The Blur Years
The ego death of early fatherhood
Nothing compounds and distorts time like the first years of fatherhood. These are the blur years. Where the days are long and the weeks are short. Where a youthful ego is emacerated in the morning smoothies your toddler impatiently begs for while you wait for the 4th cup of coffee to percolate. You’re no longer a self-contained set of wants, needs, dreams, and trivial desires. You have a bright sun attached to you now, and they can’t shine their light without your help.
Three years ago, as we waited for our daughter, I was forewarned about the sleepless nights, marital stress, and financial “burden” of starting a family. More often than not, the outpouring of joy, was mentioned as a passing afterthought (if at all). To neither my wife nor I’s surprise, none of the “boogeymen” of parenting woke us in our sleep. We made it through just fine, adjusting our schedules as needed, picking up the other persons slack if their energy had been ground to dust. It wasn’t easy, but what is? Drinking and watching TV on the couch? Staring at a wall? Rarely are easy things meaningful (or fun for that matter).
What neither of us expected when stepping, naive as we were, into this all-consuming vacuum, was that children are ego killers. They are not “time-takers” or “needy” or any of the other popular adjectives used. They are fundamentally reorienting to ones entire conception of self. “Needy” implies a selfishishness that children cannot understand. They are your time now, they do not take from you. You are the compass of their helpless potato existence. They need only you, and you need your own compass to assist in pointing theirs in the right direction.
The blur years—like all stages of life—has its own arc, though it’s unique in it’s speed. Whereas the arc of our childhood seems to bend forever, a visual representation of the blur years would resemble the spike of a heartbeat on a cardiac monitor. You never change as much as you do here, and often you don’t realize it.
Your work, your extended family, your hobbies, your marriage, and your leisure become compressed both in time and focus. Things you never thought you’d cast aside soon become after thoughts. Conversations you’d been putting off for years become pressing. Politics, religion, and the culture-at-large demand your attention, if for no other reason than seeing the encroaching grinding shadow of tomorros ever new and differing problems waiting for your child to wake up in.
All things either expand in scale of meaning or diminish. There is nothing in your life untouched or visually altered.
“When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”
- C. S. Lewis
The patterns, emotions, and enjoyment of life enters a dreamlike state, which, subconscious in the mother and father experiencing it at the present moment, signals a final transition from the first stage of young adulthood into full maturity.
Possibility, discovery, and independence are condensed in a narrow aperature and life takes on the initial color of being lived in the third-person rather than through our own familiar eyes.
For women, this transition is from a maiden to that of a mother. In men, a boy to a knight. And both, in different sex specific ways, tussle with similar questions of identity in the few quiet hours between the calling of responsibility.
“What parts of myself have I ignored and where have I been led by fruitless passions?”
“Who am I beneath my job and day-to-day responsibilites?”
“Will I become like my mother or father? Will time always move this fast?”
In seeking answers to these questions, we turn back to the habits and patterns of our old lives—when the world was more or less an open world game—seeking gold where there is none, leaning towards information or a reframe that will “set our course” or inspire an impulsive action as it had once before. The paradox of this initial questioning impulse (which often bubbles up in the middle of the night between a tantrum) is that asking the wrong questions puts us in a place to see the through the new aperature with which we now must live.
The risky options are reduced to near zero. Who you are now is how you must live—at least for that day. Behavior and inclinations you once fantasized about changing become ordered. There is a strict hierarchy to your decision making. How you order the day. You can’t afford to daydream about who you will be, you must make a conscious decision to attack life when it presents its window. All your whining, complaining, and petty resentment loses its once sustaining fire permanently.
The ego of selfish youth no longer has oxygen accept whatever thought you’re willing to provide it. And the sooner it’s starved, the sooner it can be transformed. The sooner you can fall into the present as the archetypal knight. And now, for the first time, you find the vitality of your own internal spirit living outside of your body. The answer to all of lifes ripe fruit reflected in the eyes of your child—in family.
This is the narrowing of superfluous thought, passion, daydreams, and emotions into a guided path, eternal reocurrance, our great and fearful duty as men.
The days are long, but the weeks are short. It’s a blur. Make the most of it.
As always, thanks for reading.
-Joe
Well done, Joe.
This is a treasure.
Thank you.