On October 1 (and about four and half weeks early), my wife and I welcomed our daughter into the world. It truly was every bit as incredible, miraculous, joyous and nerve-wracking as everyone told us it would be. We can’t quite believe we have brought a new person into this world, and every time I hold her, or feed her at 3:30 AM, or bless her on Shabbat, when I look at her, all I can think of is, “Who will she be?”
As a rabbi, I live in a world where I regularly experience a whole lifespan in the stretch of just a few days. I hear young parents sharing their hopes for their brand-new child on one day, and hear grown children sharing their memories of their recently-deceased parent on the next. I see parents cry with joy as their children become bar or bat mitzvah, and see people of all ages cry with anger and frustration as they struggle with the challenges life throws at them.
But while I have had the title “rabbi” for a few years, I have had the title “daddy” for just under a month. Naturally, this new relationship is causing me to think of all sorts of questions: “What are things that my daughter will say and do that will crack me up? What challenges will she face in life? Will I have any chance of keeping it together when she becomes bat mitzvah? And what will my daughter say about me as a father when I am gone?”
What compounds all of these questions is the fact that right now, her communication consists of eating, sleeping, crying and pooping. Yes, I am thinking about the life she is going to lead, but the truth is, neither of us have any real idea of what she will sound like, look like or act like three months from now — let alone three, thirteen or thirty years from now.
My sister — who has a 15-year-old and a 12-year-old — once told me that, “When it comes to children, you can’t interpolate out, but you can extrapolate back.” In other words, when we are looking at the next generation and wondering what children will look like, sound like and act like years down the road, there simply isn’t enough data to make any sort of accurate prediction. But when we look back, when we study old baby pictures or tell stories about when kids were even younger, we can often say, “You were like that from the time you were a baby.”
So whether it was the way they loved to be rocked, or that they always hated being cold, or how if they had a choice between eating and sleeping, sleeping would win, there seem to be certain personality traits that stay consistent throughout life. But the only way we recognize them is when we reflect back — we can’t predict them in advance.
That’s why one of my favorite quotes is from Soren Kirkegaard: “Life must be lived forwards, but can only be understood backwards.”
After all, we humans are meaning-making creatures. We have all sorts of things happen to us, and we don’t always understand why. It is only when we can put them into a story that they start to make sense. I don’t believe that “Everything happens for a reason,” because that creates a very challenging theology (did God really look down on the earth and say, “I’m going to give that person cancer”?). Instead, I believe that no matter what happens, we can look back on events and try to make sense and meaning out of them. What can we learn from our experiences and how can we grow from them?
As Jonathan Gottschall explains in his book The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human, “The storytelling mind is a crucial evolutionary adaptation. It allows us to experience our lives as coherent, orderly, and meaningful. It is what makes life more than blooming, buzzing confusion.” (102) The reason I have no idea what kind of person our daughter will be is because at one month old, her story is just beginning to unfold. Only after she has more life experience will she be able to tell it and tell us “who she is.”
And there is another level to the story of who our daughter is, as well. Like most Jews, my wife and I named our daughter after people we loved who have passed away. Yes, their lives have ended, but the values that they taught us are inspiring the way we are trying to raise our daughter. And so God-willing, she will lead a life that will inspire the values of those who will come after her. Our daughter’s personal story is in the context of a larger narrative.
Indeed, for all of us, while our past has guided us towards who we are, we are the ones who construct our life story. And when we see ourselves as one link in a long chain of tradition, we miraculously bring both the past and the future into each and every moment of our lives.
Because ultimately, the answer to the question “Who am I?” is a dynamic one. It is always changing. So who will my daughter be thirty years from now? Ask me in 2043. All I know is that right now, she is someone my wife and I are simply loving getting to know.
