“Hey guy!”
Those were the words that a mustached older gentleman yelled at me while I was doing some final Thanksgiving shopping in a Fred Myers grocery (the grocery store in the Pacific Northwest—it was to my utter shock and horror as a kid when my California relatives informed me it did not exist in their state). We had traveled to Washington state to see my family for Thanksgiving and my wife, one-year old daughter, and I were still coming off the time-warp sensation one feels when they travel across our vast country. And now, to add to the dysphoria, this ominous and mysterious figure loomed before me.
Those who know me well know I despise shopping. When I go into a store, I have one mission: get in and out as fast as possible. Naturally, this day was no different, so I proposed a divide and conquer strategy to my wife. She would give me items to hunt down in the grocery which I’d quickly obtain like a faithful golden retriever. I had just fetched some black beans and returned to my family in the fruit section when the mysterious man announced himself. We stared at each other. Time slowed.
Do I know this guy? He wasn’t jogging the memory banks. Then I thought about my attire, I was wearing a Washington Huskies sweatshirt, and a week earlier I’d watched my beloved alma mater put up 400+ yards through the air on the Oregon Ducks. It was a glorious victory over our hated rival in Autzen Stadium in Eugene. Perhaps this man was a disgruntled Duck fan, enraged at the Washington beat down his team had received. I envisioned him taking a swing at me. Then I’d tackle him into the apple stand while moms throughout Fred Myer watched in horror as we slugged it out, fruit debris flying haphazardly through the air.
Instead, the man finally said, “How’d a guy like you end up with these two beautiful gals?”
I was still reeling from my imagination’s wild fruit-stand dust-up and responded with some nervous laughter and a “I don’t know, I’m truly blessed.”
He chuckled, then said, “Happy Thanksgiving,” and walked away. My wife and I laughed about the experience and continued shopping. But the man’s words stuck with me.
2022 has been one of the more incredible years of my life. It’s been my first full year with one of my new best friends, my one-year-old daughter, Harper. I watched the miracle of life take form in her, saw a personality begin to emerge, and experienced the unconditional love parents have for their kids. I got to see my wife as a mom for the first time and observe the beautiful new shades of her character that developed as a result. I started a new job at a company I’m excited about that I believe has big prospects ahead. And I co-founded this publication with my good friend, Jean-Luc Currie.
This is our seventh issue and it’s been fun to look back and reflect on what we’ve done so far. And in that introspection, it’s brought me face to face with one of the driving forces behind this project: ambition.
It’s a funny thing, ambition. It can provide the fuel needed to work harder and enable you to push past your perceived limits. But it can also lead into dark, selfish areas of character. When I’m honest, in the rawest sense of the word, and look at the motivations that sometimes drive me, I have to acknowledge that they’re not always good. Sometimes it’s simply because I want to be perceived as someone who’s done something great. And through that greatness obtain wealth, control, and influence. But when I’m fueled by this sort of ambition, it often leads to dramatic mood swings when hours of effort collapse into failure.
During our visit to the Northwest, my wife and I spent a day enjoying Portland. We went to the rose garden in Washington Park that overlooks downtown and gazes towards the eastern Cascade Mountain range. We wandered the surrounding historic neighborhoods where literal castles and architectural marvels owned by the old-money and elite of the Rose City stand proud on the hillside. Even though I grew up in the region, I’d never explored these neighborhoods and my jaw dropped as I stared at their expansive, intricate designs. They sat perched on the hill overlooking the Willamette Valley like the gods’ throne room on Mount Olympus. And as we walked the streets, I fantasized and dreamed of owning one myself.
I’d host friends and family (generous with my wealth of course) for a holiday feast–the buffet table strategically positioned near a wide window displaying the city below. People would meander through the vast hallways thinking as they explored, wow, Matt really made something of himself. How quickly our imagination can lead us into sickening displays of ego.
So, as we wandered this majestic neighborhood, staring at homes I’d never be able to afford ($2 million was the low end, the internet informed us), suddenly the memory of our grocery store visit popped back into my head. And the peculiar old man who reminded me I’ve already got it made. How quickly I’d forgotten the great treasure of my family. Such is the human experience.
Earlier in our Portland adventure, we swung by Powell’s Books – an iconic site that claims to be the largest used bookstore in the world. If you’re a reader, it’s easy to get lost in the labyrinth of book-stacked shelves and multiple floors of the store. I picked up a memoir by a monk named Thomas Merton called “The Seven Story Mountain” in which Merton reflects on his lifelong spiritual journey to know God.
Early in his life, Merton was fueled by a deep ambition to be great and experience all that the world had to offer. He directed himself towards the highest realms of intellectual achievement studying first at Cambridge, then Columbia, to pursue an education he hoped would lead to a career as a prolific writer, poet, or professor. But the more he sought to achieve these aims, the more unsatisfied he became. Merton writes:
"I had at last become a true child of the modern world, completely tangled up in petty and useless concerns with myself, and almost incapable of even considering or understanding anything that was important to my own true interests. Here I was, scarcely four years after I had left Oakham and walked out into the world that I thought I was going to ransack and rob of all its pleasures and satisfactions. I had done what I intended, and now I found that it was I who was emptied and robbed and gutted. What a strange thing! In filling myself, I had emptied myself. In grasping things, I had lost everything. In devouring pleasures and joys, I had found distress and anguish and fear."
Here I was in Portland, home to corporate juggernaut Nike where slogans like “Greatness is not born, it is made” and “What you do is up to you. Just do it”, would spur me on to try and one day obtain one of these glorious mansions on the hill. Yet Merton’s wisdom quietly spoke of the ends of such self-centered pursuits. I could spend years working to amass the wealth needed to purchase such a home only to find like the monk did that “in grasping things, I had lost everything.”
So fittingly in the Thanksgiving season, God sent a messenger to me (in the grocery section of Fred Myers of all places) to remind me to be grateful for what He has given to me. A beautiful family, good friends, a job, a home, and so many other things that would turn this essay into something far too long to read.
I had a pastor who once told me, “For the Christian, there’s no such thing as coincidence.” So on the plane ride home when a cowboy from Eastern Oregon sat down in the seat across the aisle, looked at my family, and said, “Son, do you have any idea how blessed you are?” I knew it wasn’t random.
“Yes, I do sir,” I responded. And I meant it.