You don't owe anyone an explanation
I saw a quote a few years ago that said “you don’t owe anyone an explanation for how you live your life”. It caught me off guard because it was advice I felt I should have received before but no one had ever given me. I’ve felt at many times throughout life that I owed a lot of people explanations for how I lived - family, friends, religious leaders, neighbors. In my experience, guilt and pressure are hallmarks of the homogeneous social norms that pervade each entrails of communities we exist in… digital or physical. If you aren't living life according to the predetermined and widely expressed views of the majority then well... you’d better have a good explanation. Always asking myself, am I doing this right? Or what will my counterparts think if I do X? Will I be accepted if I evolve the way I feel I need to?
In the past, I found myself exhausted and defeated with this mindset. So much of what I was trying to do was live a perfect life that added up to the standards of others. I was eventually able to shed a lot of this but the sentiments seemed to linger in the air above me for years. Like a cloud of conformity that was always trying to settle a little lower. Where misconduct was conflated with learning and experiencing life was positioned as vices. The focus being on all of the “sins” to avoid in the world and virtues only an afterthought. Be “this” type of person and you’ll be accepted.
Take for instance “Sex, drugs and rock n roll”. The phrase was first used in 1969 in an article of Life Magazine of all places. It was an article on counter culture… people who live their own lives according to their own standards. It coincided with an era in which societal shifts were happening and the world seemed to be on fire. Not much different than today.
Where I grew up rock n roll was preferred to be Christian, sex only in marriage and drugs with a doctors prescription. Not only were these maxims impractical and the parameters faulty but also authored by social constructs of what others think is acceptable. There are a lot of marriages with no sex or unhealthy sex. Overly medicated and addicted patients to prescription drugs is an epidemic and sorry but have you ever listened to Christian Rock? However, these are microcosms of a greater problem. You don't have to live your life as a middle finger to the establishment by diving head first into every vice but so many people do things or avoid things in order to be a certain way to impress others or fit into a mold.
I am still realizing a lot of areas where I dance to the rhythm of others. Over time I’ve slowly tuned out other peoples music and tuned in to my own. It can be uncomfortable at first but over time I’ve increasingly felt more freedom in my life to be myself, regardless of how that might look to others.
I’ve tweaked my lifestyle to make it healthier which in turn makes it better. My values are now more finely tuned. They are my values because I chose them not because I was told to choose them. This is the difference between a prescribed value and a personal truth. Discovering a freedom to live my life how I want also means learning to live it wisely. Living freely does not mean one is free from accountability. I may not owe society an explanation for my life but it turns out I do owe it to someone other than myself.
As my daughters get older, they will only know one life and it will be strongly impacted by the one I live. As a father every action, choice, thought, and word, makes a tiny imprint on my girls whether they know it or not. The way we live our lives then becomes much more important and not exclusively up to us as parents.
My girls are my moral compass; two polar forces guiding me on this journey. Being accountable to them doesn’t feel like a prison the way feeling accountable to society did. It’s actually a safety net, a launchpad and a roller coaster all in one. They keep me safe so that I make wiser decisions. They inspire me and challenge me to grow, giving me the confidence to fly. And like a roller coaster, it is an up and down process but it also pushes me to be the best version of myself.
I fuck up as a dad all the time. Sometimes I yell too much, or let them eat Cheetos for breakfast. I have realized halfway through a movie that it was not age appropriate and given tough love when gentleness was the answer. But there is no road map for parenting and there is no road map for how you live your life. In my case the two are intertwined so taking my own path forward is a privilege when I look around and see so many other people on a freeway that isn't their own. Even if that means lots of mistakes a long the way.
I don’t want my girls growing up feeling like they have to live a perfect life, be the model citizen, or have the life envisioned and advertised by others. I want them to understand that it’s okay that life is messy but it’s a package deal, the mess comes with beauty. There is enough pressure to have or be someone else’s ideal. So I want them to have their own idea of what the good life looks like and live it out loud.
Understanding this mindset though and having had this experience is one of the natural evolutions of parenting. That we go through things for a reason. So that we can then change it for our kids. I am grateful for having felt this way because now I can be intentional in how I raise my girls. I want them to be free to be who they are. Free to make mistakes and understand that they are accountable to themselves and to the people they love. Not to the world.
What I want to impart on my daughters is that my life is simply a model that they can learn from to design their own. I want them to know they get to live it how they see fit and hopefully it will be exactly what they want. What my hope for them is that they will not only do what makes them happy but be the person that makes them happy. I want them to understand the importance of living with purpose and meaning but doing it their own way and carve out a path unique and individualized. I’m sure one day I will be eating these words as my teenage daughter will certainly tell me “I don’t owe you an explanation for how I live my life!” - When that day comes I’ll just have to trust that she knows what she’s doing… sex, drugs and rock n’ roll included.
