For all its faults, social media is a great way to stay in touch with people you don’t see on a regular basis. For me, I’m able to keep up with folks I knew when I was a kid, classmates from high school, and friends I’ve met along the way through college, work, and life. It’s cool to see how our lives have changed over the years.
Social media can also showcase the natural progression of life for you and the people you follow. People you played sports with, partied with, and did things you’ll never speak of publicly are now parents and doing family things like soccer games, pumpkin patches, and pictures with Christmas jammies.
From time to time, however, social media delivers bad news. Maybe the parent of someone you grew up with passes away. Perhaps someone you know is going through an illness and they are requesting prayers and good vibes. And on the saddest of occasions, you hear of the untimely death of a friend. I recently learned about the passing of someone I knew throughout the majority of my childhood. We played sports together from the time we were kids all the way to high school, and while we weren’t close friends by any means, those memories have lasted forever. So when I saw some rumblings on Facebook about him, I naturally clicked around to make sure I was seeing what I thought I saw. And because we had lost contact over the years, I reached out to someone who would know for certain what was going on, and sure enough, what I read was true. A former classmate and teammate, dead at 42.
It’s a gut punch whenever I hear that someone around my age has died, no matter the cause. Because that’s my generation. They experienced things growing up that I experienced. Most likely they are in a place in life similar to me. And in this case, it was definitely true. My classmate had kids, two of which were smaller. He had a wife, but in the blink of an eye, that was gone. His kids will now have to go through life without their dad. That unfortunately reality is perhaps the scariest thing that lives in the back of my head.
As I processed the news, it served as yet another reminder of how precious time is. It’s a reminder that not only is tomorrow not promised, but the end of the day is not promised. So the question remains as dads, how are we using our time? I’m sure as Halloween was approaching and the holidays thereafter, my classmate had plans for his kids. Whatever those were will never come to be. We all put things off, that’s life. I have days when work has drained me and I don’t give 100 percent as a dad. There have been times when I’ve rescheduled things assuming that I’ll make it to that day. That will continue to happen. I just have to make sure I’m doing my best to maximize the time I have. Life is short, and in an instant, it can all be taken away.
Time Part III
Very nice piece on the importance of time in regards to your children. I see so many people squander that time. It goes fast and you cannot get it back. When my kids were very young, I accepted a job with a company that was very lucrative. It would have set us for life. Then, unexpectedly, they sent me out of country for 3 weeks. When I got back, they told me I needed to head out for another month and after a short hiatus, I would be heading out for a minimum of 2 months. None of this was in the job description.
When I missed one of the kid's birthdays, and then Halloween, I realized I was then going to miss Christmas with my very young children. I know this is fairly common, but I could not stand the thought of missing all these events that I could never get back. I turned in my notice at that very lucrative job and went back to the grind of a more regular job for way less money. A sacrifice? Yes, but the time I regained with my children was more than worth the loss in income and career. Your young children only make one pass through your life... MAKE IT COUNT!
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