IS THAT ALL THERE IS?

A Conversation with My Dad

As a creative person, I can be...extreme.  In my twenties, I discovered the Enneagram, and embraced the label, “Tragic Romantic”:

“Motivated by the need to understand and to be understood, you desire experiences that are rich with feeling and meaning. You may find it easier to deal with painful emotions than to deal with the tedium of daily routine.”

-http://www.enneagram.net/type4.html

I must have been an extra-emotional teenager to raise.  Thank God I had extraordinary parents.  I remember a conversation with my dad at a fast food place.  I don’t know if he planned it, or if we just happened to be alone together and the opportunity presented itself.  But he began to talk about…well, feeling.  And longing.  And understanding that I had a desire to experience more than a mundane, daily existence.

I was in heaven, listening to my very practical father talk about such things!  He said, “You want to know if getting up, going to work, coming home, and going to bed day after day is ‘all there is’.”  I leaned in.  My dad was about to validate what I knew must be true:  that ordinary lives were okay for some people, but that special, artistic people like me could look forward to dynamic lives filled with exciting adventures and intense meaning.  He said, “The answer is yes.  That’s all there is.”

If you’re like me, you’re probably screaming, “WHAT???  How could a father tell his child there’s nothing more to life than monotonous routine?  That’s criminal!”  But my dad, in his fatherly wisdom, knew exactly what his tragically romantic daughter needed to hear.  If I had been a different child—perhaps disengaged, isolated, or prone to depression—his advice might have been quite opposite.  But he’d raised me and knew me well.  He’d seen the best and worst of my artistic sensibilities, and his wise advice for me—stated exactly how I needed to hear it—was, “Embrace the mundane.”

That day, my dad gifted me with a perspective that has served me well.  He helped me to see the value and purpose of building structure into my days, and of giving attention to the seemingly mundane parts of life.  While the picture of an artist engrossed in her work, not stopping to eat, too consumed to sleep, is indeed romantic, it tends also to be unnecessarily tragic.  And over the years I have found that when I am cyclically in a season of being all over the place, letting my fancies rule my time and resources, it is by embracing the mundane that I am able to turn my fancies into something productive and meaningful.

Oh, how I miss my dad.