Welcome to the Owner’s Manual

Greg and Nancy Cummings lived in a 1950’s ranch on a suburban street with half a dozen others just like it. Like most of the adults on the street, they had moved there when their lives were transitioning from the unencumbered free flight of young adulthood to the settling in place that comes after. There was a nest to build and then fill and then there would be mouths to feed.

This home would be just the place. And it was.

After moving in, he went to work at a corporation. She gave birth to their three children and then stayed home to raise them. The three kids went on to school in town and then went off to college. From there, they found careers, married, and started families of their own.

If the World War II generation had charted a path for their children to follow through adulthood, the elder Cummings’ lives would have been exactly it. Greg and Nancy had navigated the route taught to them precisely and perfectly. He had worked hard over a long career spent working for a single company and had done well. She had raised their three kids and had raised them well.

In the post-war America of the 1950s, the Cummings’ route was the main highway and for good reason: it led good places.

The Cummings’ particular home was by no means the biggest in town but it was north of the midpoint; and the town itself was north of the midpoint as suburbs went. Those two ‘above-averages’ combined with Mr. Cummings’ salary made for a good life somewhere gently within the boundaries of ‘upper middle class’.

For the elder Cummings, the experience hadn’t felt like upper-anything though. It may not have been plagued by hardship but there had always been burdens and obligations ahead to worry about and plan for and fit in the budget.

Those worries had been a soft but constant background music which played at all times. The volume wasn’t obtrusive; it spiked only occasionally; and even when it did, it still never reached the volume it did in the lives of people less well off. The Cummings worry-track simply hummed along at a volume low enough to often not notice much.

By their early fifties, the Cummings were already well into the portion of the route where the hardest driving fades into the rearview. Behind them were the most stressful mountain passes of the prime parenting years; in front of them through the windshield was a winding slope down toward a prairie of gold and grain alit by a long warm sunset.

They weren’t quite there yet. However, with the kids through college; their tuitions paid; and Mr. Cummings still earning well, there was already some money saved and there was more left each paycheck to tuck away - and all of it was appreciating.

By their late-fifties, it seemed possible for the Cummings to maybe pull off the road and give up the driving altogether. While many couples still had a ways to go before both people could leave the flow of commuter traffic, the Cummings could afford it by the time Greg Cummings was 58…

…and so he did.

In retiring, he left the only company he had ever worked for and stepped out of the only routine he had ever known. For men, in particular, that is often a fraught moment. The surrendering of one’s career lands with an impact. It marks the end of what had been the first and longest tenured of The Three Verbs of adult life.

We’ll come to the other two. The first, though, is: Be.

Be [something]…

Be a doctor or dentist or cook.

When the verb tense of a man’s lifelong ‘Be’ switches from the present to past – from ‘I am’ to ‘I was,’ - it seldom settles lightly. Instead, it often lands with a jarring and sudden thud… It rattles things on the mantle and sometimes tips some over.

It is a phenomenon that is predictable and common yet society speaks nothing of it; and there is a reason for that:

Acknowledging it would diminish a Golden Promise… and much of how we are led to live our lives is based on the premise beneath it.

It is a promise that is never kept fully and is sometimes not kept at all.

So, there were Greg and Nancy Cummings. Retirees with means and savings and each only 58-years old.

In Greg Cummings retiring, they had arrived right at the gate to the last of The Three Verbs.

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In a way, this series is a bit of a journey of its own. There is a destination. It will be reached in segments. Each will take us closer.

In many there will be a landmark. They serve a wayfinding purpose. They are the ‘red churches’ and ‘gas stations on the corner’ which the handwritten directions said to look out for... They help to navigate the route.

From a narrative perspective, the ‘landmarks’ are building blocks. They are foundational things. Tidy little granite blocks pulled out to build upon.

The first of them is:

The Three Verbs: Be. Have. Do.

Be…  ‘Be’ a scientist or lawyer or banker, mechanic, or plumber. ‘Be’ a mother with all of its requisite other ‘Be’s’. Be a homemaker and caregiver and teacher, nurse, and counselor…

And then…

Have… Have enough to get by… and then have enough to retire comfortably.

And then…

Do… Do all of the things long imagined but put aside and pushed off which are now possible.

‘Be. Have. Do.’ is the underlying schema beneath how one generation drove through their own lives and then taught the next to navigate theirs.

No matter how old you are, whether you know it or not, that schema has impacted how you have been taught to drive and how you do – and how everyone else around you was taught to drive and drives too.

