Treasure Burden

Nothing is as weighty as the weight of the life you create. I hear many parents moan as they buckle under it, finding they have no time left for themselves, what they want, what they need—their old lives now hunched over under the sleepless, no-time-off, never-ending grind of another, or others.

But if it helps lift the weight just a little, I once heard John Macklovitch tell the story of how one day he realized his kids were too heavy to go up onto his shoulders, and upon his shoulders, they would never go again. At that moment, he didn't feel relief—the relief of some small part of that burden lifting, a burden that would lift more and more each day until it was gone, and he was also gone, his DNA duty done. Instead, he felt only sadness, loss, and the melancholy of a weightless life to come.

You see, being a parent, like much of life, is all about change management, adaptation—both the child to the world around it, and also you to it, it to you, itself to itself, you to you. It's a constant process of firsts but also lasts. The joy is designed to compensate for the pain, but if the pain is all you feel, that's all you get.

Some never have the gift of that burden, or they rush through it to get to the end, to escape back to themselves, not realizing that the burden is the only real treasure life gifts us—that everything else is ashes.

I say this as someone who did feel that loss myself and, looking back, saw that treasure scattered. I tried my best, but I was too young to know, just another child adapting to the world and to itself. But I was lucky enough to have a second chance, a rare thing in life, to find another treasure, and this time, try to enjoy every moment of it.