Fellas,

I took a couple of days off and drove down to Atlantic City. Nothing fancy. Just a chance to get away for a little while, clear my head, and stare at something other than mailboxes.

I’m standing on my hotel room balcony on the twenty-fourth floor with a cup of coffee in my hand, looking out over the city.

To my left stretched the Atlantic.

Nothing but water, rocks, and waves rolling toward the shore exactly as they had long before any of us arrived.

To my right stood everything we'd built.

Casinos.

Hotels.

Roads.

Parking lots.

Houses lined shoulder to shoulder, some with solar panels catching the morning sun. And almost directly beneath my window...

An empty lot. Just dirt. I couldn't stop looking at that empty lot. My very first thought was if you could fit a house there, facing the ocean.

I wasn't trying to think about it. My mind just went there. And that's what got me thinking.

Why?

Why do we need something to become something else?

Land becomes neighborhoods, neighborhoods become cities. An empty wall becomes another television.

A spare bedroom becomes an office. A free Saturday becomes another project.

Even our conversations begin the same way.

"So, what have you been up to?"

We measure movement almost instinctively.

We admire it. Expect it.

The ocean doesn't seem concerned with any of that. It wasn't trying to become larger. Or straighter. Or more impressive than it had been yesterday. If it was, I didn’t notice it.

The city, on the other hand, looked like it had spent decades refusing to sit still. My own mind joined just as quickly.

I looked at an empty patch of dirt and immediately started designing a future for it.

We're builders.

Maybe it's also why so many of us struggle to simply exist inside the lives we've already built.

From twenty-four floors up, the city looked almost like an ant colony.

Cars weaving through intersections.

Tiny figures disappearing into buildings.

Every one of them headed somewhere.

Meanwhile, the ocean just kept making waves.

When little boys are asked what they want to be when they grow up, the answers are almost always occupations.

Somewhere along the way, we begin measuring ourselves by what we do long before we learn to measure ourselves by who we become.

Nobody tells a ten-year-old boy,

"I hope one day you have three friendships that carry you through the hardest years of your life."

Or...

"I hope your children always know they can come to you with the things they're most ashamed of."

Instead, we inherited another script.

Work hard.

Don't complain.

Figure it out.

There's nothing wrong with those values. In fact, I still believe every one of them matters. A father should be dependable.

He should work hard. He should protect the people entrusted to him. Those things aren't the problem.

The problem is what quietly disappeared while many of us were becoming those men.

A few years ago I started noticing something. The fathers I respected most all had something in common. They were the kind of men everyone leaned on.

The ones people called when something needed to get done. The ones carrying more than most people realized. Somewhere in the conversation, something else would come out.

"It's been a rough year."

"Sometimes I wonder if I'm doing enough."

"I don't really have anybody I can talk to about this."

For a long time I assumed these were isolated stories.

One difficult marriage.

One financial setback.

One stressful season.

But the more fathers I met, the less convinced I became that these stories belonged only to the people I knew.

They started looking like patterns. Not identical stories.

Patterns.

Imagine a man who makes a mistake in his relationship. What's the first thing that comes to mind? Flowers, dinner, jewelry. A weekend away. An expensive apology.

Nobody sat him down and said, "This is how you repair trust."

He absorbed it.

Movies.

Television.

Commercials.

Watching other men.

Even the phrase, "Happy wife, happy life."

The lesson wasn't, "Become more honest."

The lesson was, "Make her happy again."

Before long, neither person is responding to what just happened. They're responding to years of learned patterns.

The next time you find yourself reaching for the first solution that comes to mind, it might be worth pausing for a moment.

Ask yourself one question:

"Who taught me this was the answer?"

If you don't know, ask another.

"What problem am I actually trying to solve?"

Am I trying to reduce my guilt or rebuild trust?

Am I trying to end the argument or understand what caused it?

Am I trying to look like a good father or become one?

Standing above Atlantic City, I couldn't help noticing how much effort goes into building a city. Nothing stays finished for very long.

There's always another building.

Another renovation.

Another empty lot waiting for its turn.

We build our lives the same way.

How much do you earn?

What do you drive?

What's your title?

How many hours did you work this week?

Those questions are easy.

Who really knows you?

Who do you call when your world starts coming apart?

When was the last time someone asked how you were doing, and waited for the real answer?

Those aren't questions society measures. But I have a feeling they're the ones that shape us most.

We're all building something. Some men are building businesses. Some are rebuilding relationships. Some are rebuilding themselves.

Some are simply trying to make it through another week without falling apart. From the outside, those lives can look completely different.

From the inside, they often feel surprisingly similar. We're all carrying something.

We're all looking at our own little empty lots wondering what could exist there someday.

The city reminded me of ambition.

The ocean reminded me of peace.

Neither one was wrong. Neither one was asking the other to become something different.

One built. One simply existed.

Maybe wisdom isn't choosing one over the other. Maybe it’s knowing when each is needed.

There are seasons to build.

To work. To strive. To sacrifice. To stay up late. To wake up early. To pour yourself into something that doesn't exist yet.

There are also seasons to stop looking for another project long enough to appreciate what's already standing.

We'll probably never stop building. I don't think we're supposed to.

But I do hope we remember something while we're busy adding another floor, chasing another goal, or planning the next project.

The people we love don't just remember what we built. They remember that we were there while we were building it.

The drive.

The Saturday morning.

The phone call.

It's okay to stand twenty-four floors above a city, look out at an ocean that isn't trying to become anything else, and remind yourself that while you're busy building a life.

You still have to live in it.

Until next time,

Barkim

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