them much more often in the coming months and years.

            When they left I really tried to take time to process all of the moments and consolidate them into meaningful memories (it wasn’t too difficult either, as novel and rare as such a simple situation like this has become). All in all, it was a perfect way to spend my fortieth birthday, and I’m looking forward to their own fortieths, as we discussed and agreed to meet up for each of their respective fortieth birthdays in the coming years. The most interesting aspect of our shared time together was to see how we are different in many ways due to how our individual lives branched off and out, yet the same in a few key areas. Discussing these common traits demonstrated that though we all have very different lives at this point, we have a strong capacity for leadership, an uncommon amount of charisma, and a desire and willingness to constantly improve ourselves personally and professionally, which in turn we try to instill in those around us, especially those with whom we work.

            And this brings me to the other major shift in my life that began around the same time as my fortieth birthday—becoming a mentor to new teachers. Six years ago, our school district put into place a program that would help support and retain new teachers who were coming into the field. Teaching is certainly a profession with a high level of turnover, with the average across the nation being approximately fifty percent of all new teachers leaving within the first three years on the job. To combat this phenomenon, a mentoring program was created and implemented to help provide support and direction to first and second year educators in an effort to foster and retain highly effective teachers. And, for at least the last three years, I have had friends who went on to become mentors in the program and tried to get me to apply believing that I would be amazing in this role.

            After saying no for those last three years, I finally took a leap of faith and applied this past spring. Just getting past the initial two paper screenings and the twelve person interview panel (as harrowing an experience as that was), I discovered, have only been the beginning to one of—if not “the”—most challenging undertakings of my professional career in education. This is not to say that I am not enjoying the challenge immensely, because I am. But as crazy and hectic as getting into the program turned out to be, it is nothing compared to the daily insanity of trying to meet with all of the new teachers for the required amount of time during the work week.

            All the busyness of mentoring notwithstanding, I absolutely love the job. It is completely foreign and unlike anything I have experienced in my career. The first week of school when I was not in class and teaching felt rather weird, to be honest. The connections I have made with the young teachers with whom I am working, however, have been amazing. I have always felt that the best aspect of my teaching is being a mentor in many respects: constantly offering encouragement to others, helping people find what it is that most motivates them and developing that passion, providing a listening and sympathetic ear when times get tough, etc. While I know I have so much to learn about this new role, I am so excited and honored to have become a mentor to new teachers, which is just one more reason I am back and motivated to return to these letters.

            Well, I know this has been a lengthy letter and one that is long overdue. As always, NIP, I hope that you are well and that you are cultivating a life well lived. With this initial foray back into these letters, I just wanted to catch up with you and let you know what I’ve been up to in the last eighteen months of life. There are definitely numerous letters waiting to be written, and I truly hope to write at least one per month from here on out. I feel as if there is so much more new ground to be covered now that I’ve hit this particular age-related milestone in my life, and even more so due to the perceived need that more letters must be written, if only to clarify my own life experience and distill whatever wisdom I can from this year-and-a-half long hiatus. I guess all that is left for now is a parting valediction, so I will go with an old favorite…

Keep chipping away, NIP.

- Ryan

The Art of Living: Learning, Loving, and Laughing

Happy New Year, Nobody in Particular! 

            It’s been far too long since I have written to you. I hope that you, your family, and friends had a wonderful holiday season and that this letter finds you ready to once again turn the page. Erin and I are glad to leave 2013 behind; it was definitely one of the more challenging years in our lives, and we are eager to see what further positive changes 2014 will bring. And while it was a trying year at times, it ended on a hectic yet great note with my youngest brother-in-law, Ross, getting married on his birthday last Saturday. There’s nothing quite like a wedding to remind us all about what is most important in life: learning, loving, and laughter. A good marriage is ultimately about these three ideals in equal measure: that in marriage we will learn and grow from and with each other; that successful marriages are founded on a love that seems to deepen with each passing day; that some of the best moments in marriage are when a couple can laugh with (and sometimes at) each other and together.
  
