I have not written much in the past year.
My last post, You Get What You Get, was about the year-end rating system at my company, and a few weeks back we kicked off this year’s process. Almost a year gone by without any writing.
A lot has changed in that time. I started going back to church 18 months ago and was finally confirmed as a Catholic. I no longer run as much as I used to, and spend more of my time in the gym. Anne and I celebrated our third wedding anniversary and Toby turned three years old. I shaved my beard for the first time since 2022, then grew it back.
And far more important than any of that, Anne and I became parents. To twins.
The babies were born a few weeks early, in the beginning of November, and spent about a month in the NICU before we were able to bring them home this past weekend. As you could guess, shuttling back and forth to see our babies in the hospital is not how we envisioned our first month as new parents. Particularly for Anne, who carried both children in her body for 34 straight weeks, leaving them alone in the hospital each night was terrible – scary, frustrating, and sad to go home without the two beautiful, vulnerable little babies she had just brought into the world.
Looking back on the experience now, I’m amazed with how easily we got through what was otherwise a very difficult time. Maybe it was the lack of sleep, or our own ignorance of the NICU process, but at no point did we fall back on the self-destructive coping mechanisms all of us are far too familiar with:
- Self-pity (why is this happening to me?)
- Jealousy (why isn’t this happening to them?)
- Despair (will this ever get better?)
- Blame (whose fault is this?)
I could go on.
For some reason, other than some healthy frustration at hospital processes, Anne and I were able to stay sane throughout the whole ordeal.
Why?
Because babies make it easy to see the silver lining in a difficult situation.
Despite the circumstances we found ourselves in, there was a ton for Anne and I to be thankful for over the past month. From the minute they came into this world, both babies were as healthy as could be for 34 weeks old. They never required ventilators, caffeine, intubation, or any of the more intensive interventions used in the NICU to nurse premature babies back to health. They had a team of excellent nurses and doctors watching them 24/7. And best of all, the time we spent with them in the hospital turned out to be an amazing crash course in parenting for both of us.
Would it have been preferable to bring our babies home right away? Of course. But we were also fortunate to get help becoming parents. We were fortunate to have healthy babies. We were fortunate just to get to hold our babies for a single moment. Not everyone gets that.
It is relatively easy to find silver linings when it comes to children, because everything about a new life is so clearly a blessing, but it can be much harder to do so in other areas of our lives. Where is the silver lining in being fired, or experiencing a death in the family? In those situations, it takes a concerted effort to focus on the good that could come from the situation, rather than the bad that has happened.
Ryan Holiday has written about this choice extensively. As he puts it:
“We can choose to look at something as an obstacle or an opportunity. We can see chaos if we look close, we can see order if we look from afar. We can focus on our lack of agency in what has happened or we can focus on what we do control, which is how we respond.”
Or, as I recently heard on a podcast: “It is with God.” What’s done is done. Anne and I weren’t going to change the fact that our babies came early or the additional care that they required. All we could do was be grateful and make the most of the hand we were dealt.
Looking ahead at this next chapter of my life as a dad, it seems more important than ever to develop a mindset that looks for the positive in difficult situations. Just because these babies came into this world as two joyful blessings doesn’t mean that is how I’ll always feel about them. Already, after just one night with both of them home, I found myself getting frustrated by their crying! Positivity and gratitude are not simply light switches to flick on but require a lifetime to cultivate.
All of us can spend more time in 2025 asking ourselves:
“Since this had to happen to me, what can I take from it?”
– Emmett
What I’m Listening To:
Be Thou My Vision – Audrey Assad (Spotify, Youtube)
‘O Sole Mio – Luciano Pavorotti & Others (Spotify, Youtube)
Stumblin’ In – CYRIL (Spotify, Youtube)