This is going to be my most personal post yet, I reckon. My wife and I had a daughter in May. My book was nominated for a literary award in Europe. My father passed away last week. Bam. I can see people reading these sentences and going from ‘aww’ to ‘oh no.’ Interesting, because I don’t.

It’s life. Yes, I have gone through these experiences, and I am doing it in a way that some people find and found ‘unusual,’ and others may have thought to themselves that I was nuts in some way. Because I often don’t fit what’s generally expected, normal or even accepted behavior in our current culture. Going through my life experiences the way I choose to most of the time now has truly changed my perspective, and having had these notable events happen to me in the span of five months has shown me that my perspective has taken hold in me and cannot be pushed aside, even by my own ego. And I am glad that this is so. Let me explain.

Before our daughter was born, I had heard numerous stories from other friends who are fathers how having this baby born changes you, how when you see them for the first time, you realize your life is no longer about you, that there is someone else now you have to think of first, and that you are instantly in love the moment you lay your eyes on them. Well, not for this father. Labor was amazing, all natural, no interventions, and I was awed by my wife’s resolve, groundedness and strength. I knew women were strong, but holy crap, that was some kind of strong. Then our daughter suddenly pops out, is placed on my wife, I see her for the first time and my thought was: ‘Holy shit, what the hell is this?!’ No bursting heart, no realizations of any deep kind about anything. Just a big unknown I was looking at. I struggled with this silently. My ego stepped in, trying to make up a positive feeling for me, when that didn’t work, it began to analyze me and concluded that there was something wrong with me. My wife sent me home (it was 5 am), and when I returned a few hours later, she asked me right away what was going on as I walked in the room, and I told her that I didn’t know what to feel for this baby, that I had no sense about it belonging with me. She looked at me and said, ‘me neither.’ Bless her. We laughed and talked about it and decided to trust that we would feel everything in our own way and timing. And we did. We love her until death, she is a hoot, and she has become part of our lives only another parent can understand. But we do not own her. We simply chose each other to share our lives here on earth as child and parent, and we love her, and we will do our utmost to take care of her, and most of all, not fill her head with our own stories of what (her) life should be about. But that it is her choice, always.

So then my father dies. We didn’t live close to each other, so we would talk on the phone or skype, and we knew how to have distance without creating one. In the past few years he had joked more frequently that he was tired of living and really wanted it to be over. One time last year he and I were talking and I asked him if he’d be willing to make a deal with me about this; that he would tell me when he was done joking about it and was serious. He agreed. The call came this August. He had developed some more issues with his prostate cancer, nothing that couldn’t be handled, but on the call he said to me, ‘I am serious, son. I am done. No more.’ It was beautiful how clear and peaceful he was about it. Within a couple of weeks he lost 40 pounds and went downhill fast. I flew to see him and hung out with him for two weeks, talking, laughing, having fun and reminiscing about life and what it is and isn’t about. We talked about his upcoming departure, and that was good too. No fear on his part, more curiosity, if anything he was worried how my mom would do without him. He bounced back for those two weeks and everything I wanted to say and share with him I did. Except my daughter, which was alright he said. After I left he plateaued for another two weeks and was gone within another two. On his terms, and in his way. And I was with him all the way. And now that is complete.

I have been through both of these life changing experiences, and I felt stuff. The whole time I did. From fear, to worry, occasional self-judgment, joy, sadness, loneliness, you name it. Point is, I felt those things, but I never became them. My perspective on life in general and mine in particular have aligned. The perspective that my life is not mine to own, but mine to experience, and that I choose that experience every moment of it. Nothing can change that anymore. Not the birth of my child, not the passing of my father. They represent to me the eternal rhythm of the cosmos (or whatever you may call it) breathing in and out. There is nothing and no thing that is permanent. First we forget this, and then we try everything we can to not remember this. We lose our perspective on life. We get sucked into our story, and we will fight until death to maintain it. And we tell each other all the time that our stories are real and that who and what we are as a result is not only ok, but justified.

The most interesting challenge for me in going through these experiences this year thus far has not been my own feelings, it has been having to listen to other people’s attempts to try and share in them by coming from their limited story perspective. People were well intentioned, I know that, but most of them were coming from their story, and from reiterating the agreed upon collective stories around the joys (and trials) of becoming parents, and losing a parent. I get it. I can appreciate their honest wish to share and to support. But most of it was not helpful, because it wasn’t real. It was a story. The few people that were simply in a space of being with me, asking what they could do, without expectation, were the helpful ones. They did not have to say anything, their presence was what was helpful. Throughout all of this, my perspective remained solid. I will feel what I feel and keep moving through life. I am in a great place about having a daughter, and I am in a great place about my father having gone back to swim in the quantum soup. I am in the unknown as it is. That’s life.

We come in with a breath and we leave with a breath, how beautiful is that? So I wish for you that you can gain your perspective on your life that lets you experience it in all its facets, without having to become trapped in it. No matter what you are going through, remember that you are going through it, but you aren’t it, you are the experiencer. You get to choose what that looks like, no one else, again and again.

Cheers,

Ralf

P.S.: I am not allowed to publicly talk about the literary award nomination until November, when the list is announced.