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Gaining Through Loss

Blog / Produced by The High Calling
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“I don’t think I want to do this anymore, Dad.”

I knew those words would come. Knew eventually that the newness, the adventure, would wear off. That the shiny knobs and the cool television and the showering attention would begin to fade and he would finally see the truth:

All of this is cool, yes. But it’s scary, too.

We’ve spent the past fifteen minutes talking about the afterward. To him, that will be the fun part. That’s when he’ll get the endless supply of cartoons and ice cream and popsicles, and the choice seat in the recliner by the window. And the fifteen minutes prior to that were spent talking about the before, about waking up early and skipping breakfast (which I also did, sign of solidarity and all).

But now the nurse just said the anesthesiologist is on his way, which means it’s no longer afterward or before, it’s now.

And now is scary.

“Why not?” I ask him.

He shrugs and tries to focus on the television in front of him. It’s tough being a son sometimes and stuck between the boy you are and the man you want to become.

“You won’t feel it,” I say. “Promise.”

“Why do I have to lose my tonsils?”

“Because you’ll feel better when you lose them.”

He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t need to. I’ve seen that look on his face before—the furrowed brow, the nibbling of the bottom lip, the sigh. He’s thinking.

“That doesn’t make any sense, Dad,” he says.

“Why not?”

“Because you get better when you get stuff, not when you lose stuff. Like when I got sick, Granddaddy gave me that bear, and then I got better.”

“I see. So you’re saying instead of taking your tonsils out, the doctor should put an extra pair in?”

He weighs the options and decides that even if that were possible, it would still mean he’d have to get operated on.

“When the man comes in with the happy gas,” he says, “will you stay?”

“Yes.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

And that’s good enough, because he’s still at that age where he believes that no matter how scary something is, it’s going to be okay as long as Daddy’s there.

But as he settles back into his bed and immerses himself in the cartoon on the television, I can’t help but wonder about what he’d said earlier. About the losing and the getting.

As a kid, he thinks in such simple terms. Thunder is God moving his furniture around. Santa Claus is watching him. He’s convinced that at night his toys come alive and play in the middle of his bedroom floor.

And he’s also apparently convinced that it’s much better to get than to lose.

I can’t blame him for that last one.

There was a time when the prevailing wisdom of the world was that less was better. It was Socrates roaming the streets of Athens urging the love of wisdom over the love of things. Christ urging the rich man to give his possessions to the poor. Thoreau calling us to, “Simplify! Simplify!”

Yet now my son and I both live in an age of gathering, when happiness and meaning are measured by what has been gained and gotten. There have been times when I’ve wondered at the wisdom in that. I’ve wondered if the blank spots in the patchwork of our lives were just as necessary, just as beautiful, as the colored ones. And as I stare down at him and wait for the doctor to arrive, I wonder of it now. How much of our lives are spent in pursuit of the accumulation of things, and how much of that accumulation piles upon us and hides from us our truest selves?

Before I can answer that, the curtain pulls back.

“Ready?” the doctor asks.

A nod from my son, followed by another from me. And we’re off. Not to get, but to lose.

And he’ll be the better for it.

Photo by Ann Voskamp. Used with permission. Post by Billy Coffey.