I love the times I get to spend with
my children.
My mother
recently asked me how often I get to see them, now that
Alexandra
lives in
Madrid Spain,
now that
Christian
lives in
Santa Barbara California,
now that
Joshua
is less than two years away from graduating high school. An exchange
of shared poignancy ensued between
my mother
and I: both of us have now experienced the miracle of our children
being born, growing up, moving out, and getting on with their own
lives.
When our conversation was over, I was surprised to notice I wasn't left
with my love of the times I get to spend with my now nearly totally
emancipated children, as dear as they are to me. What I was left with
was rigor. I noticed of all the qualities I want my
children to be imbued with out of our intimate relationship, rigor is
at the top of the list.
noun
when you look at or consider every part of something carefully to
make certain it's correct or safe
<unquote>
I don't know if rigor can be taught or if it can't be. I
wasn't ever taught rigor. However, I learned
rigor by working in a rigorous environment. I learned rigor in a
monastery
of rigor called
Franklin House,
Werner Erhard's home on Franklin Street in San Francisco California.
That's where I learned rigor. What's interesting is in
Franklin House
I learned to be rigorous in
Franklin House.
It wasn't until a few years later I learned to be rigorous in my own
life. Actually, that's not what really occurred. What really
occurred was a few years later I became rigorous in my own
life. Learning to be rigorous, and becoming rigorous, aren't the same.
The latter is much more spontaneous. It happened like this:
I lived a divine, inspired chapter of my life right on the sands of the
fabled Clifton Beach in Cape Town South Africa. At the time, I worked
for Old Mutual, the largest Life Insurance company in Africa. Computer
programming by night,
surfing
by day. It was perfect.
One evening after a gorgeous sunset session
surfing
my paddle-ski on crisp, clean beach break, I walked into my
"pad", and as I wiped my feet on the doormat, I noticed a lot of
beach sand had accumulated around it. The thing is this: it was always
there, only this was the first time I really noticed it. I went inside
and fetched a broom. Then, still wearing only my baggies, I
swept the entryway clean. It looked so good (and felt so
good doing it), I continued sweeping the length of the path leading
down to the beach. Doing that looked so good and felt so
good that the next thing I knew I was down on the beach picking up
trash I'd always walked by ie always walked by until that
moment. Then there was something else I cleaned up. And then
something else. It was past midnight when I finally stopped, looked
around, and saw everything in my immediate world all in
its place, just so. And I noticed I liked what I was
seeing.
What had happened was spontaneously, starting with sweeping the beach
sand from around my door mat, a process had begun in my life which
would continue from then on. Spontaneously I had begun no longer
stepping over things. Spontaneously I became
rigorous, a process which naturally started then, twenty nine years
ago, and has continued unabated, intensifying ever since. You could say
all the rigor in my life (and I am rigorous)
dates back to sweeping the beach sand from around my door mat inspired
by
Franklin House,
the
monastery
of rigor.
So back to
my children.
How do you teach a child to be rigorous? Rigor,
I say from experience, is impossible to teach. But it's
easy to learn. If I ask my son to clean up our workspace, then ask him
later if he's done so and he says yes, and then when I look at it I see
he's done something, yes, but it's "far from perfect", I don't just let
it slide - because that would be stepping over something.
Rather, I acknowledge him for what he has done. Then I'll
point out what could be done more rigorously. And when I point it out,
I make it clear (without making a big deal about it) that it's only my
opinion it could be done more rigorously. I want him to have the space
to see it for himself. I want him to see rigor as a function of his
relationship with the physical universe. It's more than that
actually. It's I want him to see rigor as a function of
relationship
- period.
It's this quality of rigor I learned at
Franklin House.
And when it comes to rigor of this quality in Life, there's no such
thing as
too much
rigor.