The Things He Carries, Part I

Kuf here. I found something.

Reader’s note: finding something in a person’s mind is a weird game show. It is like removing outdated wallpaper to uncover stranger, uglier wallpaper under that and making sense of it. And despite the nonsense of the patterns, I can’t tell if what I’m looking at is random or had been planted for me to find. Here goes.

The memory I found is from January 2023.

Happy is on the brink of a larger-than-usual existential crisis. He has decided that his children are completely and utterly fucked, or might be fucked, unless they get into private school. R1, his eldest and, by all accounts, the less organized of his two children, returned home with a “C” on a math test. R1 did not realize there was a fourth page to the test, so he turned it in with 20% of the grade on the table.

“Wouldn’t happen in private school,” Happy says to Renetta.

R1’s private school math grade is pure speculation. Nonetheless, Happy has gone down the slippery slope of cause and effect, which starts with a C on a math test and ends with ugly grandchildren.

The Ugly Grandchildren Theory of Education

The Ugly Grandchildren Theory of Education is a simple framework that explains gaining a competitive advantage in Western society. Spoiler alert: it usually starts with having a competitive advantage in Western society. To maintain this advantage, the child follows a distinct educational progression, or his parents face the consequence of ugly grandchildren.

It goes like this. The child does well, or shows great promise, in the school he attends. The child applies and gets accepted into a prestigious private school. (Reader’s note: private school admission happens as early nursery school for such a child.) From there, the child is better positioned to get into an elite college, which leads to better job opportunities, a more promising life partner, and, eventually, better-looking grandchildren.

When the child’s father is old and cantankerous, he must prove that the sum of his life’s choices is more than a sack of quarters. It is widely accepted amongst those who maintain a competitive advantage in Western society that the one with the most, or best-looking, grandchildren has won the game of life and celebrates the achievement by drinking highballs at the club. It is unclear what this old man does at the club except drink highballs and tell his friends that his grandchildren are better looking than Franklin’s grandchildren or something like that. That’s winning.

Now to Happy’s memory.

Renetta rolls her eyes because what else can she do when Happy gets this way? “Then look into private schools,” she says.

“I will,” Happy says. “I will.” And with great fear and loathing, he does.

Happy starts an application to a private school.

For Happy, multiple private school applications are overwhelming, so he starts with one. Remember, reader, that R1 is nearly 10 in this memory, and the application process is not too rigorous. Happy only needs to write a few essays and to hope that his kid’s application looks better than the other kids in the application pool. Renetta will ace the parent interviews, so that is on her, and R1 will visit the school with the bright-eyed enthusiasm of a future student. What can go wrong?

But nothing is ever simple for Happy. Instead of writing good parent essays, he frets. It turns out that Happy cannot write when his writing is tied to a specific outcome, like admission into a private school. Happy is much better at writing a story in a diner, for example, or a journal entry in a waiting room. The parent essay for R1’s private school application has big stakes, and Happy is a not-a-big-stakes writer.

There is another obvious problem with Happy here: he doesn’t believe what he is writing. And lack of conviction an ugly human makes, hence the fretting.

Fretting begets more fretting, and the ugliness that ensues is ghastly. Now, not only does R1’s C on a Math test threaten to doom Happy’s progeny but also Happy’s inability to write a good essay forewarns ugly grandchildren.

Woe is me, cries Happy.

It is not that Happy cannot sell R1. Happy genuinely believes his son is amazing. Happy’s lack of conviction stems from his doubt that an essay is capable of capturing the truth, that besides smaller class sizes, recyclable biodegradable cutlery in the school cafeteria, and well-maintained grassy areas, a prestigious private school is the better option for R1. He can’t just blurt out “because ugly grandchildren” and be done with it.

I remind the reader that Happy cannot distill the depth of his son’s life into a few paragraphs. “Tell us about your child.” or “What brings your child joy?” How much raw emotion, nuance, and honesty can anyone bring to a few short answers? Is a parent essay even possible to write?

Lacking conviction, Happy abandons writing his parent essays to search for something he believes in.