            Even beyond the context of marriage, though, I think these three ideals are perhaps the most important aspects of life, which I hope to explain with this letter. I think they are not only universal ideals to be espoused with words, but are crucial aspects for a life well lived. Much of what I have tried to put into words by writing these letters over these last few years has been an attempt to suss out what it means to live life well. When I first began writing these letters three and a half years ago, I used the metaphor of sculpture. We are all carving out our life’s work, our great masterpiece or “magnum opus” with the choices we make. Those choices determine who we become over time in our journey through life and, ultimately, what our magnum opus looks like.

            To an outsider, I am quite confident that my work-in-progress looks weird. I’ve been deeply influenced by philosophy and religion, both of which have profoundly shaped my worldview. Like Michelangelo who saw the sculpture inside the rock and tried to carve it in a way that would release the image contained within, at the core of who I am I know there is a philosopher who is endlessly questioning and curious about life along with a religious mystic who has realized that this life (both mine in particular and all of existence in general) is an incredible gift that is never to be taken for granted. Because of this, most people think I am just flat out weird. And sometimes it’s difficult to explain my rationale for the way I live because words fail to describe what I feel inside my heart and mind. Just the other day at the wedding, my now sister-in-law’s brother said to me, “So, I hear you’re the health freak.” Now, I don’t think I am a health freak; I think what I have learned has affected me for the better and I try to eat healthfully most of the time because as far as I can tell this will be the only chance I get to live life the best I can.
  
            This focus on living life well has brought me to somewhere I never expected to be just a decade ago. I am an extremely happy and grateful person, and a large part of that has to do with my relationship with Erin specifically and all of my relationships with other people generally. Writing these letters has helped me discover something about myself, and for what it’s worth, I hope that they have helped you in some small measure, NIP. I know that the frequency with which I have written the letters has fallen off during the last year, and this is due to a few reasons: first, 2013 was a struggle. Some of the events of that struggle were detailed in the letters of last year, but overwhelmingly the struggle that ensued only led to further personal growth and closer relationships with Erin’s side of the family; second, and perhaps more importantly, I began to feel as if these letters weren’t offering anything new or fresh. It seems as if I was beginning to retread old ground that I had already covered; third, I think the older I get the more philosophical and mystical I become, and I need to find a different outlet for that (and if you’re interested in joining me on this new adventure, please be sure to check out this letter’s post-script). Though this will not be the final letter, I will probably only write them on occasion moving forward rather than trying to write two letters every month as I used to in years past. For what it’s worth, the final three sections of this letter will be a distillation of what I have gleaned through this process since beginning these letters.

             As I mentioned in the beginning, a good marriage is about three critical components: learning, loving, and laughing. I also personally believe that these are the essential elements to “the good life,” as philosophers for centuries have called it. This isn’t to say that one must be married to have “the good life” or anything like that; perhaps my ideas just happen to coincide with the fact that I have a great marriage with a very special woman. It is truly difficult for me to separate the causal connection(s) and I don’t know for sure if my marriage has brought about these changes in me, but either way my relationship with Erin has played a significant part in my overall development as a human being. With that said, please allow me to explain one final time as to why these are the three most important ingredients for a life well lived.

Learning

            I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: I am a nerd’s nerd. I have a restless, unquenchable thirst for learning. Whether technical or practical knowledge matters not, if it is something that I do not know or understand I probably want to learn more about it. If I had a role model, it would easily be Socrates, the ever-curious wanderer who was the gadfly of Athens, always questioning, questioning, questioning. As I approach the middle years of my life, I believe I finally understand Socrates—if not as a person, then at least as an archetype. All this questioning in the long run doesn’t get you answers, it only gets you more questions. And that’s where the real learning begins. The real learning is in knowing the only one thing that Socrates told us we were actually capable of knowing—nothing. This is the heart of wisdom, and also, I think, the heart of humility. Thinking that we know everything breeds hubris, which makes us small and makes our lives small and petty; thinking that we know nothing not only breeds humility but a sense of wonderment as well. The endless questioning that brings this out in humanity is akin to our childhood when we were ceaselessly fascinated by every aspect of life. By cultivating this childlike curiosity, we open ourselves up to the inherent beauty all around us. To paraphrase the religion scholar Huston Smith, the greater the sea of knowledge, the longer the shore of mystery. The more we try to learn about ourselves, others, the universe and everything within and beyond, the more we realize that the art of living is based on learning.

