[COPY] Long Distance Dad
He doesn't know where he's headed but knows where he's been.
Friends and family used to give this man self-help books for his birthday or Christmas. He never questioned why because he seemed puzzled about his life. He knew what he wanted to do with his life, but he needed to do something else first. By the time he finished what he needed to do, he didn’t have the energy or motivation to work on what he wanted to do. Maybe that self-help book had the answer to his problem. This wasn’t his first self-help rodeo. He needed an answer he could run with to put his universe in order as he imagined it. He had plenty of energy to find the right path for his quest. There was a redundant pattern to these self-help books. The author would start by telling him the extraordinary life he envisioned was within his grasp. It brought hope and happiness. Then came the part he needed to grasp to make it all happen. Every book had the same grasp ending.
One book had an interesting exercise. Take a piece of paper and draw lines to create four equal squares. Each square would have a title. Each square was to be titled. One was family, then friends, work, and community. The exercise placed you in the back of the church at your funeral. Four people will come to the podium to fill in their version of each title under the appropriate square. He was to write down what he would want these people to say about him? He put down the book. It was time to give his daughter a bath.
Twenty years had gone by. He was going through files from his past, looking for something he wouldn’t find. These were his files of dreams, half done. It is said humans spend two years of their lives looking for stuff. He always said he would have to add another year to look. He would always find something he wasn’t looking for. Today was the paper with the four squares describing what people would say about him at his funeral. He filled in those squares before it was sent to the lost and found. How did he do on his test?
Self-reflection can be biased until you look in a mirror. He felt like he was 25 until the dreaded mirror stood in front of him. So what did he find?
He moved around a lot all his life. He was a military brat. He started a new life every three years. It was a hard habit to break. For the first time, his mistakes didn’t go away by location. He is a Dad. It was easy to forget a lie or a poor decision when you would be gone before it resurfaced. It was like waiting until you were fifty to get your wisdom teeth removed, not pulled but cut out. It was pain made for a younger man. He had debts that he may be too old to pay back and broken promises that were too late to repair.
His eulogy is yet to be written. He isn’t dead yet.
To Be continued: