Everyone knows there is a distinction between “stupid” and “ignorant”. The main difference being “stupid people who mean well” are different than “stupid people”. And we call “stupid people who mean well” “ignorant”.

In my experience, I have come to see one other division of the general category of “stupid”. I see “harmless stupid” as most humor and silly assumptions that do not negatively affect life, even if they do hinder success. One example of this that comes to mind is misattributing cause and effect—not ignorantly—but harmlessly. Like when the regularly scheduled sprinkler system goes off during the outdoor church service and people attribute it to the devil doing devil things. They aren’t ignorant of the situation, they just are stupid.

Different from this kind of stupid is the kind which causes insecurity in life. One easy example of this would be alcoholic parents. They may be great parents most of the time, but the weekly or monthly instances of uncontrollable outbursts or whatever particular scenes unfold (kids trying to wake up passed-out parents etc.) leads to insecurity in life.

With me? Make sense?

Routine, even if for harmlessly stupid reasons, is still secure. “Every Monday after dinner my parents drove exactly the number of miles as the calendar date. I never understood why. Still don’t. But we got ice cream afterwords and it was fun overall.” That’s a bizarre and stupid routine, but it is not problematic.

Put another way, and to get to the point of this post, I value security over intelligence.

Moreover, I do not believe that stupidity is necessarily insecure.

What I am not certain about is if I am actually right. All I know today is that I need security.

My wife hails from one of the most uneducated regions, continents, and countries on the Earth. While dating, I noted many harmlessly stupid comments and observations. (This was/is not too different than any other day, or any other interaction with folks.)

Little anecdotes about “everyone there believes all Americans are rich” were cute to hear and even carried an air of “why would they believe otherwise if the only source was Hollywood films?” intentionally-sympathetic soundness. Couple this with the fact that no educated American wants to admit the reality that, “What you just said is completely without thought at a level that is beyond ignorance and evidences some mixture of mental laziness and legitimate inability to think”—especially if the conversant is BIPOC.

To be clear—I have witnessed first-hand many, many American friends hear my wife tell the same anecdotes and they all respond the same way, ie, no one calls out what each of us plainly hears. And why not?

I cannot answer for anyone but myself, and my no-call was because I believed there was harmless stupidity.

But the other kind, the stupidity which leads to insecurity, that is now something I am dealing with every day. And I don’t know how to right the ship. I don’t know how to course correct.

Readers might offer advice about the big things, like kindness, compassion, empathy. And I wanted to believe those exist, but have slowly been convinced that those are culturally-based postures and so the problem in this culture-clash-called-my-family is not resolved.

So far, my solution has been to try “let’s start with truth” and go from there. “Could we agree to say true things?” But the language barrier is such that even this seemingly simple request relies tremendously on ignoring reality and relying on hopeful intentions.

He said: “What did you buy?”

She said: “Groceries.”

So far so good.

He said: “What is this item?”

She said: “Oh, underwear.”

Setback.

He said: “In your culture is ‘underwear’ in the same category as ‘food and soap’ and other things that we use up?”

She said: “It’s wrong to buy underwear now?!!”

So even something as supposedly universal as “truth” seems out of reach.

Of course, the easy solution is to resign. To simply not care. To “let go and let God”. To choose a “non-fighting” version of “peace” as the higher ground in every moment of every day. But the problem with that is I tell the truth. I don’t tell it in a “I’m just keeping it one hundred” provocateur kinda way (mostly not at least). I just need my words to mean things, and I need my kids to mean the same things when they say the same words.

In other words, I need security.

It really bothers me that my choice of wife has resulted in the kidnap of my daughter. These days, I think it probably best to say “kidnap/runaway.” I think the addition of runaway better reveals the indifference and poor parenting involved. We’re not talking about a fairy tale here. We’re talking about years long moral crimes by mothers and all who support them.

Coming a close second to the fact of physical separation and the resultant lack of influence by yours truly is the absolute nonsense behind the idea that I, me, have any responsibility for the situation. Let me be clear: I don’t cause these crimes.

Not only have I done nothing (ever) that any reasonable person would think indicates that I don’t want to raise or can’t raise or shouldn’t raise my daughter, I have only ever acted with the intent to raise my daughter. Do you know how easy it would be to quit these days?

My intent is evident all the way from the fact that I have a job down to the fact that I have never—not ever—suggested that her mom not get time to raise her. She’s your kid too, dummy! Of course you get the chance to screw her up like your parents screwed you up!

