Be Neighborly
I have a terrible track record of being neighborly. In the five years since moving out on my own, I’ve really only been friendly with one neighbor. It actually makes me a bit sad because having great neighbors is one of the best parts of the communal living experience. People looking after each other, enjoying each other’s company, and sharing life together can enhance the lives of everyone involved. Perhaps I’ll find that neighborly spirit when Alison and I buy our first home in a few years. Regardless of where we live, we all need to reclaim a strong sense of community in our neighborhoods.
I have in my mind a vision of the perfect neighborhood where we welcome newcomers, help each other in time of need, water someone’s plants while they’re away on vacation, and grill in the great outdoors together. I hope that one day Alison and I will find a neighborhood where all of those things are true. It seems like these days, we’re just a little too focused on our own lives; neighbors are almost the enemy. They play their music too loud, their guests take all of the best parking spots, and they don’t keep their lawn properly maintained. We spy on one another, ignore new families and live as ships passing in the night. While this level of apathy towards our neighbors may not be true for everyone, I think it’s important for us to reconnect with one another as people. Your neighbors may not be your best friend, but you can be friendly towards one another. They have stories, passions, dreams, families, and so much more, just like you do. You can talk about more than just the weather.
Today, I want to encourage you to be a bit more neighborly. Whether you live in an apartment, townhouse, or a house in the suburbs, be more friendly to those who live around you. Share a smile or a hello. Learn your neighbor’s name and, if you’re doing things to avoid them, stop. We all want to live in a friendly, vibrant community and that type of community is only built by people engaging with people in meaningful ways.
Endure Misery
Life is full of a range of emotions. There are days when we’re over the moon and others when we’re down in the dumps. There are events that lift our spirits and others that drag us to dark places. While we’re sure to have periods of great joy and fulfillment, we’ll also have prolonged periods of deep misery. We seem to easily acknowledge that our good feelings are temporary, yet we fail to do the same to bad feelings. Misery is temporary.
When you’re experiencing a period of misery, find a way out of it. What’s the root problem and what can you do it resolve it? How can you minimize the impact that misery is having on your life? It’s true that some factors are outside of our control, but others are very much within our grasp. If your job is causing you to be miserable, maybe you could look for a better one. If your life choices are leading to misery, perhaps you seek help. If your family situation is causing misery, it may be wise to finally resolve those longstanding issues.
We tend to only seek out God when times are tough. When all is well, our mind tells us that we don’t need God. In difficult times or in challenging times, we seek out God asking for aid. When you’re in a period of misery, lean into your prayer life. Seek out help from Mary, your patron saint, and anyone else you can think of! Acknowledge God’s great power and love and understand that prayer really works!
Misery will happen and when it does, try to work through the core issues and be sure to turn to God in prayer and ask for assistance.
The Best Thing About Permanence
Marriage is designed to last. While that’s a simple statement, the implausibility of the construct makes it an enigma. How can two completely different adults, with completely different customs, traditions, and rearing, come together in their 20s or 30s and build an entirely new family that not only survives a 50 or 60 year marriage, but thrives and endures after the couple’s death? There is but one lynchpin in the whole system that keeps this complex arrangement together: permanence.
On their wedding day, couples promise to love and be faithful to one another until the end of their natural lives. Those two sentences are the bedrock of marriage and it’s only when the idea of permanence is abandoned that marriages fail.
The thing is, while many single people loathe commitment, it’s that very commitment that holds everything together. 50 years presents endless opportunities for screw ups, for handling situations poorly, and for making mistakes. Yet, despite those hundreds of thousands of errors, permanence holds it all together. Marriage can survive imperfection because both spouses have consented and promised to endure all trials, together, even when the other is causing the strife.
Permanence protects more than just the spouses; it protects the kids. Children are unable to grasp the nature of marriage, and so oftentimes children in broken homes blame themselves. It’s precisely because of permanence that children are able to live with their mom and dad and be nurtured and protected. Permanence binds parents together, working towards the ultimate goal of forming a well adjusted adult.
Without permanence, there is no marriage. Marriage is a safe haven, a refuge, a lighthouse in the storm. When things get tough, it shines it’s light into the situation reminding the quarreling spouses that this is a but a small disagreement in the scope of a 50+ year marriage. When permanence holds a family together, all members grow, thrive, and live in peace.