            Learning doesn’t just mean reading books and watching documentaries, either. I think the most important lessons are the ones we learn in everyday life. While I’ve probably read more than 100 books since starting these letters, none of those tomes helped me become who I am in this present moment more than the daily interactions with my beautiful wife, other members of my family, my students, my friends and coworkers. None of those books taught me more than taking time out each day to spend time in mediation and prayer. Sure, I loved reading them and they certainly all contributed to my personal growth, but none more so than the reciprocity within each relationship with which I am blessed. The most important idea to remember about learning is this, NIP: it never stops. Learning is a lifelong process. If you’re not learning, you’re probably not living, at least not to your fullest potential. You don’t have to necessarily be a bookworm to learn. Just as all teachers will tell you that different students have various learning styles in school, this is just as true about life. But you can’t be passive to be a true learner, you must be active. Always be open to learning in each and every moment that life presents. You will not always get it right (I know I haven’t), but if you are patient with yourself learning will have a profound effect on you.

Loving

            I have no idea where I would be if Erin hadn’t rescued me. I really believe that. That she rescued me. She saved me from myself, from what I was becoming. It’s almost as if she picked me up and spun me round and set me back down in a completely different direction. This isn’t to say that I didn’t love other people in my life before I met Erin, but looking back on it now I don’t think I loved other people as much as I could have. I’ve mentioned in previous letters how my views about love and marriage were undoubtedly marred by my 11 year old psyche that didn’t know how to process my parents’ divorce, and this left me doubting myself when it came to love. The relationships I had for close to the next 20 years were all stepping stones that led me to Erin, that led me to truly understanding what love is. And now I know because Erin came along into my life. She was the missing piece that completed the entire puzzle. And though she was only one piece, it was almost as if she was the central interlocking piece that held the entire thing together. Every day at the end of my meditations I pray. The culmination of my prayers is always the people for whom I am grateful: my family, my friends, my students, and most important of all, my wife. I am especially grateful that she not only taught me I am worthy of being loved, but that I have the capacity to love, something I doubted gravely during my teens and 20s. Now I do my absolute best to love everyone freely and openly. It has brought immeasurable meaning and satisfaction to my life, and I wholeheartedly believe that the greatest gift we are given within the gift of life itself is relationships with others. It’s great to be alive; it’s even better to share that with understanding with others.

            So what is love, then? Love is our highest calling. Every single major world faith in its own way espouses this ideal. By trying to love others and ourselves as best we can, we continue to open ourselves up to life much in the same way that learning does. But whereas learning is the purview of the mind, love is the heart’s domain. Love is also a challenge. It’s a challenge because it constantly demands that we give the best of ourselves to others. Love is a give-and-take balance of sacrifice. There are moments in life when we are called to give, but there are equally moments when we must have the wisdom to accept the love and support of others as they sacrifice for us. This balance is never easy, and I am still trying to figure it out for myself. But in trying to get my metaphorical footing, I have learned to love deeply because of Erin. Just when I think I couldn’t love her any more, I wake up the next day to discover that I do. Love makes me want to be the best husband I can be, and this has helped me to try to love others honestly and unconditionally, has helped me try to become the best person I can be.

Laughing

            This may be the easiest yet most difficult aspect to learn simultaneously. It’s easy in the sense that it’s hard to not laugh. Unless you’ve got the absolute worst sense of humor as a human being, then I am quite sure you have laughed before. I try to laugh a lot. Laughter usually brings joy (not all types of laughter are equal; people can laugh while being incredibly cruel to others, for instance), especially if the laughter is genuine and sudden. When I was younger, I prided myself on trying to be a bit of class clown because I liked to make others laugh. I think this is the easy type of laughter, especially when you’re making others—including yourself—the butt of the joke. This laughter has its place in life, but this isn’t necessarily the type of laughter I am talking about. The more difficult laughter is learning to laugh at yourself.

