The truth is, I’ve spent my whole life seeking appreciation while pretending it doesn’t matter to me, but one day a year I let myself openly long for something special. Golf is my favorite pastime, but this year I haven’t played once. Eighteen holes doesn’t seem like too much to ask for Father’s Day.
The weather, though, isn’t taking requests.
The rain starts at sunup, and it doesn’t stop until after sundown. The thermometer doesn’t top sixty all day. It’s bad weather for Easter, let alone Father’s Day.
And it feels personal, if you know what I mean.
So my mind does what minds do when they take something personally: it starts telling its always-escalating stories.
“I work so hard, when am I going to get to have some fun?”
“I can never have anything good for myself.”
“The universe is out to get me.”
“No one loves me—I’m all on my own.”
Suddenly, the clouds outside are nothing compared to the storm clouds gathering inside of me. My heart is closing quickly, and I know how a closed-hearted Father’s Day is going to go. It’ll be dark and heavy. Grumpy and grouchy. Tiny and tortured. Limited and loveless.
In a word, it’ll be a prison.
It turns out, you can lose your freedom to something as a simple as a low pressure system. In fact, you can lose your internal freedom to pretty much anything that doesn’t match your preferences. You can be in the middle of a perfectly good day, when…
your wife says that thing she always says,
your husband doesn’t do that thing he never does,
your teenager’s eyes roll so dramatically it seems their eyeballs will fall right out of their hormonal head,
your friends don’t invite you to the thing,
the traffic is jammed,
your news feed is doomed,
a home improvement project goes sideways, or
a visit with family goes even worse.
When these things—and countless others—happen, you can give away your emotional freedom in one totally triggered moment, or you can get triggered in slow motion. Either way, you end up behind the bars of your closed heart.
And sure, the bars will keep the people and the pain out there, but it will also keep your soul stuck in here.
So, as the rain streaks the windows, I do what it takes to open one’s heart: I become a total loser. I just give up.
I give up my preferences for the day—what I wanted for it, and how it was “supposed” to go.
I relinquish control of the weather, because—news alert—I wasn’t in control of it to begin with.
I surrender my ego—the complicated matrix of self-protection I’ve been developing since childhood—this wonderful creation intended to save me from separation and sadness, this accidental creator of the problem it was supposed to solve.
I let go of all the things my ego attaches to—like winning, and being right, and getting my way, and proving my point, and momentary invulnerability, and the undependable happiness that depends on everything going the way I want.
Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
What a recipe for losers.
Then he said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”
A double dose of loserdom!
He went on, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”
The third time he exults the losers, you start to realize maybe he isn’t fumbling his words. In fact, he might be making a point so shocking to our egos that we’ve mostly missed it for two-thousand years:
Lose your life so you might find it, he says. Let go of your ego, so you can recover your soul. Open your heart so you can show up to your life with your best, wisest, most loving stuff. Every time the prison cell beckons, ask yourself if you want to lock yourself behind bars like a stubborn winner, or if you’ll be a loveable loser and stay free to fully live your life, no matter what is happening.
As the rain streaks the windows, I open my heart, because I know an open heart is the best gift I can give myself for Father’s Day. And as I walk into the kitchen, I feel like Andy Dufresne in Shawshank Redemption. The rain has washed me clean.
My daughter greets me with a hug.
“Do you want to make pancakes together like we used to?” she asks.
It may not be a round of golf, but it’s a pretty great way to spend a Father’s Day morning.
Or an Independence Day.
Or any day for that matter.
Is openheartedness coming easy to you right now, are you finding it difficult, or are you somewhere in between? Let us know in the comments, and feel free to leave any other reactions as well!
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