There is great irony in the fear of commitment by single people. These people fear being unable to remain committed, which is ironic because their fear is of the very thing that will keep their marriage together. Permanence isn’t a yoke, permanence is freedom. It’s freedom to give up everything for your spouse without worrying about being vulnerable. It’s the freedom to let your spouse work late, go out for drinks, or take a business trip without constant fear that they’re being unfaithful. It’s the freedom of the mind that allows one spouse to love the other without the oppressive entrapment of constant questioning. Permanence is what makes marriage and that’s a beautiful thing.
Fighting Impatience
Several times a week, I fail to reach the high Catholic Husband standard. Being the husband that I was made to be is indeed a very high bar and one that’s only achievable through diligence, focus, and determination. Many times throughout the week I’ll be working on some project and Alison will ask something of me. It’s usually in those moments that I’m most impatient.
The only real way to beat impatience is to actively choose to not be impatient. While that may sound trite, it’s at the core of this conversion. Understanding which situations try your patience the most, and then working to change your responses in those situations is the best way out of a tendency towards impatience. When you begin to move away from an attitude of impatience, be on alert for those situations that put you in the greatest danger of a relapse. With this level of focus and attention on your surroundings, and by understanding your triggers, you can know when you’re at your weakest and be able to respond more appropriately. This type of change requires intentionality because impatience is such a snap response. In order to overcome impatience, you have to be in control of all of your responses, especially rapids ones.
When a situation arises that may try your patience, don’t respond immediately. Take an extra two seconds, think, and then respond. So if I ask Alison a question and she doesn’t immediately answer, it would be wise of me to take a deep breath, wait for two seconds, and then ask for her attention again. That’s a far better response than getting frustrated and leaving the room, or angrily looking at my phone. Perhaps she simply didn’t hear me or maybe she was working through a big idea that needed just another moment before she was ready to change her focus. It’s best in all situations to maintain perspective. We’re often too quick to judge a situation and when we do so, we often judge wrongly. As in the example above, maybe your wife just didn’t hear you. Although forgetting a question or an idea can be frustrating, it may not have been that important of a thought. Situations that try our patience are minor interruptions in the grand scheme of things. These minor interruptions are hardly worth getting into a fight over.
When you choose to overcome impatience, you’ll have a long road ahead of you. Yet, if you’ll maintain focus and persevere, you can grow in virtue and leave the impatient you in the past.
Embrace Confession
In what I suspect is a universal experience among Catholics, I always get nervous in the Confession line. Despite my years of frequenting the Sacrament, there’s always a bit of a pit in my stomach that eases the moment that Confession is over. While this pre-Sacrament anxiety is a momentary discomfort, I’d hate to think that it alone is keeping people away from the grace of Confession. When you consider the power of the Sacrament, what’s the worst that could happen?
We all have anxiety and bear the invisible burden of guilt because our sins. These things won’t simply go away on their own. No matter how big or small our sins are, there seems to be a weight that we carry around, only realizing its presence as we leave the confessional. For whatever reason, I always feel lighter as I walk away and complete my penance. I feel like a new person because I no longer have to carry around the burden of my sins. The anxiety that I feel right before Confession is more like a gentle reminder as to why this Sacrament is so important than it is a punishment for my indiscretions. It’s a tool to harness and use to make better decisions in the future and the anxiety always breaks when I’ve received absolution.
Naming your sins is extremely painful. Despite the absolute seal of privacy that the Sacrament affords us, we can find ourselves quibbling or struggling to find the words to name what we’ve done. The indictment against us is clear as day in our minds, but we struggle to verbalize it. That’s because it’s difficult for us to face our true selves in the Sacrament. It’s hard to realize just how far we’ve fallen and how foolish our sins have been. Sin didn’t live up to the promises that it made, and we feel dumb for falling into its trap. Use the discomfort of naming your failings as a motivation to not commit those sins again. Make it the last time that you ever have to confess that particular sin.
We let fear creep up in our mind. We fear someone outside of the confessional hearing us, the priest recognizing our voice, or even being yelled at. Yet, those fears are baseless. I’ve been going to Confession for almost 20 years, all across the country and around the world, and I’ve never been yelled at once. There were challenging Confessions, and there were uncomfortable ones, that’s for sure, but I’ve never been scolded. When I do have a difficult Confession, I’ve come to regard it as it truly is, God challenging me to step up my game. While Confession is meant to be an ocean of mercy and a bath of grace, it’s not meant to be an enabler. If Confession was an easy out, there’d be nothing stopping you from going out, committing the same sin again, and then coming back. It should challenge you to be a better person, and it should remind you of the vast depths of God’s love. There’s nothing to fear in the Sacrament.