            As Erin or just about anyone who knows me well enough can tell you, I can be an intensely serious person. I like to think I have what the Romans called gravitas. This is a good quality to have, but as I grow older I am starting to discover that I don’t need to take things so seriously all of the time. As challenging as 2013 was, the one aspect I will take away from last year is that sometimes all we can do is throw up our hands and laugh at the minor absurdities that life throws our way. Some of them are undoubtedly of our own making, others the products of sheer circumstance, but some (perhaps even many) need to be laughed away. To varying degrees, humans have an uncanny ability to turn molehills into mountains as cliché as that may be. Laughter takes the edge off, helps us relax and better assess a situation calmly and more deliberately. Increasingly over the last year, I laughed more and more at myself. Some of these bouts of laughter have been in front of others and when they inquire I just smile and speak about how silly I am. The most important thing to remember is to not take every single aspect of life seriously, especially yourself. Life is too short to be serious all of the time. We must have fun, too. And sometimes fun just comes gift-wrapped in the form of laughter when we realize how silly our seriousness can be when it’s uncalled for in the moment.

            So, this is where I am currently in life, NIP. I am trying my best to live well, to be as authentic a person as I can be, and doing it by constantly trying my best to learn, love, and laugh every single day. I am excited about the prospect of how the rest of my life will unfold over the years, and I sincerely hope that you are too. I will be sure to write again, though the letters may become different in tone as I continue to grow. I thank you for reading and being part of this amazing journey through life with me, and I honestly wish you and yours a healthy, prosperous 2014 full of bounty, blessings, and a few surprises to keep you on your toes (and hopefully laughing).

Keep living, learning, loving, and laughing, NIP.

- Ryan

P.S. – If you are like me and like to really ponder what life’s all about, please consider checking out my new blog, “What’s Up, Soc?” My hope is to post a short blurb about what I was thinking about that day along with questions to consider. It will be nothing like LOETONIP insofar as length of letters and the infrequency with which I have written them over the last 12 months or so. If anything, I hope to bring everyday philosophy to the masses and in the process learn from the shared dialogue of the participants. I’m starting today, so come on over and check it out at http://www.whatsupsoc.blogspot.com

Let's Celebrate!

How are you, NIP?

            I’m great. Today is my 38^th birthday. Today I am celebrating being alive for 38 years, and I couldn’t be more happy and satisfied with my life at this point. Though demographics would indicate that I am approximately half way through my life at this point, I honestly hope to live until I’m 100, especially if Erin will be by my side the entire time. Yesterday was also an important day (perhaps more so than my birthday at this point) because it was the 8^th anniversary of our first date. I couldn’t have imagined a better way to begin my third decade of life than with the woman who has given me so much in such a relatively short amount of time. I honestly cannot wait to see what the remaining years of our marriage will bring.

While one’s birthday is often seen as a time for celebration and reflection, I don’t think we should savor such riches only on special days. To be honest, I believe we should celebrate every day that we wake for the potential that it brings us. Each and every day is another chance to try to dig a little deeper, to become a little better, to learn another lesson, to love more openly—the possibilities are endless. The more we are able to focus on the abundance we have in our lives, the more each and every single day becomes a celebration. There will certainly be days and perhaps even stretches of weeks or months in which we are challenged, but we must remember that even our existence beneficially impacts others in ways that perhaps we do not completely understand. When challenges arise, it is then that we must especially look for things in our lives to celebrate, even if seemingly inconsequential in the big picture. If there’s anything I’ve learned so far in my life, it’s that every day matters—and every one I meet in each of those days matters, too.

I have a proposition for you, NIP. I want you to think about what’s worth celebrating in your life. And don’t be defeatist and say “nothing,” if you’re currently down and out. Trust me, there is always something to celebrate, but sometimes it takes marshaling one’s will to see so in the proper perspective. So, in ode to my celebration today, I would like to share with you what I celebrate on a daily basis. Typically I think about how grateful I am for these aspects of my life each morning after I’ve completed my mindfulness meditation, after which I close with what one might call “contemplative prayer.” I express my gratitude and appreciate the following people who have made an impact on my life and helped me get to where I am now. Here are the ones I celebrate each and every day:

I celebrate my family.

            I could not be who I am (or who I’m becoming) without such an amazing family. I come from what one might refer to as a “tribe” due to my family being so large, and I am grateful for every single member of it who has nurtured me in ways big and small. Each parent, brother, grandparent, aunt, uncle, cousin, niece and nephew has made a contribution to my life, whether he or she realizes it or not. Though I don’t see or talk to them often enough—especially my immediate and extended family in Rhode Island, Texas, and Taiwan—I celebrate their presence and contributions to my life first and foremost. They instilled the values of family and love in me and gave me a solid framework to begin my own family. Luckily, I married into a great family, too, and they have sustained me in times when I cannot be close to those whom I have known the longest.

