Author: Jason Zerbey

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He Didn’t Mean It That Way

Bob: What is the value of your life right now?

Me:
This is a legitimate question.

How do we measure quality of life versus quantity? That’s what we’re really debating. We only have so many days on this planet. I only have so many Springs with my sons. This one is pretty crappy. We visit museums, friends, family, gymnastics, jiu-jitsu, parks, and new places every week. We go on road trips, we camp, and we adventure. They both have birthdays during the lockdown. I can hardly get them a decent ice cream. I can’t get them the piles of books they find on our many trips to the library.

This is precious developmental time. I’m doing everything I can to love on them and give them opportunities to explore their vast curiosity, but time is wasting away. They were supposed to start going on on-camera auditions last month. They worked hard to earn an agent. Their dreams, their passions, and their curiosity is being bootheeled under fear.

And maybe this sounds too fantastical to believe, that these kids are over privileged or I’m exaggerating something. They lost their mother to viral and bacterial infections two years ago. No underlying, no preexisting, no autoimmune issues…boom…two weeks. Dead. The flu. That killer of the young and healthy.

They know about death better than anyone who is willing to give up one day in the sunshine to live a couple more days in the dark.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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No Letters

While Alessandra Nicole turned her grief into a powerful message and shared it with the world two years ago, we celebrated a combined birthday party for my sons with as many friends and family as we had ever gathered together.


Later that day, I sat on our couch with the boys and watched the “live” stream I had buffered in hopes it would still be up after the party.

Alessandra had asked permission to use a couple artifacts referencing Mary’s death. I expected we might appear in a collage or be mentioned in passing. Instead, she put our story in the forefront, parallel to the loss of her grandmother on the same day as Mary’s passing.

My heart dropped and I paused the video, apologizing to the boys and giving them a chance to not watch any more. They were too transfixed about being on a big screen, behind a friend, and broadcast to the world to be concerned with anything else.

They’ve taught me a lot about grief and living. No matter how trivial, the concerns of life are greater than the concerns of death.

Alessandra and letter writing have also taught me a lot about grief and living. Our journeys have remained parallel and the last two years have been marked by the letters I have written.

I haven’t written a letter in months. I can’t say why. I’ve sat with my letter-writing kit many times, written a few Dear So-And-So’s, but haven’t completed or sent any.

I’m going to watch this talk again. I’m going to write again.

God bless and thank you for reading,
Jason

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You’re Gonna Die

Death is a guarantee. We’re surrendering our freedoms. What is life without freedom? Maybe we could live forever frozen in tubes. Would that be living? Where do you draw the line? How do you choose to live? Do you understand that any breath could be your last? Do you think about the likelyhood of another car plowing into you on any given day?

Every choice involves risk. We are handing those choices over to politicians we wouldn’t trust to watch our kids for an afternoon.

None of that sounds right to me. Give me liberty or give me death? How would you answer? How much liberty is worth a little more life? How many destroyed lives will be worth the ones extended for a few years? Months? Days?

They were lying just a couple weeks ago about masks and now you believe them? How many times will we be lied to before we wake up out of our collective Stockholm Syndrome?

No tricks. I’m trying to answer these questions for myself. I think more of us should be asking them

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Missing the Smiles

The Delaware Governor has ordered that face coverings must be worn in public places. I wonder how it is that government can use the threat of law enforcement violence to compel individuals into purchasing and using products in a certain way. I wonder how such an order will be enforceable except for an increasingly compliant population at the ready to shame and report on their neighbors. I wonder how I will approach this latest infringement of rights.

Beyond all the questions there is a certainty that came to me today. I miss seeing smiles. I’ve suspected that the non-verbal cues signaled by one’s face would make communication more difficult, then today it hit me that smiles are medicine. Seeing someone smile can break the worst mood.

The guaranteed suffering of these restrictions is increasing as the benefits become more and more hazy.

God bless and thank you for reading,
Jason

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TV Free

About 80 bucks. That’s what I woke to discover had been spent on digital gems, coins, or whatever kind of bullshit my sons had desired overnight. Once we were all in bed, they had fetched the tablets, reset my password, and went on a shopping spree.

After repairing the damage, I hid the tablets, TV, DVD player, speakers, gaming console, and streaming device. Our entertainment center turned into an empty table.

That was two weeks ago.

