The Things I Want

I want to become the person I would look up to. I want to change, moving forward every minute, every hour, every year. I want for wisdom to take the place of my declining intellectual aptitude. But always, I want to be sharp, if only ‘for my age.’ I want to gain the ability to say exactly the right thing at exactly the right time.

For profession, if I ever do anything that I do not love, let it be from necessity and not greed; let money never be a justification for unhappiness. I want to reinvent myself often enough to fend off boredom but never to the extent to which I’d render myself unrecognizable to those I love, above the new clothes and new business card, my core values still audible in the very tenor of my voice.

And of religion, I want to take my family to church, not because I believe in God, but because I believe that children need Gods to ward off the Monsters. Adults do, too, sometimes. I want to believe in human freedom, whether or not it really exists, and I want to rely on this faith to get me through hard times. I want the hard times to be few, but to stop by once in awhile to say hello, a cold blustery wind in February reminding me I’m alive, convincing me that this is not all just a dream.

I want to have a few trusted friends, but I want to be trusted even by distant ones. My schedule notwithstanding, I always want to make time to listen to a story that needs listening. I want for my advice always to be heartfelt and well-meaning, if nothing else.

Of my prejudice and discrimination, I hope that it be Just and never at the expense of someone’s humanity, God’s secret ingredient, the locus of all that is great and beautiful in human achievement, that which is found in equal proportion of prince and pauper, black, white, yellow and brown.

I want to be the lesser half of the greatest couple ever. I want to find my wife beautiful long after we have become a pair of comfortable shoes, my heart being more perceptive than the eye. I want to be inspired by her, to be lifted up, suspended there as long as my days. I want for her mere presence to warm me, a welcoming hearth by which to remove my boots and take refuge from the cold. I want us to agree often, and fight fairly when we don’t. I want for sacrifice to be the tie that binds us, selfless love being the highest ideal of which man is capable. I want to make her laugh even long after our bodies have grown tired. I want to overhear my wife’s friends say, “You have the best husband ever.” I want to be the best husband ever. I want for the first day I loved her to pale in comparison to the last day we had each other; in the beginning it was never enough, in the end, it was everything I needed.

When I was 22 years old a friend said to me, “I’ve never met anyone who’s so comfortable in his own skin.” I want for that to have been true then and I want for that to be true in 50 years.

I look forward to when time has stretched the truth behind my stories, a time when I appear like a giant, but only in retrospect. I want those I love to know all the stories by heart. When my dad passes, I want to refer to him as the greatest man I ever knew; my mother as a saint.

I want to build my dream house with my own two hands.

I want to learn to eat my vegetables.

I want to coach my son’s baseball team, teach him the art of the changeup, in life and pitching, and teach him how to roam centerfield, how to be a good teammate. I want to teach him how to shoot the 3-ball and the crossover. I want him to teach him to win with honor and lose with grace, sport being a crude approximation of life. I want to teach him that few things in life are as important as gaining the respect and admiration of great men. I want to gain the respect and admiration of great men. When my eldest son finally beats his old man in arm wrestling, by then, I hope to have taught him everything he needs to know to live a happy and fulfilling life. By then, I hope to have learned those lessons myself. I hope to be able to let go, allowing him to spread his wings, stumble yes, but on his way to great heights. I want to overhear his friends comment, “You have the best dad ever.” I want to be the best dad ever.

If I have a daughter, dear God nothing scares me as much as having to raise a daughter, I hope to be the kind of father that will encourage her to have healthy relationships with men. I hope to muster enough restraint not to beat up her boyfriend, though I hope to keep him leery. Over and above all circumstance, I want to protect and provide for my family. I want the best part of my day to be the return home, unlocking the front door.

However old I get, however successful I become, I hope never to forget the importance of being able to laugh at myself, taking oneself too seriously the number one cause of heart disease and sadness. I want to see the Mets win the World Series again. I want to jump up and down like a little kid. I want to sing at the top of my lungs.

Of a few things, I want to stay the same. I want to remain fortunate. I want to remain the idealist, cynicism not being the cure but the malady. I want to defy all that is ugly around me and find beauty in all things, though in some more than in others. I want to remain the romantic. I want my dog to live forever, his muzzle grey with age, his spirit still bouncing like a puppy. I want for him to add levity to my life, his eyebrow furrowed trying to reach the ball that rolled underneath the coffee table, his earnest belief that the greatest thing in the world is a good belly rub. I want to never feel as though I have it all figured out. Rather, I want to approach the truth like the horizon, always a destination at which never to be arrived. I want to always have a decent jump shot, because shooters need to shoot, as if by religion, even if only enough to keep the defense honest. I want to always remain active, the sedentary life being the home of disease and self-loathing.

I want to find a back country road now and then, as if by accident or by design, and I want to drive, drive, drive, under that canopy of autumn leaves or accompanied by that unmistakable buzz of spring, never letting traffic jams or aggressive drivers usurp my love for the road. I want to never be so important that I can’t get lost for a little while. I want to experience the journey, bring the background to the foreground at times.

I hope to find 1 novel, 1 poem, 1 song, and 1 painting that I feel were made just for me and I want to consume them over and over and over. The places I frequent, I want to be known by name and to be greeted by a smile; if in a big city, I want to carve out my own four corners. I want to travel to far off places where no one knows my name, places where one can be a completely different person, or completely oneself.

I want to drive a safe car and keep the speed limit, not out of reverence for the law, but because I have people whom I love too much to take unnecessary risks.

I want to grow more economical in my diction, not taking 500 words to get to the point, but always appreciating the place of words without true function. I want to have one of my poems published. I want to read it out loud at a hole-in-the-wall coffee shop, my personal Carnegie Hall. I want one of my painting to hang in a museum. Or maybe an elementary school.

I want for you to have read this far.

I want to always see myself as a student, regardless of my station in life. I want to have a voracious appetite for the written word and an equal hunger for the spoken one.

Even when gray, I want to go to the window during a thunderstorm and bow before nature’s majesty, wonder and awe being two things that keep you young at heart. For the most part, I want to be consistent. On occasion, I want to let myself believe the unbelievable, desire the impossible, and strive for the unreachable, contradiction being one of the things that keeps you interesting. But, I want to be grounded, for my roots to take deep. I want to love what I have, not because I have it, but because I earned it and because it is all I need.

At the end, I want for the good things I’ve done number too many to remember, the bad things to be few and seared in memory, so as never to be repeated. I want to have been content. I want for it all to have been worth it. I want to have done it right. I want to have lived not too much, but just enough, my days on this earth filled to the brim, pregnant with meaning. I want this list not to end.