Rocks. Straws. Knives.
I can’t point to the first straw. I can’t even point to the final straw. As I sit here in this hotel room contemplating where we are and what we’ve done, all I know for sure is that we did it. Yesterday, we sold our home and left Denver. Today, a truck and an RV become our new home and we’ll drive off into the sun with heads packed full of inspiration.
I’m gazing through full-length windows. It’s 4 AM on June 5, 2020, and the night horizon hints at shades of indigo and denim. In the adjoining rooms my wife, Alisha, and my two teenage children, Hailey and Bri, sleep soundly as I watch the sun begin its spectacular pursuit of dawn.
As I write my journal, I’m dreaming awake, filling my heart with the adventure ahead and reminiscing on the past few months. Right now, I’m bursting with exhilaration and hopes while a tiny dose of doubt swirls low in my stomach to remind me that we just gave up everything for a 30 foot RV. I ponder, “How many straws does it take to choose that?” A lot. But I know in my heart that the final straw probably wasn’t frustration, anger, or unhappiness at all.
It was love.
I suppose I’d have to look back ten months to find the first time Alisha and I began mulling an option that appeared nothing short of madness. The low background buzz of stress and familial angst had reached a point where we were openly asking each other if it was possible to quit our current life, our kids’ school, our entire conventional existence, and head off around the world for a year’s sabbatical. But why would we even do that? We had good, secure jobs; we enjoyed bountiful holidays with our extended family, an awesome social life, and a wonderful home. By any conventional metric, we were doing great! Why would good parents even consider cashing in their chips for a year in an RV, however enticing it might sound to sleep on short, hard beds and regularly empty a black tank?
That’s why I’m, rather strangely, contemplating camel proverbs all of a sudden. Which straw broke the camel’s back? I couldn’t point to one big thing. It wasn’t one thing. As the saying suggests, it was many little straws. And it all added up to the conclusion that having a life that looked great was worthless if we didn’t have a life that felt meaningful. The reality for all of us, Alisha, Hailey, Bri, and I, was that the conventions assured us we were successful but all we kept asking each other was: “Remind me why are we doing this again?”
One of those straws was definitely made of Rocks. I was a Sales Director with a fast-paced, growth-focused, start-up company. At work, each month, the departmental leaders identified non-negotiable objectives that were essential organizational goals. Some companies call these “key performance indicators” but we called them Rocks. If you work in such a business, you’ll know exactly what I mean. Every company has similar metrics because companies love measuring stuff.
Because these Rocks were significant to my company, these Rocks were significant to me too. They occupied my time and energy and also gave me a sense that my job had a purpose. When I ticked off one of those Rocks, I was successful. Go, Jon, go! Every team would work on and talk about their Rocks and the company culture would revolve around Rocks. Rocks made sense. Good, logical sense. Did I mention that they were called Rocks?
In fact, Rocks were my motivation. And maybe that was part of the problem. You see, I began to arrive at a contentious opinion: motivation sucks. In fact, let me rephrase that. Motivation really sucks. Don’t get me wrong, I am a firm believer in the need to know where you are going in life but I began to see how much of a blunt instrument motivation actually is.
I mean, think about it. I can motivate you with threats or I can motivate you with wads of cash. You can do it because you want to get rich, or you can do it because you don’t want to die. Motivation relies upon an end goal and is fueled by emotion. It doesn’t really care which one. Fear, greed, envy, anger — any old fuel will do. Companies the world over motivate through these psychological techniques but as much as I enjoyed doing my job and I loved feeling successful at it, none of those rocks actually inspired me. That’s the difference. It’s the difference between pointing your life towards a future goal because of the rewards (or the avoidance of fears), as opposed to the inspiration of heading out on that trip because you are emotionally captivated by the entire journey.
I loved my job. I loved the company. My boss, Chris, was, and still is, a man I respect. Some days, I felt invincible at what I did, like the sales equivalent of John Elway, twirling my way to a first down against the Green Bay Packers. Okay, maybe not that good, but I’m a man with a Broncos tattoo on his shoulder — so we all gotta dream. The point is that when I paused to look at what my job meant to me, something was missing. A part of me had no place in the stadium because it wasn’t included in the rules of the game. And what was missing from my job was also missing from everywhere else in my life too.
