“I want to go on a road trip to Colorado in July with my friends.” Words I didn’t expect to hear from my son.
He’s hated being the car for almost all of his 18 years – occasionally carsick, usually a complainer. Anything more than an hour drive was a hard “no” for him (if he had the choice which, given our family of 6, he rarely did).
Also he didn’t like… to do that many things. Reading was his jam when he was a boy; he read constantly. He’d opt for his book over bike riding or a canoe trip or getting together with pals, holing himself up for hours on end. Friends said, “Why complain? The kid’s reading – every mom’s dream!” And they weren’t wrong. It was great that he read. I just wanted him to also get out there and engage enough with the world.
Engage. The key word. To engage is to roll up your sleeves and get involved. It’s to Do The Thing: paint the canvas, go to baseball practice, bake the muffin, strum the chord, play Uno, fix the car.
We flourish as humans when we choose and act for the good – for beauty, knowledge, truth, friendship, play, life (these are called “the basic goods”). Every act we take toward one of these leads toward big-picture thriving. Natural law – the set of universal truths common to all humans and discovered through reason – teaches us this.
We don’t flourish when we choose and act against the good. And we don’t flourish when we sidestep the goods, when we just abstain.
Disengagement is sidestepping the goods, failing to act. It’s letting that blue sky light up the day while you laze for hours on the couch. Staring at your phone when your friend’s sitting on the next stool, hankering for a conversation. Thumbing the video game controller in the basement while there’s a live music festival happening down the street.
Flourishing is never passive but necessarily active. The goods don’t rush up to us like an enthusiastic little dog and jump into our lap. That’s not how it works. They have to be sought after, and they have to be actually achieved. Person by person. Day by day. Can’t be outsourced.
Passivity is the enemy because it’s leaving the goods sitting continually on offer, untouched. It’s a choice to starve ourselves of the goods.
And this passivity is turning out to be near fatal to us moderns, the great tragedy of our time. We are The Culture of the Disengaged – having things done for us by our modern inventions, lulled to complacence by convenience, addicted to comfort and ease and “safety.” Unaware that our failure to act is thwarting and even crushing us.
We are made for goodness, truth, and beauty. We come alive as we pursue and interact with the goods. Our souls expand and smile.
Why would we want to miss this?
Flourishing accrues, a rolling stone gathering moss, as we gain experience in taking action toward the good. The more we put ourselves out there and experience meaningful things, the more we realize it’s worth doing. Our mindset shifts, and then our habits do. My son (who still enjoys reading, btw) is an example.
And so a plan for a cross country road trip begins to take shape, with its road maps and route-planning and rotating of the tires. There’s schedule coordinating to be done, safety lessons to be imparted, calls about car insurance and Triple A – the ingredients for a life, eventually, ripe with joy. The road trip, after all, is the gateway to new vistas of beauty, a laughter-filled car, campsite fires, that unforgettable lunch at the ridiculous roadside diner. So we embrace and make room for the logistics that lead to the trip, that leads to the thriving.
Have an experience.
Live your adventure.
This is the path to the good life. Heres’s to engaging.
Timely article to come across after I spent my last morning on a beach in Spain, contemplating just this. It's my biggest wish for my children that they choose a life of service and passion. I love that your son is choosing this in his own timing! That's been my biggest lesson raising a teenager... let them come to it on their own. They will :).
I hope it's a great trip for him!