Of Bonding

Angry Chibi Buddha

The subtitle for this one should probably be "(A Rant for Saff)" since he's, likely, one of the only people who will be motivated to follow this through.

I think it's appropriate to go here as it's about my trip with my brother and my Dad, and it's about New Years Resolutions, and it's about being repressed (as the Japanese sometimes are), and it's about the ways that our society approaches certain things--approaches that really piss me off.

What's more, it's about something I believe in very passionately.

So, without further screwing around, here she be:

You have to realize something:

The majority of our Supercalafragilisticexpialidotion Father-Sons Miracle Bonding Vacation was spent in silence. We'd walk around, we'd look at stuff, and, if pressed, Dad would reveal how amazed he was about the construction of the stuff we saw. We didn't sit around, crying and giving each other hugs. It's not how we do things. Not ever. It's not who we are.

You go on and on and on about how we need to have this epic, father-son bonding vacation together. What you have to realize is that we don't need it because we're beyond it. We don't need to have two weeks together in a foreign land to tell each other how much we mean to one another because we do it every time we have dinner together. I don't need some big bonding adventure with Dad because a long time ago I realized I needed to see him and talk to him more, so I made a point of going over there every week for dinner, and we'd talk for hours thereafter. Every time Craig, Dad, and I sit down together around Dad's table, we're bonding. We've been doing it for years.

People who don't talk about their feelings and don't tell their loved ones that they love them often enough need big, epic, bonding experience adventures. They need a new setting to share their feelings because they are, for some reason, too afraid to do so in their standard settings. It's like the Japanese when they drink to let go: relying on a change of state--whether it be a mental one from inebriation or a physical one from travel--to break down the barriers you've set up around yourself.

People who talk about "Bonding" need an excuse to do it. They give intimacy and sharing a name, set it on a shelf, and they keep telling themselves they need to get to it some day. And, in so doing, they never get to it. It's like making a New Year's Resolution: you realize you're not doing enough of something, and you set that something on a shelf as a lofty goal and one of two things happen:

1) You achieve your goal by forcing yourself to do it. You don't do it because it's natural or right or it moves you. You do it because you have to, and you're motivating yourself with guilt.

OR

2) You never achieve your goal precisely because you've set it on a shelf. By making it your Resolution--your Goal--you endow it with an extra bearing...you make it bigger than it ought to be by making it something that's so hard to do that you need to make a resolution to do it. It carries all the guilt of you not having done it before, and that guilt makes it seem all the more insurmountable.

People who never mention the word bonding are, in all likelihood, the people who are already doing it. Instead of attaching a name to it, putting it down on their list of things to do, and saying they need to get to it one day, they do it naturally--organically: just like breathing, just like circulation. They go to the people they need to go to, they say the things they need to say. I'm not saying it's easy to do. I'm saying that when you do it, you have to do it naturally.

If you slot in "bonding experience" on your calendar, and you schedule a defined amount of time for it, you are destined to fail. The exchange will be stilted, synthetic, defined. At 11:00 am The Bonding will commence, and at 1:00 pm The Bonding will be completed. You cannot bond with someone on a schedule. It's not a matter of gaining bonding points through scheduled interactions until you gather enough to trade in for a bonding level.

I guess what I'm trying to get down to is a cliché:

Talk is cheap.

Don't talk about bonding. Don't talk about New Year's Resolutions.

Just do it.

I don't like talking about bonding; I just try to do it.

So, on our Jones Family Trip, what we did was spend time together and see stuff together. There was nothing overtly deep and meaningful about it in the instant; that kind of stuff comes with time. The kind of Hallmark, saccharine sentimentality that you seem to be hoping for never transpired, and I'm glad it didn't as it would have been false--for all of us. Any bonding or life changing that occurred occurred silently, inside our heads, and it's the kind of bonding and life changing that Daddio will seldom if ever talk about, but it's the thing that will occur to him with a smile when he's sitting on his own somewhere.

We are what we are, and this trip will be what it will be. To try to force it to be anything else--to try to force it to be meaningful in a loud, showy, let's-talk-about-it way would be to counterfeit the experience. The meaning exists inside our heads. It's as real in there as our names and our passions. To try to make broad, sweeping, heart-warming statements about it is to cheapen it.

In short, I don't think I can give you the answer you're looking for because that answer would be a lie. Just know that this was good. I enjoyed it, and I think Craig and Dad enjoyed it, too.