🌱The Metrics That Matter

Rethinking Progress at 65

This essay introduces "Rooted & Reaching," a series exploring how working the soil of my land parallels working the soil of my soul—connecting physical stewardship with spiritual growth, recovery with healing, and mortality awareness with flourishing.

As I anticipate completing my 65th trip around the sun next month, I find myself doing what many of us do at milestone birthdays—taking inventory. But instead of counting the usual metrics of success—publications, speaking engagements, or professional accomplishments—I found myself drawn to different measurements altogether.

The Metrics We're Given

For most of my life, I've tracked progress through conventional metrics: degrees earned, career status, and 401(k) balance accumulated. These aren't inherently wrong—they've marked genuine achievements and contributions. But somewhere along my journey from Louisiana boy to Naval officer to priest and theologian, these metrics began to feel like mile markers on someone else's map.

Our culture continually reinforces these external measurements. Open any social media app and you'll find countless variations of the same message: success means more followers, more influence, more productivity, more material abundance.

Even in church contexts, we often adopt secular metrics with spiritual language: congregation size, budgets, programs offered. And in my own life, I've frequently fallen into the trap of measuring my spiritual journey by sermons preached, adults and children mentored in faith, or theological arguments won.

But as I sat watching through my kitchen window as birds flourish in the many gardens we've planted, I wondered: what if the metrics that actually matter look entirely different?

Rediscovering Measurement

My body, well into its seventh decade, has become an unexpectedly honest teacher. When I run these days, success isn't measured in pace or distance, but in the joy of movement itself and the attention I bring to each step. In my downstairs 'pain cave,' progress isn't about how much I can lift, but how my body feels afterward and whether I've maintained proper form to prevent injury.

This physical wisdom has gradually seeped into my spiritual understanding as well. Perhaps progress isn't measured in theological knowledge accumulated, but in my capacity to love difficult people. Perhaps success isn't about influence wielded, but presence offered.

I think of my father in his final years, confined largely to his favorite couch by the tumors that had spread to his brain. By conventional metrics, his progress had reversed. Yet on that couch, and especially in the waiting rooms amidst other cancer patients, he mastered a sort of luminous presence with whoever entered. The quality of his attention, the genuine interest he took in others, the complete lack of self-importance—these were metrics of spiritual maturity I'm only beginning to understand.

Alternative Measurements

So what metrics might actually matter as I enter this new season? Here are a few I'm considering:

Attention Capacity: Can I be fully present with the person in front of me, whether they're fascinating or frustrating, without reaching for my phone or mentally rehearsing my response?

Recovery Time: How quickly can I return to equilibrium after being triggered by anger, fear, or shame? Not by suppressing emotions, but by moving through them honestly and returning to a state of openness.

Truthfulness Quotient: What percentage of my speech and writing emerges from genuine conviction rather than what I think will please others or advance my position?

Gratitude Frequency: How often do I pause to genuinely appreciate the astounding gift of existence itself—from the taste of morning coffee to the complex web of relationships that sustains my life?

Liberation Capacity: Am I becoming more able to free others from my expectations, projections, and needs? Can I love people without requiring them to fulfill my unspoken agenda?

The Garden as Teacher

Our vegetable gardens and orchard have become both metaphor and classroom for these alternative metrics. The conventional metrics would measure its success by appearance—how lush, how colorful, how impressive to neighbors. But the metrics that actually matter are different: how many native pollinators find haven there, how the soil quality improves year by year, how the garden participates in the health of the broader ecosystem.

Just as healthy soil develops slowly through years of patient attention, so too does the soul. Growth happens in imperceptible increments. The most important changes rarely announce themselves with dramatic flourishes.

Each morning now, I walk with my coffee watching the subtle movements of our garden—the bees navigating flower to flower, the gradual unfurling of new leaves, the steady work of decomposition beneath the surface. This patience, this attention to slow processes hidden from casual observation—perhaps this is the truest metric of progress.

Navigating By Different Stars

I don't imagine I'll suddenly stop caring about conventional metrics altogether. They'll continue exerting their gravitational pull. But - largely due to my wife Sajeena's patient example - I'm learning to navigate by different stars, to measure progress by metrics that align more closely with the person I hope to become.

The metrics that matter at 65 aren't about expansion but integration. Not how much territory I can claim, but how fully I can inhabit the ground beneath my feet. Not how many people know my name, but how deeply I can know and be known by the handful of souls in my immediate orbit.

As I look toward the horizon of this new decade, I'm less interested in leaving a legacy than living a life of integrity and presence. The metric that matters most, perhaps, is simply this: am I becoming more fully alive, more fully human, more fully present to the miracle of existence itself?

What metrics matter most to you? I'd love to hear your reflections in the comments below

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