Today is my birthday. I am not going to confess my age but here’s a
hint: Jesus was crucified at this age. That got me thinking about
what I have really accomplished in my life up until now. Admittedly,
if Jesus is the measuring stick, then I find myself gravely
disappointed by my lack of accomplishments. However, Jesus’ real A-
list status emerged after his death, which is sort of an awkward
thing to contemplate.

But enough of that. Now that I am a dad, I guess I am supposed to say
that my greatest accomplishment is my little Chindian son (mom is
Chinese and I am Indian). And while objectively that’s true: he’s
happy and healthy and pretty darn cute, call me ego-driven, but I
still feel like I need to look at something I have built or created
over the long haul, and draw a degree of satisfaction and
accomplishment from that. (Also at this stage when I look at my five-
month old son, I really must deem all credit for his existence thus
far to my wife). The thing is though, when I was younger, I always
looked at this age that I am now, and set certain milestones that I
wanted to have achieved by now. Admittedly, some of them may be
considered rather shallow – having a certain “net value” in my bank
account, having established a specific brand in certain professional
industries, etc – but they were goals nevertheless.
Now that I am here at the age that I am, some of those achievements
are murky. Indeed I have established some of the net value, albeit in
debt. I have established the professional pedigree, though a quick
google search will reveal my name linked to Jenna Jameson’s in my
latest creative endeavor. And yet, I feel decidedly unsatisfied. I
feel this nagging suspicion that I need a new set of goals to aim
for, stuff that may not be as, well, superficial. Without getting too
esoteric and existential, my sense now is that I am part of a
planetary community and ecosystem where my own agenda can’t really be
singularly defined or separated from the world around me. My
adulthood – and for the first time in my life I actually feel adult
responsibility – is defined by the “inconvenient truth” that
everything from our economy to our ecosystem to our nation’s
relevancy and security is likely to be significantly worse than it
was than the generation before us.
So where does that leave me, err us? Hey, I’m no Jesus and don’t have
all the answers…yet. But stay tuned.