It is here that Happy devises an ingenious plan. To better prepare himself for this exact moment, where he is a 44-year-old dad writing parent essays that tip the scales of admission for R1, Happy will change the course of his future by altering his past. To execute his plan, he prepares and sends a letter to his 19-year-old self.

The logic is ironclad. Had Happy understood the magnitude of this pivotal moment when he was nineteen, for example, he would have been prepared to write killer parent essays at age 44.

Happy assumes that if a version of a letter exists now, then there must be a version of himself at age 19 who found motivation in it. Therefore, a letter, intended for a nineteen-year-old Happy Julius Pipe, can alter the state of mind of his current and future self.

Sound confusing? Just go with it, okay? It’s Happy we’re talking about.

Now that we have the back story, let us get to the letter.

Happy writes a letter to the Happy Julius of August 1997 to gain perspective and undo his current fretting situation. This is it:

Hi Happy,

It’s me, Happy, from the future. I’m a good quarter-century older than you, and man, have I learned some things.

You are probably thinking, why me? What does the nineteen-year-old Happy have that an older, wiser Happy does not? A stream like a firehose, for one. And so much hope. The nineteen-year-old version of us is on the brink of so many experiences: a new school, new friends, new subjects of study, and a life with many possibilities. The future is just an open road at this point.

You are about to accumulate much that will add to the person that you are becoming. This is exciting, bud.

So much that we hold dear to us, we acquire during life’s accumulation phases: meaningful relationships, not-so-meaningful relationships, philosophical grounding, and gross consumption of low-brow entertainment. Mostly, we accumulate a taste for laughter and love. This is by far the most important.

Laughter and love can feel ephemeral at times. This is why we must seek and accumulate them. Especially because they are very light and easy to carry. We like them. We want to carry them even though we enter great stretches in our lives where laughter and love are elusive.

You’ll meet a woman walking down the street one day. You’ll see her on a balcony and think to yourself, “holy shit my whole life is right there.” Hold onto those moments when they come.

But the problem with life is you’ll also accumulate unwanted things. The intense feeling of shame after your first fight, for example, or the uninformed assumptions that carry you into disagreeable conversations.

There are many things we don’t want to carry, but we carry all the same. At nineteen you don’t understand this. You are nineteen. You piss like a firehose and can finish two cheesesteaks for lunch without heartburn.

So I challenge this future version of us: Recognize and hold onto those things that make you light, and discard those things that make you heavy.

But there is a rub. There is always a fucking rub, Happy.

I say this to you now because at 44, at the halfway point of our life -

Reader’s note: Happy is unaware that age 44 is much further than his probabilistic halfway point - remember, he is destined to move on on November 11th, 2035.

- I have no idea how to discard those heavy things. I cannot simply throw them away.

Heavy things are toxic and can harm others without proper disposal. I am talking about unwanted emotions that blind us to temporary madness. If not properly disposed of, our heavy emotions can spread and harm others.

And the more we spread our heavy emotions, the worse we feel. So you must tread with caution and thoughtfulness. Because at a certain point in your life, you will accumulate as much fear and loathing as love and laughter, and if you do not properly discard those heavy, unwanted emotions, your life will teeter out of balance. And that really sucks balls.

Be mindful of the two-sided nature of accumulation.

Unwanted things start as little seeds of feelings and emotions. “Doubt” is a perfect example of one. I don’t want to use the word “demons” because we are not living in the 1600s. So I will call these unwanted feelings “little fuckers” or just “fuckers”.

“Fuckers” has a playfulness to it, which is why it works better than “demons”. I tend to believe that the worst parts of our nature, which grow from the unwanted emotions we carry, tend to have a playfulness to them. This is why they are not “demons” per se, because the worst parts of our natures have a redeeming quality.

They are still fuckers and you will accumulate them. They will weigh you down. And you must dispose of them. This requires work and planning and I have no idea how to rid myself of them. However, I have a hunch. And sometimes, a hunch is the best place to begin.

Don’t release the fuckers. Releasing the fuckers is bad. This amounts to shouting or yelling. Huffing and puffing like a goddamn dragon, smoking up the joint so badly that no one can breathe. The fuckers you carry want you to release them. You cannot do this. To begin, you should ignore the fuckers and find a different way to express them.