Now, let’s get back to the Cummings’…

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Greg and Nancy Cummings had arrived at the golden gate to Do with all of the Have to make anything possible - and the gate was open.

Prior to retiring, Greg Cummings had been so focused on the Be of his career, there had never been much on his list to actually do. His entire adult life, his eyes had been on the road. The Do’s were always a subject for another day – even as that day drew nearer and then arrived.

Nancy Cummings, on the other hand, had been freed of much of her own driving years earlier. Her ‘Be’ had initially been tied to the raising of their children. As the time and energy that work took eased from all-consuming to lighter to little, Nancy had been forced to fill her days with new Be’s and Do’s. Her transition had been longer; and that had eased her toward being ready for life inside the gates of Do.

For Nancy, the last of Greg Cummings’ time behind the wheel had just been a wait to get out of the car. She had compiled a list of Do’s. He was her ‘Do with.’ He was doing the last of the driving. She had the plans for once they arrived.

Most of the things on Nancy’s list were destinations themselves: travel, trips, places to go and see and experience. Europe. The country her ancestors came from and the town where her distant relatives still lived.

Other Do’s on her list were leisures or luxuries which were not necessarily all that luxe; they hadn’t been so much out of reach but instead simply not grasped earlier. A cruise maybe. A lake house or long stays in one. Weekend trips to charming places with quaint restaurants.

Nancy was ready to Do. Greg was a willing ‘Do with…’.

There before them lay the banquet. The long, rich, fulfilling meal of The Golden Promise.

It was time to fill plates.

And then Nancy developed cancer.

It progressed quickly despite treatment. Two years later, she was gone.

In the space in between, out of all of their Do’s only a few were done; and even the ones that were felt less like the unencumbered, joyful checking off of items from a bucket list and more like a salvaging of what could be salvaged from a list which would never be close to completed.

The Cummings were my friend’s parents. Among my circle of friends, they were the first of our parents to retire. They hadn’t just retired earlier, they had also retired younger; and they had been the ones best positioned to do all of their Do’s.

Instead, they spent the first and only years of their time to do them together largely shuttling between doctor’s offices and hospitals and home.

At the time, I was in my late 20’s. I was a ‘climber’ in a company that had grown large during my time there. I had gotten six promotions in five years. I had risen to working directly for the Chief Operating Officer.

I was focused on my Be. And I was both good at it and on the precipice of more Have than anyone in my family before me. My career was thriving. By all outward appearances, I was too… .but, in reality, somewhere inside, I already felt the stirrings that I was not cut out for a life of ‘Be. Have. Do.’.

Within a year, I would be out of that company altogether, unemployed, and onboard a plane heading toward a final interview (which was largely a formality) for a bigger job paying twice as much.

I remember feeling this surreal disconnect during the flight. I was headed toward what should have felt like a momentous meeting which would accelerate me well into a Have that I couldn’t have even imagined a few years prior… but my mind wasn’t on any of that. Instead, it was on the question I eventually asked the person sitting next to me inflight:

“What would you do if you could do anything?”

What would you choose as your ‘Be’?

I was trying to find a path. A route to a life well-lived. I had no idea what it was but I knew the one we’re taught to follow – Be. Have. Do. - wasn’t it. For me at least... that wasn’t it.

I was trying to figure out what ‘having lived a happy life’ might look like from the other side so I could try to get there.

I didn’t know the path, but I was on the road to find out… and I don’t think I knew that either.

By the time I boarded that plane, I had seen the Cummings do everything right and never see the reward; and I had seen up-close a set of senior executives who had amassed unimaginable Haves and with them, an endless freedom to Do, but who had what looked like horrible, miserable lives. I felt like the greyhound who caught the rabbit. I hadn’t. But I had gotten close enough to it to become entirely disillusioned with the idea that it was something I wanted to chase.

I had no idea what a better model might be, but for me - and maybe me alone – as someone who tries to be truthful with himself – I knew it wasn’t ‘Be. Have. Do.’

I knew it just wasn’t my path… so, I got off of it and spent the next 20 years trying to find my own.

We get but one chance at life. It is a journey of indeterminate length. Society pushes us to stay between the painted lines and focus on the destination, but we are the ones doing the driving.

I think we should enjoy the trip.

We have but one lifetime to steer ourselves through.

The Owner’s Manual is a collection of things I wish had come in the glove box.

Some will be about planning the route and the obstacles we encounter along the way. Some will be about these human machines we inherited and how they run. All will come with stories from the road and the people I met along the way.

Welcome to The Owner’s Manual. I’ll do my best to make this series a good ride.