I celebrate my friends.

            Whether past or present, I am so happy to have the company of my friends. There have been times—most critically during my younger days—when I don’t think I would have made it through certain situations if it weren’t for my friends. As we all have experienced, there are moments in which we feel safer turning to our peers than to our family members. I have been blessed with both wise and foolish friends, and I learned something from them all. As counselors and guides, I know I wouldn’t have turned out the way that I have if it weren’t for the advice, sympathy, and encouragement from my friends. Some friendships were fleeting, some friendships have lasted for decades; either way, every single one of them played an important role in my life and I am deeply grateful for their presence in my life both then and now.

I celebrate being a teacher.

            Though I sort of fell into teaching, I can’t imagine doing anything else more than a decade into my career. I am fortunate to work at an incredible school where there is a palpable camaraderie among the entire staff. Some of these coworkers have become good friends, and I feel I make a significant contribution to this community on a daily basis. And while these people are important and make most of my working days gratifying, the relationships that have changed me even more are my students. I am so thankful for all of my students, former and current. I have been teaching long enough to have taught thousands of young people at this point, hopefully leaving many of them with lasting memories and improved lives. Though there are so many aspects of teaching that I find frustrating (bureaucracy, politics, poorly planned policy, etc), none of those things bother me between the bells. When I close my door after the passing period I come alive in a way that is hard to describe. I revel in the moment when I am teaching, and that may be an understatement. And I believe what I love best is that each day and from every student I learn something new. Every interaction, no matter how seemingly minute, makes an impact. The reciprocity between teacher and student is an enthralling dynamic that is difficult to put into words, but I cherish every second of it.

I celebrate my wife.

            As I mentioned a few letters back, my wife is my foundation. Though it’s great to celebrate my birthday today, yesterday is perhaps a much more important date in my life now. Eight years ago yesterday we went on our first date, and though it took me until the end of our first week together for me to recognize that she would be the woman with whom I would spend the rest of my life, she claims that she knew the first time she saw me and “looked into those blue eyes.” I honestly cannot imagine being the person I am today without her. She has changed my life so much for the better in innumerable ways. She is thoughtful, kind, giving, inspiring…the list could go on forever. As cliché as it may be to say, she literally makes me want to be a better man. Much of the change in my health, positive attitude / perspective and everything else in between is a direct result of her being an integral part of my life. I feel as if I have so much love and life to give to others because of her presence and our marriage. There may not be words for me to explain how she makes me feel or how she has changed my life for the better, but just about every action and breath I take working toward being the best person I can be is a direct result of Erin and her love.

            Now that you’ve read about what I celebrate every day, what about you, NIP? Who or what is a part of your life that you celebrate on a daily basis? If you haven’t thought about it, take stock of your life and examine the aspects for which you are most grateful and would like to celebrate. While all of the above mentioned relationships and people who enrich my life have made major contributions to me personally, I believe the biggest reason I have to celebrate is simply being alive. Maybe people take being alive for granted, but I know that I most certainly do not. Each day when I wake the first thing I literally think is how grateful I am to have been given one more day to experience all of this wonder. If you ask me, every day should be a celebration for that fundamental fact. And so I try my best to live each day as if it were a celebration, because each one I get is another chance to enjoy my family, friends, coworkers, students, and wife. While my birthday may be important insofar as it brought me into this marvelous world, it is only one small part in the chain of existence that I have thus far forged with my daily living. I’ve made my fair share of mistakes, but I think I’ve learned from them and done a great deal of good, too. I hope to do a lot more by simply inspiring others to live their lives as a celebration as well.

Let’s celebrate together, NIP!

- Ryan    

Hold Fast

It’s been a minute, NIP…

            It goes without saying that I haven’t been writing much lately. To be completely honest, it’s been a summer of reading. Since the beginning of June, I’ve been plowing through books, trying to alternate between fiction and nonfiction. I’m currently on my 14^th book this summer and so far have read over 4,000 pages of material. And while I’ve enjoyed being engrossed in a book with just about every spare moment I’ve had, it looks as if the summer will come to a close without me having read the one book I really wanted to reread this summer, Moby-Dick.

