Author: Jonathan Frei

The Paradox of Routine and Freedom

Routine works. Establishing one does not make life boring or formulaic, but it does set up guide posts where true freedom and excitement can take place.

A routine I recently established was getting up at 6 a.m. This guide post has given my days structure. It has established a time where I can write this.

With the responsibility of fatherhood, I have had to change my focus from myself to my family. And having a family is a sure way to confuse and throw a wrench into any established order or normalcy in life.

However, I established this routine months after my son was born. It opened up the possibilities of being a great dad while still caring for my own needs.

The last several mornings now I woke up two minutes before my alarm was set to go off. Each time I glanced at my phone, and it showed 5:58. It’s only been a few weeks since I started, but already the routine is freeing me from the annoying buzz of the alarm.

Before I started working on this I’d be sleeping deeply and when my alarm would sound, I’d hit the snooze button two or three times. The idea, of course was that “10 more minutes and I’ll be rested and ready for the day.” But snoozing three times adds up to a half hour of frequently interrupted sleep.

On the other hand, getting up and getting going shakes off the sleepiness much faster than laying awake in bed between pressing the snooze button.

Routine has given my day something new–a beginning. Rather than drifting into the day from a haze of sleep and snoozing, establishing a routine has created a clear delineation between night time and day time.

Also, my wife and I have been working to establish a routine for our baby. We’re starting to see the first fruits of our efforts. The last several nights now, he’s slept soundly from when we laid him in the crib until after I got up.

These routines do not diminish the freedom and spontaneity of a day. It is exactly the opposite, yet still a paradox. Fixed and strictly adhered-to routines create more freedom in a day than an open schedule.

I haven’t established strict guidelines for what I’ll do when I first get up. I try to read, write, or exercise, but sometimes I surf around on the web, play with the baby if he’s awake, or spend some time in prayer.

However, no matter what I decide to spend the time doing, it is something I wouldn’t be able to do if I didn’t have the routine established to get started.

By setting up a few starting guide posts, I was able to establish much greater freedom in my day. And now I’m searching for similar opportunities in other possible routines.

by Jonathan Frei

The Myth of Self Reliance


Self reliance is a myth. Humans are social creatures that need interaction for emotional well-being and sustenance. The concept of self reliance, however, implies that we can make it alone.
True self reliance would involve a complete withdrawal from society, a Thoreau-like retreat to Walden Pond or a John-the-Baptist-like wandering in the desert. However, even there the fish of the lake or the locus of the wilderness provided what they could not provide for themselves.
Spending a dollar admits that I need what someone else has. Working to earn a dollar admits reliance on either an employer or on customers.
Since pure self reliance is impossible, we must all be dependent. However, there is good dependence and bad dependence. Learning about the good and shutting out the bad is the way forward.
Bad dependence is reliance on others. Good dependence is reliance on others–and yourself. In the second, the difference is learning to count on, trust, and rely on those around me. This is difficult, since it’s easy to mistrust people. However, this skill is critical to forming well balanced relationships with the people you know and encounter.
Driving on the highway, I need to trust that the car I’m passing won’t suddenly swerve into my lane and run me off the road. I rely on the driver’s competence. However, in this situation I also rely on my own driving skills and knowledge to not pass on the left and to avoid cars that are weaving in and out of their lanes.
I work in sales. I rely on my employer to pay me each period, but I also rely on myself to perform. My employer also relies on me to perform. The action it takes to secure my performance is to pay me each period. There we have an example of a well balanced mutually reliant relationship.

A pure reliance, on other hand, is out of balance and even harmful to the individual. Reliance on a person or entity without that entity relying on you is dependence. It plants and nurtures an entitlement mentality. The feeling that you deserve something without earning is a direct result of this one way reliance.
This is why welfare is so damaging to individuals. They receive benefits from the government that they are trained to rely on. The government does not receive any reciprocated benefit. This one way relationship of giving is not generosity, and it does not promote a society built on balanced and mutually reliant social relationships.
When the cycle becomes one of take take take instead of give take give take, the relationship shifts from that of two people to that of a house pet. I’m not calling welfare recipients animals. Many people truly need assistance to survive. However, when dependence replaces mutual self reliance, it diminishes a distinctly human.
I’m learning the beauty of mutual self reliance. It reveals the deeper value the people in my life have, and shows me my own intrinsic value which I provide through our relationship.

Photo by Nicholas T

by Jonathan Frei

‘Better’ is between where you are now and perfect

It’s easy to get down on yourself when you’re not perfect. Being less than perfect admits a shortcoming, a failure. It’s humbling.

A common cliché used to make someone feel better after a failure is to remind them that no one is perfect. However, this condolence provides little or no consolation. That’s probably because it doesn’t take a perfect person to avoid the particular screw up that’s getting you down. It only takes a better person.

