This Matters More Than Anything

The utter aliveness that keeps our souls from going numb.

The last few weeks cracked something open in me. In partnership with my wife, the goddess that she is, I’ve been surfing weekly, and I took a midweek trip to climb a mountain six hours away.

Last night, dropping backwards off my board into the water, salt in my mouth, hair in my eyes, something primal erupted. I was giddy with wild energy. I wanted to scream,

"Are you kidding me? Holy shit. This is unreal."

Not because it was the biggest wave or the longest ride. Although, it felt like it for me. The same way it wasn’t the highest peak or the hardest climb, it was the feeling of losing my grip a thousand feet up a cliffside, smashing into the rock, and realizing I was still held. That I could get back up. Try again.

It wasn’t about the wave or the fall. It was about what it woke up in me.

I paddled in, the wave grabbed me, I popped up, and this thought blasted through my system: Goddamn, I love being alive.

Not in some tidy, gratitude-journal kinda way. I mean lit up. Buzzing. Laughing like a madman. It made me realize the truth I've spent years trying to tame:

This part of me, that is undeniably me… wild, childlike, uncontainable zest.
It's the part I’ve tried to subdue, to domesticate, because it’s “too much,” “not grounded,” “makes people uncomfortable.”

But fuck that. This is the real ground.

What if we stopped dimming the parts of us that love too much? That feel too much? That get wrecked by a sunrise, or giddy over a perfect wave, or brought to tears by a song or book that radically changes how we perceive the world? Inside, I always feel like that guy… everything is life changing. If there was an emoji to describe much of my experiences, even the simplest of them … it would be this 🤯 (ask my wife)

This isn’t self-indulgence. (Albeit, as I pulled out of the driveway and left my wife with our four kids, a part of me sure wanted me to feel a lot of guilt.)

It’s fuel. It’s fatherhood medicine.

It’s the raw vitality that pours into how I love my wife, how I show up with my kids, how I lead men, and move through the world.

I’m a husband. A father of four. I run a business. Sure, lots to be responsible for. But these moments, the ones that set my soul on fire, are not luxuries. They are necessities. That I, too, must be responsible for.

They reconnect me to a deeper source of energy no hack, no strategy, no material success can replicate.

This matters more than we let ourselves admit. Especially as men. Especially now.

We’ve been trained to suppress joy. To keep our wild hearts leashed. To pretend we’re unmoved, that nothing touches us, nothing thrills us, nothing shakes us to the core.

I wish I could replay the voice memos of my surf reports that I sent to a couple buddies... they were full-on blasts of shared energy and love for life.

I have it that the world is starving for men who are vibrantly, unapologetically alive. Not reckless, not adolescent, not escaping their responsibilities... but fiercely rooted in something real. Something untamable.

In conversations this week, guy after guy made comments like:
"What did you do, brainwash Bess?"
"How are you doing these things?"

They all kind of had that must be nice undertone, even if unintentional.

It makes sense. In a world of endless responsibility, most men are living under a constant weight. The burden to provide, protect, perform... without ever feeding our own fire.

Our deepest needs get put on the back burner. Always. Until we wake up. Until we’re really fucking honest. Unless we learn to lead differently, creating true partnership, building lives that nourish everyone in the family, not just drain us dry.

Unless we bring the undeniable intensity of our aliveness back into the home where it belongs... where it enlivens, not escapes.

Maybe this writing is a permission slip. For me. For you.

To stop hiding our excitement.
To stop pretending our awe is immature or unserious.
To stop apologizing for our joy.
To stop hiding the part of us that is borderline or even full blown crazy.

To let ourselves feel, really fucking feel… the miracle of being here.

And to let that feeling change us.
Shape how we father.
Shape how we lead.
Shape how we love.

It’s the heartbeat. The heartbeat that co-regulates our wild little creatures, and allows their true natures to flourish.