Physiological effects surface by just typing this description of the perverse nature of the situation: a mother kidnapping her daughter from the father while stealing his money to foot the mealticket and nearly every single witness, the judge, and the jury look away. Does God?

It bothers me.

Did I ever mention on here that despite thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars being stolen by H-’s mom that when I finally saw H- again, she was wearing socks with more than one hole in them? That they were thin as tissue?

Do you see the three-fold problem with that, dear reader? First, no one over there has thought to teach her self-respect. Second, “Buy the kid some friggin’ socks!” And third, “Pay attention to your kid’s socks!”

Why is my daughter clothed like a pauper when the money you steal should have her keeping up with the Kardashians? Or do you work for me and not have money left over for H-? I wonder what your husband thinks of his benfactor? Sounds fun. Maybe someday his balls will drop.

The great flaw of Christianity, if it can be called that, is exemplified by the following question that constantly circles my situation. The folks who put this question to me usually preface it with, “Now don’t get upset, but…”

The question is, “Is there anything you are doing to cause this situation?”

I want to answer them, “Uh, yeah. Tons of things. Like, breathing. And eating. And putting one foot in front of the other. The other day I turned on the water; I think that had something to do with it,” but instead an anger of the hottest kind boils over into, “I AM NOT CAUSING THIS!! IT IS NOT A SITUATION WHICH IS AN EFFECT OF A CAUSE!!” (That use of capital letters is meant to convey yelling in the most passionate rage.)

Some people, it seems, live on a planet where there is a balance book, a zero sum world. In their world, if you help an old lady across the street a couple times as a kid, then your future ex-wife is morally grounded, narrowly avoiding the ever-present call all women face to embody a virulent waif. On the other hand, if you discard every instinct and signal your body sends, in favor of optimism, and accordingly marry someone (whose action of leaning over in her car, as the two of you drive separately from her job to the restaurant of your first date, is, you later find out, for the purpose of taking a hit of weed), divorce her later before the madness spirals totally out of control, and write—with uncommon voice, vocabulary, and velocity—both how you feel about the State you served’s defense of a mother’s right to kidnap and neglect a child, rob the father, and that she never once, not once, ever, never ever supports herself (or her daughter) financially, then it’s open season on you.

Sorry, Bible-believers, but if you really thought that “choice of spouse” was that important, then that should’ve been the end of the matter and we can forget about the whole Gospel thing.

But you and I both know that life is about much more than marriage and family relationships, don’t we? That’s right. We do.

The thing, in short, is this.

Every bone in my body tells me I am right, tells me my way of seeing—not everything—but this situation is reality.

I would be betraying myself, I have betrayed myself, by giving time and action to the notion that I somehow, in some way, play a role in the situation. That is simply not true. It is an untenable option.

I want my daughter, I have always wanted my daughter, and I have done nothing to push her away from me. Never. Even the divorce was my way of trying to save her from experiencing her mother for at least some of her childhood—exactly half, if I had my way.

Instead, all my efforts have dropped me off on soil where I am the one who never sees H-.

This bothers me. It depresses me. It makes me want to quit. Quit with a capital Q. I feel like ending all effort and just vegging out on the couch in front of the tv. No more work, no more parenting my other kids. No more reading. No more piano. No more nuthin’. Just leave me alone.

But I persist. I persevere.

Why? Because if I was H-, and this daydream may be my fatal flaw, if I was H-, then I would want to know that I had experienced violence at the hands of the only person I trusted. In other words, if I was H-, I would want to know I had been kidnapped.

I would want to know.

****

Half the reason I am motivated to “keep on, keepin’ on” in life is the quest to find reality. What is real? Put differently, am I alone?

Reality for me, I guess, means peace. It means evidence of order—irrespective of feelings. Reality is not the chaos caused by passions. Most importantly, reality is worth fighting for.

Am I really a deadbeat dad, deemed by society as unworthy of raising my own child? Is that the reality? Am I really some maladjusted, bitter, and just plain mean terrorist of a man, being justly punished for an unending reign of terror—but a man who is always one moment away from changing his ways to the reward of being reunited with his daughter? Is that reality?

Or, or, or, are those and other grandiose fantasies being perpetuated from every angle with all intensity upon an unsuspecting teenage girl who finds herself bound by a seemingly unbreakable spell made up of an unrelenting dark web of lies and half-truths cast by her own mother?

Reality, for me, is the latter. But H- is the one who must decide. So I persist. Because she is my daughter and worth fighting for.