It is accepted that perfection is impossible, and it is. That being the case, the proposition also needs to be acceptable. However, it can be so difficult to accept not being perfect, that we sometimes forget perfect’s younger sibling: ‘better’.

It’s okay to not be perfect. However, this cannot be cause for complacency. The premise that nobody is perfect does not justify not trying. ‘Better’ is a great alternative to perfect because it’s situated directly between where you are now and where you’d like to be.

Also, each time you take a step to be better, you’re that much closer to perfect, and there’s another ‘better’ in close proximity for you to move towards.

Small steps in the right direction are acceptable. They are not preferable to lasting radical overnight changes, but they’re a good start. Besides, for most, they are far more realistic.

Some people are are able to make drastic changes overnight, or even over the course of a year. Here I use the word ‘some’ to describe a very small minority of very special and talented or very weird and crazy individuals.

For the rest of us, the walk towards perfection will be a long one. It will take a superhuman perseverance. This will mean committing to a daily goal with clear action items to become a better person, to change bad habits, to start good ones, to develop the way you think about things, and to inspire those around you by your actions.

And if perseverance, commitment, desire, endurance, and patience are not traits that you either possess or can develop, then it will be better to look for some quick overnight fixes. Unless you’re part of that ‘some’, they won’t work, but even a quick fix is better than no fix.

by Jonathan Frei

Can a husband and father be a radical lifestyle designer?

Consciously or not, I’ve found myself drawn to a number of lifestyle design blogs over the past few weeks. They’re filled with stories about individuals actively pursuing unconventional ways of thinking and living.

Part of this desire may stem from feeling that my life is becoming to ordinary, too formulaic. I want something drastic, something radical to break up the mundane. There shouldn’t be anything ordinary about life.
However, if I’m going to jump on this lifestyle design bandwagon, I’m going to have to come at it from a very different angle. First, I have a family who I am very much in love with and committed to, so I am , to a small degree, limited in the radical lifestyle choices I can make. My lifestyle affects others, and I must always keep them in mind.

Spending time with my baby and being a good husband are the most important things to me. This involves time and support that I must provide.

Also, I work full time in a conventional setting. I’m not as adventurous as I’d like to be and do not have a strong enough desire to be an entrepreneur to strike out on my own. Actually, I still consider myself an entrepreneur, but I only have one client: the company I work with.

Despite all these factors that seem to point to the conventional life, I think I’ll still be able to participate in extreme lifestyle design during bit of time I have left over. And that may be what makes this journey and set of experiments unique.

Can I be an unconventional thinker and passionately pursue my ideal day and life while still fulfilling my duty in what is most important in my life: loving my wife and baby?

This is a difficult question to ask. As a husband and father, there are sacrifices I must make to care well for my family. However, I have ‘me’ time in the cracks, and I don’t think that I am, right now, the best possible version of my self. And this is because I am not making full use of the cracks.

So, my goal and mission will be to use that extra time to become the best possible version of myself. I know that writing this, and the fact the my wife reads it, will mean that I’ll have at least one person to hold me accountable and to be able to witness my progress.

Photo by Ben Zvan

by Jonathan Frei

Remember Memory

(The following is from my 2005 book of poetry, Ordinary Time, which provided the inspiration for the title of this blog. I will be republishing the poems here over the next several weeks in their original order)

Remember Memory

The water, turning over on itself,
the shifting of a formless mass, swirling
in and against itself, and refusing

to cease is safe, between the embrace of
the arms that hold it dear, and know the folds,
and all within by name, and how to bend

the resistance at the edges, and pull
the waves on the receding tide into
the deepest ocean’s heart. When the ear’s sense

can finally hear the sound, the harmony,
then truth will enter in the hollowed space
and take a firm hold, deep where it belongs,

where it can grow. The plane beyond the shore
is restless and will never sleep as long
as the pockmarked moon forces it to keep

wrestling with the land. Love cannot rest
in the sleepless thrashing waves. Remember,
the strong momentum of the sea must stop

eventually—when the spinning earth rests,
When the moon drifts away, and when the sun
begins to swell up red—but until then,

on the darkest shore that strikes land, forget
the words. Remember the revolutions
of reality’s struggle. Remember

the sounds that lined the edges in the dark,
the soft returning and the withdrawing
of the slow waves at night and the way they

can drag a pebble out to sea and drown
it in itself. Forget the words spoken.
Forgive the lies. Forget the truth and listen

to the sounds dragging in the waves. Forget
that waves have washed the shore before. Forget
the sound remembered. Listen to the sound.

For only the sound can tell what is there,
and only what is there can uncover
what is not, and separate memory.
 

by Jonathan Frei