Three minutes of discomfort in the Sacrament is a small price to pay for a do over. Better than carrying around guilt and better than falling deeper into the snare of sin, Reconciliation stands at the edge of the World, catching souls before they fall off into the abyss. Although you may never get over pre-sacramental anxiety, it is but a small reminder of the life that you’re giving up in exchange for all of the love and promises of a God who loves you.
Nocturnal Adoration
When I was in Middle School, my Mom and I signed up for the local chapter of the Nocturnal Adoration Society. Once a month, we’d get up and go to a Holy Hour in the early morning hours, I believe it was around 2am. Since then, I’ve been a member of multiple parishes where 24-hour adoration was offered. There’s something really special and still about scheduled Adoration at night.
When you get up and go to Adoration while the rest of the world sleeps, you’re able to achieve a deeper level of prayer and quiet. There’s nothing to distract you at 2am, other than a nagging desire to sleep. Everything is quiet, still, and silent. You’re able to direct all of your attention and focus on just prayer. It’s a state that’s difficult to achieve during the day when your phone may be buzzing, the UPS man comes to your door, or any number of other distractions creep up.
Nocturnal Adoration isn’t easy, that’s for sure. If you have kids, there’s an ever-changing work schedule, or even if you have a medical condition that’s agitated with interruptions to your sleep schedule. If you face any of these challenges, I have no good answer for you. Yet, I’d encourage you, if you ever have the opportunity, even just once, to go and pray in Adoration for an hour early in the morning, take it. Everyone deserves to know the peace that the morning stillness can bring to a restless heart.
Quality Time Takes Time
The difference between men and women becomes abundantly clear when it comes to quality time. For men, quality time is like any other allocated time during the day, a set period of time with specific objectives that, once complete, can be moved on from. Women tend to have a more fluid concept of quality time. It’s an undetermined length of time and is fulfilled after a certain level of connectedness is reached. In order to help reconcile these differences, I’ve concluded that we men just need to concede this point. You can’t rush quality time and expect meaningful results.
When you and your wife desire quality time, I recommend that you schedule it somewhat in advance. The amount of lead time varies, but you need enough heads up so that you can clear at least two hours in your schedule. This doesn’t need to be a calendar appointment, but if you usually read in the evening and your wife wants some quality time, you need to make sure you get your reading out of the way earlier in the day so that it’s not hanging over you during your time together. It’s also important that you not watch the clock. We spend all of our day adhering to a schedule and it’s important that just for these few hours, you not worry about it.
Distractions are the enemy of quality time and they detract from an atmosphere of bonding. Take off your watch, put away your electronics, and just enjoy your time together. There may be other less obvious distractions and I’d hate for you to think that as long as you had taken care of putting your electronics away that there’d be no distraction. Distractions may also include a mess that needs to be cleaned up, a project that needs to be put away, or any other thing, project, or task that will divert your attention away from the quality time at hand. You know those things that distract you, so take care of them!
Finally, enjoy the process. Yes, this is time that you could be spending in several other ways, but you’ve chosen to share it with your wife. This is going to be a time of lowered stress and will be a great chance to bond with your wife. In the moment, it’s the best possible way to spend your time. Quality time takes time, and there’s no way around it. By planning for it, putting away any distractions, and simply enjoying the time together, you and your wife can both walk away from any time spent together satisfied that you’ve made a wise choice and are now a closer, happier couple.
Staying On Budget
Going over budget is never a good thing. Not only does it mean that you have to find the money somewhere else, it also means that you’ll experience a setback on your progress towards your current goals. There are two main reasons why people over spend: they didn’t budget enough money to start with or they didn’t anticipate certain expenses. If you’ve been diligently budgeting for a while, going over budget probably isn’t a result of irresponsibility, it may just be poor planning.
Good budgeting requires attentiveness. As time progresses, certain parts of your budget will need to be increased, while others can be decreased. Take Alison and I, for example. We’ve had the same budgeted amount for food since very early in our marriage. Now that Benedict is eating all solid food, our grocery budget is starting to get tight. So, it’s time for us to take a hard look at how much to increase our budget by. We also tend to run low on Household Goods money due to a number of small appliances that have needed to be replaced. A better technique would be for us to allocate above our normal monthly budget to cover those replacements.
If you’re overspending in your budget, it most likely is in either your grocery or household goods categories. That’s because most of us underestimate the amount that’s needed in both of those categories. Nutrition is important, so while we should be frugal, we can’t starve ourselves because it typically leads us to eating out. When you see a trend of overspending in the same category month after month, it’s time to accept reality, make a modest increase, and then move forward.
