What Must Be Allowed to Wait

I would like to end this chapter by saying I have learned to close the laptop and leave the work inside it.

I have not.

Sometimes I close it and remain mentally attached to the unfinished problem. Sometimes I keep working when she says nothing, even as I interpret her body language as a sign that I should be present with her. The pattern has not disappeared because I can now describe it.

Description still matters. A force that remains unnamed can present itself as necessity. Once I can see its motives and costs, I can no longer say that every additional hour simply happened to me.

This book is itself unfinished. So are the applications, the company I am building, my health, my relationships, and the kind of man I hope to become. If I require permanent completion before I permit myself to be present, presence will remain postponed for the rest of my life.

Finishing cannot redeem every hour already spent. It cannot prove that time I was not present or attention Misha did not receive was secretly a good bargain. The value of the work must be judged honestly, but so must its cost.

That judgment will not always tell me to stop. There will be nights when the promise, deadline, or problem rightly deserves sustained attention. Love does not require me to become less capable, less serious, or afraid of difficult work.

It does require me to stop using capability as its own command.

Misha has said she is not afraid that I will be a good father. Her concern is that I may let work consume me and interfere with being present. I hear in that concern no demand that I abandon ambition. I hear a warning that the people I hope to serve through my work may include the people who need me to stop working.

I am still learning what becoming better for her means. I once imagined that the answer would be visible in what I completed: the application launched, the company established, the book finished, the future secured.

Now I think part of the answer is found in what I am willing to leave incomplete.

Not forever. Not carelessly. Not because excellence has ceased to matter.

Because another good has the higher claim in that moment.

The unfinished thing will continue to pull. My mind may keep returning to it after the screen goes dark. Presence is not a condition I achieve once and keep. It is a choice I may have to make repeatedly, sometimes before my attention agrees to follow.

I do not need the work to release me first.

I need to learn, however imperfectly, to release it.