Dear Tristan: on the most important thing

Dear Tristan,

A good friend of mine once asked me about my dreams for the future – “What do you want to be when you grow up?” He asked with a twinkle in his eye. This friend is a dreamer, someone who set a goal of making it big in the music industry and is now succeeding. He’s that type of person. So I think I confused him when I said,

“I want to be someone who loves well.”

When I think about “what I want to be when I grow up”, what I want to be ten years from now or fifteen years from now, that’s the essence of it. I want to be someone who loves well. I am not the person who cares so much about career or prestige or success.

I guess that’s why, in so many of my letters to you so far, I have brought up the subject of relationships. Our relationships – with God and with other people – are, I think, the most important thing in life. I think this is because relationship is at the core of who God is, and we are created in his image so we carry that in us. Before there was anything, there was relationship within the Trinity. And, like relationships are prone to do, that love relationship spilled forward and created us, for the purpose of having relationship with us.

It’s not unlike how my love for your dad, and his love for me, spilled forward and created you…love begets love. That’s why we had you – because we wanted a little human to share relationship with.

My relationship with you will always be the most important thing to me. It is more important than anything you do and I will seek to maintain that relationship at all costs. Even if you make what I imagine to be the worst possible choices for your life (cue the image of a drug addict living in the seedy part of town), I will not only love you but I will want a relationship with you – because you are my son, because you are not what you do, because that’s the whole point.

Some people think something else is the point, and relationship is merely a means to that end. For example, someone may think that good behavior is the point…and try to use relationship with their kids as a way of getting them to do what they want. Used in this way, a “relationship” is not real relationship but manipulation.

I hope that as you grow up you will learn from the example we set that relationships are more important than money, success, fame, or any other worthwhile goal you may have in your life. All of those things are empty without real relationships in your life.

I think people often pursue all those other things – rather than relationship – because, frankly, it’s easier. Living in relationship is hard. It requires being honest. It requires openness. It requires being able to take the perspective of another person. It requires differentiation – being your own person and standing on your own two feet. It requires intention. It requires that you grow up. It requires grace.

In short, it requires everything.

In return, it gives you everything. Relationship gives you glimpses of God. It gives you support in your weakest moments, love when you aren’t sure you can go on, joy when it may seem there is nothing to be joyous about. Relationships give meaning to life.

Relationships are about people, not things.

It is this belief in relationships that has driven some of the parenting decisions we’ve made even now, while you’re a baby. Babies come into the world inherently relational, I think. You want to be held. You want comfort from a human being. So we’ve made decisions like the decision to nurse you for comfort and not just for food. I want you to be more attached to me than a pacifier (which you won’t take anyway.) This isn’t always easy and sometimes I wish comforting you was as easy as popping a pacifier in. We’ve made decisions like the decision to sleep with you while you’ve been a little baby and needed it rather than putting you down the hall. While we both love snuggling with you at night this hasn’t been easy all the time either – sometimes it has cost us sleep. Whenever there’s a decision to be made, we ask what would help you grow in relationship with us rather than what is easiest or most convenient. Relationship isn’t easy, even in the baby stage, but it’s worth it.

If there’s one thing I give you in this life, I want it to be a safe and secure relationship with your parents. I want for us to be your safe haven, the place you can run to even when there is disagreement, even when you make an unwise decision. I want you to always know that nothing you can do can make us love you less…and nothing you can do can make us love you more, either. I want the message you get from us to be fundamentally different than what the rest of the world screams in your ear: that you are not what you do, that your value will never lie in your looks or your earning power or any other worldly success.

This is what relationship does. This is what relationship gives.

love,
mama

other letters in this series:
on failing to live up to ideals
on curiosity
on intrinsic motivation (and why we won’t do sticker charts)
on disagreements and choosing a different path
on being open
you are not what you do
on perspective taking

Daddy’s letters:

I love you
I’m sorry
Be Yourself
Not All It’s Cracked Up to Be
Be Powerful
Be…just be
Do it for you
On Rewards and Punishments