September 26, 2008
Family ties...
Looking up to you...
It was a couple months ago when the realization hit me.
I may, in fact, have mentioned it here but I've got so many sites/blogs to keep updated that I'm, frankly, losing track.
So, here's hoping there are some new readers this week for whom this will be a novel thing.
I realized that to my kids, my wife and I are like Brad and Angie.
"Brad and Angie"?
See, I was feeling a little listless and irregular. Like my life was going nowhere. Like the things I've always wanted to do weren't ever going to happen and that I was going to wake up in twenty years with a wasted life.
That's what comes from reading too much 'US Magazine'!
So, anyway, I was feeling a little mopey about it.
(a direct consequence of 'idolizing' someone or something that shouldn't be put in that place of priority in my heart/mind...)
Then I realized that to my kids, I'm a superstar.
To them, we're rich.
In their eyes, me and mom are the cat's meow, if you will.
Like a bolt of lightning I realized that the whole point of life is life together. You and I have been made for relationship and those close, typically familial, relationships that dominate our days and years are the ones that make us essentially who we are.
I am a man. I am a husband. I am a father. I am a son. I am a grandson.
These things will never change.
(even when my parents pass I will always have been a son...)
My bank account will swell and shrink. My relative 'fame' or notoriety will fluctuate, and for many--or most--of us, no one outside our immediate circle will ever 'know' who we are.
And that could get you down if you let it.
But hopefully you've had the same breakthrough I had and you've realized that to your immediate circle you'll always be somebody worth writing about, worth spending days, weeks, months, years with. Someone whose opinion matters more than any superstar, pundit, or journalist.
And that's why, it seems to me, that we should remember to keep our life in proper perspective and not allow our careers to run away with things.
Your kids need you. You're their 'Brad' and 'Angie'.
No one else ever will be.
TD
