Rebel Talk: The Manual

I bought something the other day that came with a 47-page instruction manual.

Forty-seven pages. Warnings, diagrams, troubleshooting, maintenance schedules, a whole section explaining what to do if something doesn't work the way it's supposed to.

Side note — does a word ever suddenly look completely wrong to anyone else?

I know how to spell "manual." I've seen the word a thousand times. But after typing it a couple times while writing this, I stared at it long enough that it didn't look right anymore and I actually had to Google it to make sure I was spelling it correctly. 😂

Please tell me I'm not the only person who does that.

Anyway... manual.

It got me thinking. They'll give you detailed instructions for assembling a coffee table, operating a thermostat, or using some random piece of equipment you bought off Amazon. Half the stuff we buy comes with instructions nobody even reads.

But where the hell is the manual for everything that actually matters?

Seriously.

They'll hand you a newborn baby and basically say, "Good luck."

I remember bringing my first son home from the hospital. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. None. And they literally just let us leave with him.

I remember thinking, That's it? Nobody is coming with us? You're trusting ME with this thing?

There wasn't someone waiting at home to tell us what to do next. There wasn't a troubleshooting section. There wasn't a number to call because the baby had been crying for three hours and nothing you were doing seemed to work.

You just figured it out.

And somehow, that's what we did.

You keep them alive. You learn what different cries mean. You learn how little sleep a human being can apparently survive on. You get through diapers and bottles and daycare and preschool. Then elementary school. Sports. Friends. Homework. Problems that slowly start becoming bigger than skinned knees.

Eventually you start thinking maybe you've got this parenting thing somewhat figured out.

Then they become teenagers.

And suddenly the manual you never had wouldn't matter anyway, because somebody apparently changed all the rules.

One day they want your advice. The next day you're the dumbest human being they've ever encountered.

Some days I walk away from a conversation with my boys thinking, Damn. That was some pretty solid parenting.

Other days I walk away thinking, Well... they're definitely going to remember that one.

The funny thing is, I remember being their age.

And I remember looking at my parents and thinking they were old.

Not elderly old. Just... adults.

Real adults.

They had everything figured out.

At least that's how it looked to me.

They knew where we were going. They knew what time we had to leave. They knew how much things cost. They knew what we could afford and what we couldn't. They knew how to fix things. They knew what I was supposed to do, even when I was absolutely certain they were wrong.

There was never a moment when I stopped and thought, I wonder if Mom and Dad have any clue what they're doing?

Of course they did.

They were my parents.

Now I'm over 40.

Which, when I was 14, would have sounded approximately 106.

And here's the crazy part.

I don't feel like the adult I thought my parents were.

I don't have it all figured out.

Not even close.

And somewhere along the way, I realized something about them too.

They didn't either.

They were figuring it out just like I am.

There were probably nights they went to bed wondering if they'd made the right decision. There were probably conversations about money I never heard. Things they worried about that I knew nothing about. Decisions they made confidently in front of us and then questioned privately afterward.

Maybe there were times they walked away from a conversation with me thinking the exact same thing I sometimes think after talking to my boys:

Did I handle that right?

You don't understand that when you're a kid.

Your parents are just your parents.

Then one day you're standing where they were standing, and you realize they were just people.

People doing the best they could with the information they had at the time.

That's a strange realization.

And it's not just parenting.

It's pretty much everything.

Relationships don't come with manuals. Neither does divorce. Nobody hands you instructions for building a business, losing money, making money, or figuring out what the hell you're supposed to do with it once you finally have some.

Nobody tells you how much risk is too much.

Nobody tells you when you've worked enough.

Nobody tells you exactly how much time you should spend building something versus enjoying what you've already built.

There's no chapter explaining when you should push harder and when you should back off. When you should speak up and when you should shut up. When you should hold on and when you should finally let something go.

And there sure as hell isn't a chapter explaining how you're supposed to balance all of those things at the same time.

You just make decisions.

Then you live with them.

Sometimes you get them right.

Sometimes you don't.

I've owned businesses for years. I'm still figuring things out.

I've been a dad for almost 15 years. Still figuring that out too.

I've bought properties, built things, screwed things up, fixed things, learned to fly an airplane, and somehow accumulated enough life experience that people occasionally come to me for advice.

Which is terrifying.

Because there are still plenty of days when I'm standing there thinking...

I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing.

And maybe that's one of the biggest surprises about getting older.

I always assumed there would be some point where I'd finally feel like I had arrived.

Like someday I'd wake up and think:

Okay. I get it now. I know how life works.

I'm starting to realize that day probably isn't coming.

And strangely enough, I'm becoming okay with that.

Maybe that's actually the manual.

You try something.

Sometimes it works.

Sometimes you screw it up.

You learn.

You adjust.

You apologize when you need to.

You ask somebody who knows more than you.

Sometimes you ignore the person who knows more than you, screw it up anyway, and then realize you probably should have listened to them in the first place.

You make the best decision you can with what you know at the time.

Then you turn the page and deal with whatever comes next.

And eventually you realize something.

Nobody knows what the next page says.

Not me.

Not you.

And apparently, not our parents either.

We're all writing it as we go.

So if you're sitting there wondering why everyone else seems to have life figured out while you're still trying to make sense of yours, maybe stop comparing your behind-the-scenes to what everybody else is showing you.

Because they don't have it all figured out either.

Some of us have just gotten really good at looking like we do.

And maybe having your shit together isn't knowing all the answers.

Maybe it's understanding that you're never going to have all the answers — and being okay with that.

There isn't a manual for this life.

Turns out...

We're the ones writing it.