Today is my birthday. I am not going to confess my age but here’s a
\nhint: Jesus was crucified at this age. That got me thinking about
\nwhat I have really accomplished in my life up until now. Admittedly,
\nif Jesus is the measuring stick, then I find myself gravely
\ndisappointed by my lack of accomplishments. However, Jesus’ real A-
\nlist status emerged after his death, which is sort of an awkward
\nthing to contemplate.<\/p>\n
\nBut enough of that. Now that I am a dad, I guess I am supposed to say
\nthat my greatest accomplishment is my little Chindian son (mom is
\nChinese and I am Indian). And while objectively that’s true: he’s
\nhappy and healthy and pretty darn cute, call me ego-driven, but I
\nstill feel like I need to look at something I have built or created
\nover the long haul, and draw a degree of satisfaction and
\naccomplishment from that. (Also at this stage when I look at my five-
\nmonth old son, I really must deem all credit for his existence thus
\nfar to my wife). The thing is though, when I was younger, I always
\nlooked at this age that I am now, and set certain milestones that I
\nwanted to have achieved by now. Admittedly, some of them may be
\nconsidered rather shallow – having a certain “net value” in my bank
\naccount, having established a specific brand in certain professional
\nindustries, etc – but they were goals nevertheless.
\nNow that I am here at the age that I am, some of those achievements
\nare murky. Indeed I have established some of the net value, albeit in
\ndebt. I have established the professional pedigree, though a quick
\ngoogle search will reveal my name linked to Jenna Jameson’s in my
\nlatest creative endeavor. And yet, I feel decidedly unsatisfied. I
\nfeel this nagging suspicion that I need a new set of goals to aim
\nfor, stuff that may not be as, well, superficial. Without getting too
\nesoteric and existential, my sense now is that I am part of a
\nplanetary community and ecosystem where my own agenda can’t really be
\nsingularly defined or separated from the world around me. My
\nadulthood – and for the first time in my life I actually feel adult
\nresponsibility – is defined by the “inconvenient truth” that
\neverything from our economy to our ecosystem to our nation’s
\nrelevancy and security is likely to be significantly worse than it
\nwas than the generation before us.
\nSo where does that leave me, err us? Hey, I’m no Jesus and don’t have
\nall the answers…yet. But stay tuned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":126,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-parenting"],"yoast_head":"\n