First. You have to accept that they exist and live inside us. They exist inside you, even now, young Happy. For example, you are afraid to write. You are afraid to put your ideas out into the universe, so you accumulate your fears and store them in the junk drawers of your mind.

Neglected ideas fester and lead to doubt, which is another fucker that inhabits our mind. We fear and we doubt, allowing these fuckers to thrive. Fear and doubt lead to anger, and “Anger” is a real asshole. He is the least playful of the fuckers that live inside us.

Now, as I stated earlier, you cannot simply release the fuckers. Releasing a fucker is like taking a shit and throwing it out the window. Now there is shit on your sidewalk, which runs the risk that someone else steps in it. And everyone says, “Don’t go near that house. There is shit on the sidewalk.”

The only way to discard the fuckers is to ground them creatively. Put them into a story or a song. Allow them to exist in a medium that doesn’t get shit everywhere. You can discard them, but constructively.

Now this is important, so listen. Get them out. Write and publish. Write and publish. It doesn’t matter if the medium the fuckers live in is good or bad, clever or lackluster. Most likely it will be bad (most writing starts this way). The point is, you must exorcise them, like demons, otherwise, they will take over your life, and nobody wants to be around a person with his fuckers all over the place.

Fear, Doubt, and Anger have a brother, a big brother with a snaggle tooth and soul patch, who is the worst fucker among them, Uncertainty. He is closely related to all three but far more terrible because you cannot ground him in a story. And while Fear, Doubt, and Anger exist within you, and are an extension of you, Uncertainty lives outside of you.

Because one day, believe it or not, you will turn all of the laughter and love you have into a family, which is a good place to store your best moments. Your family members will become the most precious collection you have, the center of your life, and you will want to protect them no matter what and carry them with you as long and as far as you can.

But you cannot protect them from everything. You cannot control the choices they make and stop them from taking risks. The world can be cruel and full of situations you can’t predict or stop: disease and pain, shattered dreams and hurt feelings, and mean kids on the playground who bully with cruel intentions.

Uncertainty is the worst fucker because he threatens to destroy all of the laughter and love you accumulated over the years. He is that dark cloud on the horizon that lives where you are going. He is that potential storm that can destroy everything.

Maybe that storm will blow over and maybe it won’t. Whatever happens, Uncertainty is there, a big fucker with a snaggle tooth and soul patch lingering in the distance.

The only way to deal with Uncertainty is to live your life, enjoy it, laugh, and love as much as can, right now, because there is always a storm ahead, a big fucker, that may or may not blow over, and there is nothing you can do about it.

Because the only thing we can do is live our best life, right now.

That’s it. That is all I wanted to tell you. Remember to accumulate as much laughter and love as you can, and try your best to make stories out of those little fuckers: Fear, Doubt, and Anger.

And don’t worry about Uncertainty. He is coming for you no matter what. Instead, enjoy all of those good things you have accumulated over the years. The kids’ gut-laughs your wife’s silly voices and every flicker of a good, little vibe. Enjoy them. Carry them with you for 1000 lifetimes and give them back.

Remember this, Happy, you little shit.

Happy Julius Pipe, 44

Happy proceeds to print, sign, and mail the letter to his nineteen-year-old self.

This is very similar to how he communicates with Santa Claus, so he is confident that his letter will reach the 19-year-old version of himself.

Then Happy takes a long breath, stops fretting, and writes the goddamn parent essays.

Are Happy’s essays the best essays a private school admissions committee has ever read? Probably not. Most likely, Happy’s essays look like all the other essays in the application pool.

But he can write them. He can finish them. And somehow, if only for a moment, he proceeds as if he read the letter he wrote to himself at nineteen. The act of thinking and writing creates another version of himself - one with slightly more self-awareness.

Most importantly, the exercise of writing parent essays forces him to think about his kids and remember, that the best thing he can do for them, is to take the advice he gave to his nineteen-year-old self. Enjoy. Accumulate the light things and properly dispose of heavy ones. Enjoy right now because you never know what’s coming and there is nothing you can do to stop it.

Sincerely,

Kuf