It's feasible that the best book I'll ever write was something I could have published a decade ago. I had this idea at the time to write about parenting. The book was going to have a stupid title like How to Be a Good Parent or something equally arrogant. The plan was to write one chapter with two words - "be around" - and that would be the end, no footnotes, no photos, no charts or graphs. You could probably have finished it in one sitting. It would have cost $27.99, but the paperback would have been cheaper.
In hindsight it was probably for the best that I kept the manuscript (if you will) to myself. Books promising instruction tend to suffer from a blindness to their own arrogance and this condition would undoubtedly have plagued the presumptive NYT #1 bestseller How to Be a Good Parent. If you combine this tendency with my own long-term residency at Arrogant House, you have a recipe for one of those unfortunate public reputations - the kind that pops up anytime you google someone's name. In all seriousness, the books that claim to offer some kind of recipe for success often fail to clarify that success is a mountain with many trails. For each and every one of us there is a unique route to the summit, so blindly following some nonsense published by a half-assed blogger probably is more likely than not to send us down (up?) the wrong path. Most importantly, I must also acknowledge that How to Be a Good Parent would be a major disservice to all those great parents out there who are unable to be around as much as they would like. This fact alone is enough reason for me to have no regrets about tossing my book idea into the rubbish bin.
And yet, there is something to be said for just being around. I've had a chance to see many of my friends become parents over the past few years. The one clear conclusion from watching them navigate this new life responsibility is that they have absolutely no clue what they are doing. The more subtle observation is that they are around, and just the fact of being around is more than enough to make them great parents. For me, it's like watching history repeat itself. My own parents did their best with me but that doesn't mean they were perfect. But my parents were always around, and that's why I say I had great parents.
