Wide Range of Interests

A close friend who's also a new parent texted me the other day to confess—somewhat shamefacedly—that he was really struggling with the lifestyle of raising a newborn. The message couldn't have been more timely for me: I had just spent a long holiday weekend with my family on extended childcare duty. Usually, as an uncle, I have the easiest task in the family—I can sign off whenever and go home. But an exception arose this week since my brother-in-law has been recovering from surgery. 

What strikes me is that we all feel rather guilty about admitting that this much childcare is hard. The kids are a delight, and we love them—so why should this be difficult? My mom expressed to me the other night that she was exhausted; she worried it must be a sign of aging. My friend in his text said something to the effect of: I know I'll look back and treasure these as the good old days, but right now, I just feel FOMO—like I'm missing all the fun things happening online or in the larger world.

But really, there is no mystery here, nor cause for guilt. My friend's FOMO is reasonable. Childcare takes all one's attention; and there are always other things to which one would like to devote attention—that vast category of joy-bringing activities that we dub our "interests." Hugh MacDiarmid simply and succinctly explained the dilemma in a poem long ago: "I love my little son," he wrote; but, at the same time, "[I] long for my wide range of interests again." That was all my friend was really admitting.

Long before I had spent any time taking care of kids myself, I read and vibed with MacDiarmid's poem. I knew exactly what he was talking about. So much of my adult life has been built around trying to secure enough time to read and write—inherently solitary activities. Any spare time alone to do these things I regard as precious and implicitly threatened by the outside world. Whenever my solitude is imperiled, I "long for my wide range of interests again"—no matter who I'm with; child or otherwise. 

My sister struggles with the same feelings. When she is with the children, she will occasionally find her mind yearning toward some other line of thought she had been pursuing—some other project she had been working on, and that demands her attention. In other words, she—like the rest of us—"long[s] for" her "wide range of interests again." "That's when the suffering starts," she said. But—she says—there is a solution: acceptance. To accept: "this is what I'm doing in this moment." 

It's only when she looks for an escape that she suffers, she said. When she chooses to accept her presence in the moment—that her "wide range of interests" will simply have to wait for now—that now she is with her kids and she is simply going to have to do what it takes to be with them—to chase them around the yard or clean up their spills or whatever it may be—then the suffering ceases. It's an Eastern insight: the moment you stop struggling against the suffering, you will cease to suffer. 

This is what Henry Miller said too. As he writes in his study of Rimbaud: "Acceptance is the key word"; salvation—true "liberty"—"comes only through surrender, through acceptance." And really, Hugh MacDiarmid's poem admits this solution as well. Childcare means embracing that "dread level of nothing but life itself," he writes. No more wide range of interests—at least for the moment—that vast intellectual edifice of the adult personality and self. Instead—mere life; mere being. But that is enough.