Back when I started my first job out of college, I recall a middle-aged mainframe, superstar sales rep who would exceed sales quota quarter after quarter, year after year, and repeatedly made the company’s Winner’s Circle. He was in the office maybe two or three times a month, only to file expense reports and occasionally meet local clients. He was also very overweight. Ate fast food on the go and was a smoker. I recall colleagues telling him to slow down. Then one day, he had a heart attack on a business trip. He was flown back and ordered to take 6 months leave. He quit smoking and began to eat healthily. At the six-month mark, he resumed his old job. He travelled again. He began eating airport foods, again. He got stressed from the sales pressure, again. He began smoking, again. He suffered a second heart attack. This time, he took more than six months off. What I started to learn was that even in the face of death itself, change was difficult for this individual. It could be any of us with any of our own vices. This individual symbolized all of us as creatures of habit and it was difficult to change the proverbial leopard’s spots.

I am sure I have met many people who see me as some version of a tiger who cannot change his stripes, either. Simply ask my ex-wife, and she will be able to compile lists (both numerically and alphabetically) of all the times, I have been too adamant or stubborn to acquiesce to her. And although my inclination to change to accommodate my ex-partner with no mutual benefit was zero, I do struggle with being a mostly single-parent and adapting my style to an ever-growing tween. And as my daughter and I negotiate the expanding boundaries she roams within, I am mostly the same hard-up, ball-busting, borderline control-freakish, middle-aged man my daughter has grown to love.

The article isn’t about how I got this way; it’s how I must find ways to deviate from my norm, so my interaction isn’t persistently contentious with others. Who I was as a single-man, married-man and now divorced father is very different as I go through these stages. But I don’t think I’ve changed per se but merely adapted to the new circumstances. And it is the continuing embrace of these adaptations over time that has become my changing norm and hence who I am right now. I would imagine that once my daughter leaves home, my duties as father when she is not around would all but disappear and I would revert to being either a single-man or a re-married man. Of course, having gained about two decades of child-rearing experience, I would certainly (and hopefully) be more measured and patient than my earlier selves in the way I approach all things. But what is striking to me is the realization that my behavioral transformations aren’t necessarily conscious decisions made by me, but rather mostly directed by my child!

 

The article isn’t about how I got this way; it’s how I must find ways to deviate from my norm, so my interaction isn’t persistently contentious with others. And it is the continuing embrace of these learned adaptations over time that has become my changing norm and hence who I am right now.

 

One of the very first things I realized when I brought my daughter home was the vanishing concepts of sleep, sex and self. Of the most important, my sense of self altered fundamentally as I placed myself second and fiercely fought everything that didn’t put my daughter number one. And I started to reshape my worlds based on that paradigm. My marriage was not supportive of my ideals and so I exited. My social connections reflected a not too current view of me and I prune it. I took better care and got to know me better and replanned my future not just for my own benefit, but my daughter’s. She was the catalyst for this paradigm shift. It’s not to say that I wouldn’t have done this if my daughter wasn’t around, but it’s because of my daughter, that I got all this done judiciously and hurriedly.

I am who I am not solely because of the choices I made for myself, but because of the choices I made for my daughter. I just happen to also benefit from it consequently. As my daddy duties become lighter with age, it is my hope that many of these adaptions I have embraced over the years out of necessity will become my baseline. The changes my daughter has instilled in me would not have been necessary or even possible if it wasn’t for her coming into my life and constantly disrupting everything in it. To be precise, I didn’t consciously change; I subconsciously adapted.

I don’t know what’s happened to that high achieving mainframe sales rep from so many decades ago. I hope he was able to adopt healthy behaviors for the permanence of living well. Not knowing his outcome allows me to optimistically imagine he’s made the right choices and adapted enough to enjoy a well-deserved retirement. Not knowing how my futures will unfold also lets me believe that the adaptation I make now will be for a better tomorrow. And while I think I have always been a tiger (dad) on the inside, I’d like to think that sometimes—just sometimes—I can flash a leopard’s spot on the outside when I need it!