Sharing the Mundane

Love is what emotionally healthy people do. Nearly everyone wants to love and nearly everyone wants to be loved. I love my wife and my children, and they in turn love me. The key difference that makes love greater than like is sharing life together. This is not to say that people who like each other do not share life together. But what I am saying is that sharing life together is an essential ingredient in love, but it is not an essential ingredient in like.

When I look back at the most meaningful memories in my life, nearly all of them were shared with someone close. And the most meaningful of all were shared with a loved one. This comes as no surprise. But within that collection of meaningful memories, there is a surprise. The surprise is that what was going on during so many of those most meaningful memories was something entirely mundane. In fact, the more I love someone, the more I want to share the most mundane parts of that person’s life.

With Chloe for example, it would have been both easy and normal to simply let her out of the car during the handful of mornings this past spring when I dropped her off at school. But Chloe had a request that once asked I was quite happy to grant. Chloe wanted me to walk with her from the parking lot across the street. In fact the further I walked with her from the parking lot to her classroom, the happier she would be. And sure enough, now that the school year is behind us those memories of walking Chloe across the street those few mornings are particularly treasured memories.

Over four years older than Chloe, Philip is significantly more complicated. His natural desire to explore and assert his independence and my natural desire as a parent to ensure he explores and asserts his developing independence often operate in direct conflict with our mutual desire to share life. If I take too great an interest in Philip’s affairs—especially his most private affairs—Philip reacts quickly and decisively to protect his independence. For his most private affairs and musings both Amelia and I now need to let Philip come to us. And when he does, it is always a treasured memory.

The imbalanced interest in sharing life between a teenager and his or her parents is often a source of great frustration on both sides. But I think I have found the solution to this frustration. The solution is found in sharing the mundane whenever the opportunity presents itself. My grandfather, for example, taught me how to drive a car. He endured what was in theory endless hours of driving nowhere particularly special. But I expect my grandfather never tired of my teenage driving. I got to assert my independence. He got to support it. And the two of us got to share the mundane. My grandfather died over a decade ago. And my one of my most cherished memories of him was the driving lessons.

And so the other morning, I chose to seize an opportunity to share a mundane part of Philip’s life. As he was heading out to walk to the city bus stop in order to get to work, I asked him if I could walk with him. He was happy to say yes to a companion for the otherwise uneventful walk. But for me, I got to experience a small part of his teenage life. The walk took only five minutes. And then we waited for the bus for another five. We talked, but we didn’t talk about anything particularly interesting. And there were long stretches of silence. When the bus came, I couldn’t help but notice how different it seemed watching him get on a bus to go to work from watching him get on a bus to go to school. If nothing else, he was at least ten years younger than everyone else riding the bus. He seemed to step onto the bus differently. There was no threat of accidently doing something socially inept. He simply got on the bus and the bus simply left.

Alone at the bus stop, I was glad I had elected to take that mundane walk. I will never forget that walk, and I will never forget the image of Philip disappearing into the city bus. I look forward to sharing more mundane parts of Philip’s life, perhaps even more than I look forward to sharing the non-mundane parts of his life.