It can be helpful to have a prioritized list. For example, Alison and I categorize each household goods item as need versus want. We buy the needs immediately and the wants at the end of the month with the leftovers. A “need" would be soap, toothpaste, and other essentials while a “want" would be a replacement blender or other kitchen appliance. This approach ensures that we have enough for the essentials throughout the month.
It’s important to not make unilateral changes. The monthly budget committee meeting is where all of the decisions should be made. It’s too much of a burden for one spouse to have to be the keeper of all of the information. Work with your wife, make smart decisions, and fix the problem.
Overspending can be the result of irresponsibility, but it’s more likely that a family who budgets consistently simply has a planning issue. Ensure that your budget levels are appropriate for your family’s situation and get back into the black.
How to Deal with Traffic
Our National Driver’s Education curriculum needs to be overhauled. At least half of the teaching time needs to be devoted to courtesy on the road. We all have a tendency towards road rage and frankly, it’s too often justified. When we get behind the wheel, it’s as if an alter-ego takes over and all human decency goes out the window. Many of the delays and traffic jams are caused by people being jerks. One day this Spring, Benedict and I were caught in some heavy traffic on our way to pick up Alison from work. While in a 20-minute traffic jam, I saw a man who had all of his windows down, his headphones in, and smoking a cigar. While I don’t approve of the headphones, I do approve of his attitude. He was in traffic, there was no way to avoid it, so he was going to enjoy it.
We can all learn a lot from this man. First, we should plan ahead. If you’re traveling during a busy time, give yourself extra time to get where you’re going so that you have nothing to stress about. The drive takes however long it takes and there’s nothing to be done about it, so that extra time is your safety net. As long as you know how long it will take to get to your destination, and you leave yourself plenty of time, there will be nothing to worry about. It may take 30 minutes longer than it usually does, but you’ll still arrive on time, and that’s all that you need to be concerned about.
Next, remain calm. Bring some great music in the car or enjoy your company. If the weather is nice, roll down the windows and feel the breeze. Look around at the scenery and notice things that you wouldn’t notice at 70 miles per hour. Make this an experience, not something to dread.
Finally, get good intelligence. I use the Waze app everywhere I drive, so I know the best route. Waze helps me minimize the amount of traffic I sit through, although some of it is inevitable. Of course, no matter what, you’ll run into a bunch of jerks trying to cheat the system, but there’s no use getting mad at their poor etiquette. There’s nothing to be done.
While we may never get all of the jerks off of the road, there are certainly things we can do to make our traffic jam experience more bearable. Leave with plenty of time to spare, relax, and remain calm. Do all of these things and you may find yourself a happier driver, even in the worse traffic jams.
Give to the Beggar
Earlier this summer, Alison’s family was in town and we made the trek into DC. While there, I was particularly struck with the number of beggars on the street. Certainly there were more on the street than in previous trips due in part to the nicer weather. Yet, for whatever reason, I was particularly struck with compassion. At one point, I saw a man literally eating trash off of the street, right here, in our Nation’s capital. I think that many of us refrain from giving beggars money for a number of reasons, but lately my thinking has been evolving.
In the old model, when I would see beggars, I may have questioned their validity. Certainly you’ve seen investigative journalists do stories on your local news revealing so-called beggars on street corners who walk away and get into nice cars. We’ve also questioned how a beggar may spend any money that we give them. Will they buy cigarettes, alcohol, or drugs? In those cases, wouldn’t our “gift” contribute to their continued problems? We’ve also convinced ourselves that there are government programs to help these people, and while there certainly are such programs, they can be hard to access.
Although this old way does have some merit, I’ve started to move towards a new way of thinking. I think that if I give money to someone who asks, the sin is not mine if they use it to buy drugs. Instead, the greater sin would be to refuse to help if I had the means to help. I’ve begun to carry around small amounts of cash in my wallet. My system is simple; if I see a beggar and feel moved by compassion in my gut, then I’ll pull out my wallet and help. We need to get back to a point where we see all people as humans, looking on all people with compassion. We know what helpless and hopeless looks like, and in those cases, we can help with a clean conscience. I’m proposing that we take each situation on a case-by-case basis and that we trust our own intuition.
I don’t think there’s a wrong approach. If you decide to not give directly to beggars, but instead to charities that reach out and help them, that’s a good thing. If you give small amounts of cash or restaurant gift cards to beggars on the street, that’s a good thing. The important thing in this whole discussion is that you help, either by doing it yourself or by empowering an organization to do so. Let’s never forget about these poor souls who need our help.