            I love Moby-Dick for lots of reasons: it’s rife with interesting characters and philosophical ruminations; Melville’s idyllic descriptions of the sea and the life contained therein; the subtle, ironic stabs and slashes he takes at the less desirable aspects of American culture; and—nearly most of all—his prognostications about what we are doomed to become if we cannot curb our insatiable megalomania. But as much as I love all of those aspects, I love the language perhaps most of all. There’s something about reading 19^th century American literature that is like stepping back in time. We sadly don’t use adjectives such as swimmingly anymore, nor do we see the word stove and think of anything other than the noun that represents the cooking device in our kitchens. While this saddens me for nerdy reasons that I could probably never convey, I’ve had one phrase rattling around in my head for months now—hold fast. It doesn’t make much sense in today’s usage, and the closest idiom I can think of that nearly any native speaker of English today would use is “hang on.”

            Hold fast has become sort of a personal mantra for me during the last year, and I think this is why I wanted to reread Moby-Dick so badly. Not that I was necessarily worried about the fluke of a whale staving in a boat, but hold fast is a great metaphor for the moments (or in our lives recently, months) when our mettle is tested, when our will to carry on in the face of adversity is tried. Life, as beautiful and magnificent as it can be, reminds me of the vast vistas of the sea Melville paints with words in the novel: open, full of possibility and potential. And as incredible as the wide open ocean can be, we sometimes sail into storms head on and “hold fast” as best we can. The storm that Erin and I have been riding through over the last year has taken its toll in some ways, and made us stronger in others. It’s almost as if we’ve been lashed to the mast together and forced to undergo the ordeal from every possible angle.

            Without boring you to death with the details, NIP, my brother-in-law moved in with us over a year ago. He is currently going through an acrimonious divorce and has experienced more downs than ups during his time with us. At one point he lost his then-new job because it was during the probationary period and was out of work for nearly 6 months. He only got to see his daughters every other weekend, and at one point the older of our two nieces didn’t come at all for about 3 months straight. This was all taking a toll on him emotionally and mentally, and all Erin and I could do was weather the storm with him the best that we could. As with all storms, though, there are sometimes moments of reprieve when the clouds pull back a bit and perhaps a few sunbeams break through. He landed a job as a waiter back in April, and by early July he was also reemployed as an engineer. On top of this, he also won full-time custody of his daughters in the beginning of May and we’ve been the default babysitters this summer while he grinds away working nearly 60 hours per week in order to save up a large enough nest egg to get back on his own feet. If all goes well, he and the girls will have their own place by the beginning of the school year.

            We all face such storms in our lives. There is not a single one of us who doesn’t have challenges to some degree or another. Life is not always going to be smooth sailing, as much as we’d like it to be. But it’s successfully sailing through storms such as these that steels our courage and fortitude for the future. It has been a rough ride at times for Erin and me, especially this summer when we’re used to doing whatever we please with our free time and enjoying our company together. Helping family has been its own reward, however. We’ve gotten to know our nieces much better (it’s sad to admit that though they only lived 20 minutes away we had been lucky to see them three times a year at most), and I’ve seen my brother-in-law make great strides in his own personal progress. I know we still have to help them all weather the storm for some time yet, but it seems as if the clouds will dissipate soon enough. I have faith that the sun will shine brightly again in our lives, and I am doing my best to take the positive experiences and moments out of this ordeal and learn from them.

            If you’re currently in the middle of your own tempest, Nobody in Particular, do your best to make the most of the situation. There are opportunities to grow in every moment, in every situation. I’ve learned a great deal about my own capacity to handle adversity and counsel others with what wisdom I have during the last 14 months, and what I wanted to relay to you is that we all can and must do this from time to time. It’s not always pleasant in the moment, but if we’re patient with the ordeal and ourselves we only grow stronger in the long run. This strength then allows us to be more confident when facing new storms, new challenges. So in the event that you are in the midst of such a squall, there is one looming on the horizon, or in the future if you find yourself in one, don’t give in or give up—just…

Hold fast, NIP.

- Ryan