I won’t say that it changed our lives. We aren’t digital addicts, but streaming entertainment had become a crutch during the current restrictions on our movement. We quickly cleansed and upped our time around the dining room table, outside, and wherever we were welcome (and a couple places we weren’t welcome). We gorged on audiobooks and Lego building. We got a little sick of each other and worked through our aggravations. I was pleased to see that we had not gone mad with the rest of the world.

I set some things up last night to introduce my sons to one of my favorite movies as a kid, Ridley Scott’s Alien. We watched it after playing a rather complicated 1989 board game based on the sequel.

Balance has returned to our lives as the world outside becomes more imbalanced. It is as it should be. We master ourselves more each day.

God bless and thank you for reading,
Jason

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Digging for Courage: The Hole Is Getting Dark

This isn’t the inspirational part of the story. This is the regression into the days when I didn’t know who to ask for help. The days when I was regularly yelling at my children, exhausted at each nightfall. It’s the alone feeling that seems imposed, unfair.

This is the part when I’m triggered by deaths in outer circles, stabbed to the heart by the pain left in their wake. I see a world of fear, resentment, and envy. It’s not inside me, but it presses from all sides.

But it is inside, isn’t it? For all the love I have been gifted, for all of the love I have found and cultivated, the fear waits below.

I heard something about that in an AA meeting. The addiction, the fear, is working all the time. I might do better love work than ever, but fear never stops preparing for its moment. I’ve felt this coming. A terrified child holding his ears closed tight against the terrified din of this world. At once feeling too small to fight against it and not wanting to access that monstrous bully to burn it down.

Integration. Those parts of me that still don’t feel like me. I know what to do with them. Finding the time and space to do that work in this forced isolation as a family, that is hard.

I have to first stop with the excuses. This is work I have to do, regardless of the circumstances.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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The World of The Stray

I read Betsy Wyeth’s The Stray to my sons years ago. Westen couldn’t read when he posed for this picture, but it became a treasure map for us as we explored #MyBrandywine. —-

Betsy’s story didn’t treat children as fragile eggs to spare from the rough and tumble of her anthropomorphic world and Jaime’s illustrations were alive with the characters of Chadds Ford.

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Betsy was no small part of our burgeoning love of museums, explorations, and narrative.

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Thank you, Betsy, may you rest in peace.

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Thank you, Brandywine River Museum of Art, for being home to beauty and wonder.

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Wim Hof Challenge: Day 20

I’m halfway through Wim Hof’s 40-Day Quarantine Challenge and feeling strong. I’ve missed two cold showers, but have been averaging close to three minutes cold per shower, so I’m feeling like I’m hitting the marks.

About to jump in for an evening shower. I sleep solid after a couple minutes under the cold.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Saving the World

The only way to help the world is through the Self. Being a light in the darkness, brightening that light every day. The light is love. Fear and darkness cannot overcome the light of love.

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This is the darkest time I have witnessed. Fear of disease and government power are more dangerous in the imagination than in reality. So, what do you imagine? What do you see when you close your eyes or look into the sky? How are you choosing to love yourself? What are you listening to? What are you watching? What are you repeating? Is truth so easy to acquire that we can get it from sitting on your ass? Does it come without questions? Is truth what “everyone” is saying? —-

Popular opinion has never served me well. God speaks to each of us as individuals. Every word Jesus spoke is powerful. The ones that touch me the most are the ones he spoke to individuals. He spoke to the very particular circumstances of each person. In those small moments, grand knowledge is available.

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It was all personal. Jesus didn’t write letters or leave messages on walls, he spoke to people, he embraced them. He lived during a time that was unimaginably more dangerous than ours. An embrace could kill you, or your family if you were strong enough to fight off the threat and they weren’t. Death was more real than it is now. People died in their homes, in front of their loved ones. Now we shut off the old and sick, to extend their lives in isolation. Is that the goal? A high score? What cost are you willing to incur for that longer life if it comes with increased suffering? What line do you draw? A hundred miserable years, or 47 glorious turns around the sun?

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What would you choose? What are you choosing?

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God bless and thank you for reading,

Jasom

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Be Curious

Brett Veinotte and Tom Woods are two of my favorite voices on education and the libertarian approach. I’m closing my day with listening to them as they discuss the hyper reaction to the unclear health threats we currently face.

http://hwcdn.libsyn.com/p/5/0/c/50c01ac0de23edb8/woods_2020_04_14.mp3?c_id=69922307&cs_id=69922307&expiration=1587351549&hwt=d9d4d286adf73b7379de31f59a50d08d

God bless and thank you for reading,
Jason