Boxing, Explained

This summer, Noa started selling sticks. Not painted sticks. Not decorated sticks. Just… sticks. Big ones. Judiciously selected from fields and paths and neighbors' yards, then sold door-to-door to the same homes she'd collected them from.

I tried to help. Maybe you could paint them, I offered. Or sell something you make. Add value!

She looked at me the way you look at someone who is very confident and very wrong: "Mom. They are buying STICKS."

When I pushed, she let me finish, then shrugged and said: "I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you." I've been carrying that sentence around ever since.

This is my 21st Boxing Day letter. Long enough to watch an invented deadline turn into a time capsule I didn't intend to build. A record of becoming, one December at a time. I started writing these when I was learning how to be an adult; now I’m responsible for raising three of them.

Owen is eleven now – 6th grade – forming an interior life I won’t fully access. Theo is nine. Noa is six. They’re becoming people with opinions and private worlds. Old enough to ask questions I can’t neatly answer, or haven’t answered for myself yet.

At first, the job of parenting is keeping them alive. Don't eat that. Look out. HOT! It’s loud and visceral and relentless – think: lifeguard, referee, short-order cook. The instructions are constant because the stakes are immediate. But somewhere along the way, the work changes. The volume drops. The urgency recedes. You realize you can’t actually shape them into a specific outcome; they’re going to become who they become. It doesn’t get easier, but what’s asked of you shifts. Your job becomes example, not intervention: model what you hope they’ll absorb, then step back and let them live it.

This stage didn’t announce itself. It doesn't clamor. It quietly demands I be consistent, present, and steady. Not scarce, but selective.

Less noise. More weight.

I feel this shift most when I watch Owen navigate friendships with that same fumbling intensity I remember – the fierce loyalties, the small triumphs, the betrayals that feel enormous. I want to help. I want to say: not that kid, this kid. Not that way, this way. But he has to figure it out himself. Parenting, it turns out, is mostly learning when to explain, and when to let understanding arrive on its own.

This lesson in discernment didn’t stay contained to parenting. Dunbar's research says humans can maintain about 150 relationships. But our inner circle – the ones you'd call at 3am, the ones who've seen you ugly-cry and didn't flinch – caps at around five. Five people. That's it.

And here’s the wild part: we become the people we attach to. Neuroscience shows that our closest relationships shape how we regulate emotion and make decisions. They define our standards: how much we earn, how far we reach, what we tolerate. We rise or fall to the level of our closest relationships, not because anyone is pulling us up or dragging us down, but because proximity sets the ceiling of what is possible.

Some of my closest friends today I met when I was Owen’s age. They knew the rough draft and stayed for every revision. I also have friends who inspire me so deeply and treat me so well they don’t even realize they’ve set a standard. And I hope – quietly, just by watching – my kids are learning the same thing.

I’ve got jokes for days about being tired and antisocial, about “missing” texts and opting out. They’re not wrong (I really do love that for you), but that’s the shorthand. As someone socialized to be “nice” (come closer, fellow geriatric millennials), it’s taken years to unlearn the idea that kindness meant never disappointing anyone. Or that visibility meant value. Or that a full life required the right invitations and an audience to witness your wins. Somewhere along the way, that dog-eared playbook started to look a lot like self-erasure.

I’m no longer inspired by loud success. What moves me now are the people who achieve incredible things without constantly chasing relevance. The ones who rise without making it their whole personality. Those who know their worth without believing they’re above anyone else. That's the kind of greatness I aspire to – quiet, steady, lived, not performed. Not scarce, but selective. That feels like the real flex: letting people think what they want about you while you keep living with ease, knowing their projections aren’t yours to carry.

I'm certain 2005-me would have endless questions for 2025-me.

If I could, I’d explain that her circle will get smaller, and that's the point. That depth requires limits; you can be generous and warm without granting unlimited access. I'd explain that relevance isn't the same as worth, and that being busy isn't the same as being important.

I'd explain that emotions are powerful sources of information, but terrible bosses. That nonchalance is easy, but presence is braver. That she should always, always tell people what they mean to her, and care openly, even when it's not cool.

I'd tell her to skip the relocation flight and go to her grandmother's funeral. I'd beg her to hang up on the mentee and take the call from her brother.

But she wouldn't hear it. Not yet. Maybe the whole point is that you have to live it – the grief, the joy, the quiet accumulation of evidence about what actually matters.

Hell, 2025-me isn't done learning any of this. I still get it wrong. I still overreach, overthink, overextend. But I understand more now. A clearer sense of where my energy belongs. A willingness to pause long enough to ask whether something is worth it. Choosing where my attention goes – and letting that choice be an act of love. I don't need to be everywhere. I don't need to do everything. I don't need to be on display; I need to be seen by those I value. And that's enough.

I can't understand it for you; you’ll need to sell your own sticks. But I can stay while you figure it out.


Same time next year.