I was 45 at the time, so I kind of suspected that I might be having a very conventional mid-life crisis but I was comforted by the fact that Alisha felt the same way. She was a law enforcement officer and completely used to sniffing out lies, even those we tell ourselves. We both agreed that work wasn’t bad. It was good. It was fine. But we began asking whether our material achievements were what we really wanted for the future of our 13 and 15-year-old daughters.
All we knew for sure was that life kept piling on more straws. And even though we swore that the next straw would be the last one we could take, subconsciously, we both braced for the impact of the next one after that. We seemed to have an endless capacity to bear what we should not stand for. So, imagine how I felt standing in the principal’s office of Hailey’s school after she was accused of failing to report a small multitool her friend had brought on to its grounds. The tool included a small knife. I could feel a whole bale of hay being readied for back loading.
“She knew about the knife on the tool,” the principal claimed, resolutely.
“But it wasn’t her tool,” I replied, matter-of-factly.
“The rules are clear- -” she began to lecture, authoritatively.
“Snitches get stitches? That rule?” I interrupted, sarcastically.
“That’s not helpful,” she identified (correctly).
“Nor are your rules,” I countered, impudently. “It wasn’t even her knife. And it was a handyman tool, not a meat cleaver,” I pointed out, resolutely.
“It posed a danger to other students,” she argued, stubbornly. “It was her duty to report it,” she reiterated, lamely.
“What about him?” I pondered, pointing to the custodian who was in the room with us. “He has exactly the same tool right there on his belt!” I exclaimed, pointedly. (Ha! A new play. Beat that, Mrs. Teacher Person!)
“He’s in a position of authority,” she explained, pathetically.
“The ‘don’t do as I do’ kind of authority?” I chimed, victoriously, skipping home for six easy points. And that’s the game. Thank you. Good night.
So, that’s probably not how the conversation went, definitely, in fact, but it’s absolutely how I want to remember it. It’s better than the truth. You have to understand, this conversation was just another straw in a history of educational camel metaphors. I’m not big into labels, so suffice it to say that Hailey and Bri are neurodivergent. And while we know their profiles to be magnificent gifts, my conversation with the school principal that day was one brief highlight in an extended series of brushes with a public school system that wanted to treat our children’s needs as nothing more than awkward financial expenses they would much rather not have to deal with.
In reality, that’s not just our children either. The hallways of public schools everywhere more resemble a spawning salmon run more than a pond for educational discovery. Fulfilling the hopes, dreams and creative passions of legions of young minds is not a testable metric to them. It’s rarely about joy or contentment or finding one’s voice in the world. After all, if you apply for a job with “Found my voice” as your major educational accomplishment on your CV, the only thing you’ll find is years of unemployment. In my mind, the education system was just another metaphor for the life system it thrived within. Which comes first, the educational system or the mess the mentality that created it? It’s a nice question to ponder, but it doesn’t matter. We either give in to the stress and live with the burden, or we leave voluntarily.
Well, take that, school system! It got a little more ‘voluntary leaving’ than it was bargaining for (the father brags, having quit his job, sold his home, and exited to a hotel sofa and some lemongrass-scented bathroom amenities!)
Over time, the straws accumulated on our backs but the irony was, we were all so utterly grateful for everything we had. Our careers were on an upward trajectory. We lived in a beautiful home in a wonderful area of Denver. Hailey and Bri’s lives were blessed by gymnastics, swimming, theater, and we all embraced the network of family and friends in the Denver orbit. The sun shone. The birds twittered. And rainbows seemed to originate from little pots of gold just a few short steps from our house.
And yet each evening we all came home to our separate corners of the house, illuminated by the flicker of TikTok, immersed in the laptop, retreating into the Internet or holed-up in a bedroom chatting with people in other neighborhoods, in other homes. Beneath the comforts we had accumulated, the ultimate questions rumbled. What was our purpose? And if we had one, why weren’t these the nonnegotiable Rocks in our life instead of the evening business calls, homework assignments, draw-out meetings, more emails, company reports, and all the current metrics that marked a state of progress in our lives?
Quietly, invisibly, other people’s Rocks were ruling us. They drummed a rhythm of irritable states, short fuses, and the inclination to want to manage every detail of family life — just like managing those Rocks at work. I’d nag the kids, they’d whine back, we’d all get stressed, and eventually it would get done. Great parenting, Dad! And then on to the next rock and repeat the process…
It reminded me of Spock in Star Trek saying: “It’s life Jim, but not as we know it.”
Yeah, that kind of life.
