It is 11:45 p.m. as I write this. This post will probably go live in a few days. I couldn’t sleep because I kept thinking about writing a conclusion to this series.
This series was centered on an idea I had as I sat on the floor waiting for my daughters to finish Cinderella Jr practice. Their performance was last week. Life moves on.
My oldest son is about two months away from starting college. Life moves on.
Earlier this evening my wife and I watched the twelfth Star Trek movie (one more to go). Each summer we try to watch a series of movies or TV shows. Life moves on.
Life happens every day. We choose to walk our path with love or something else. We have family and friends that share time walking with us. That’s L.I.F.E. and no matter how much we don’t want it to, life moves on.
I hope this series got you to think about your life. To consider how important love is to all the aspects of this life. Maybe to reconnect with a friend. To live your best life today, every day. Because life moves on. And you don’t get any of these days back.
What did you spend those minutes on? Your goals? Yelling at someone on the drive home? Letting someone know you loved them? Adding shows to your “My List” on Netflix?
Our lives have big moments, some of them positive, others are heartbreaking. But most of our life is how we spend the 1440 minutes we are given each day, and that is important to understand for a few reasons.
The first reason is because we all have a last day. No matter what you believe regarding the afterlife, we all get one life. One path to walk. Each day is an opportunity to show love. To work towards a goal. To strengthening relationships. Or not.
Maybe because I am a few years away from 50, but time has become more valuable to me. Each day is an opportunity to spend time doing wonderful things. Or we can do mundane or negative things. Yes, it is our choice on how we spend our time.
The second reason to understand how we live every day is the connection to the moments in our lives that are drastic. How we live everyday creates a foundation that helps us when the big moments happen in our lives. It doesn’t matter if it is a negative or positive moment, we will respond to those moments based on the way we live every day. We will respond with love or negativity. The foundation we have every day will not ease any pain we may feel, or make the joy from a moment last longer. Our everyday foundation helps us deal with the moment. It directs our next step.
Today is our life. How we live today builds our life. We will have our hearts broken. We will achieve goals. We will laugh. We will cry. Life is what we do now. What we do with the 1440 minutes. We don’t have a great life looking back on our last day… we have a great life today.
Below are a few media recommendations that correlate with this idea.
Books
The Big Sea by Langston Hughes is part of his story as a young poet. His story highlights how we live influences our goals and talents.
I was thinking about life the other day while I waited for my daughters to finish their first day of practice for Cinderella Jr. So many little ideas bounced inside my head. I will be turning 50 in a few years. It is nice to have summer break again (been four years). The story lines of the Star Trek movies my wife and I have been watching (one through five at the time). This floor is hard. The idea of time presented in the movie, Arrival. Amazement at making it to this moment in my life. The new band Haevn I discovered.
Ideas like that, then something clicked in my head. Life became an acronym. Each letter represents an aspect of how to live a great life. I ran with the idea, jotted down some notes, and decided to write a blog series on this idea. After this introductory post, I will dedicate a post for each letter.
My goal of the blog series is:
To be inspirational for you, the reader
To satisfy my joy of dealing with deep ideas
To satisfy my drive for writing
So join me over the next two weeks as I discuss the acronym of LIFE. I will share my ideas, share some book or media recommendations, and hopefully give you, even if it is just one idea, something that will help you live an awesome life.
Just a warning, I may be writing this blog for me (life is stressful at the moment)… but I think you might like it.
Welcome to #dadlife.
Welcome to time being a single piece of pie left and 14 people wanting it.
Welcome to money being a battlefield. Bills are tanks that slowly advance but hit you from far away with loud shells that leave holes in your landscape. Making it difficult to outrun the tanks; see they run on continuous tracks.
#dadlife has no filters to make things look better. It is filled with vomit, bags under your eyes, dirty dishes and loads of soiled laundry… so many loads of laundry. #dadlife is filled with frowns, a fading body, and carpet worn thin from the family routine.
Welcome to feeling like your dreams are expired spices in the cupboard. Always in sight, thought of when cooking, but no one likes their scrambled eggs with seasoning. So your dreams sit in the back, stale and out of date.
#dadlife is being last in line at the zoo. Making sure everyone sees the tigers while you answer the questions and making sure that a little one doesn’t wander off. You get the last drops of water and few chips left in the bag.
Welcome to finding strength you didn’t know you had. #dadlife builds your heart and mind, it is crossfit training for every aspect of your life. Every day is a rep for life, building strength to handle your children’s heartaches, while striving to build a home. #dadlife teaches you how to move in 12 different ways. You become limber and agile, being capable of handling different situations at the same time.
#dadlife breaks your heart with joy and then heals it with love as you watch your children shine, on a stage, with a colored pencil, or on the court. Your heart cracks as they express their talents, fulfilling their dreams. The cracks are then healed when they catch your eye with a smile that says thank you.
Welcome to #dadlife. It is like trying to find a treasure with a faded map. You can just make out the directions, but many times you forge your own way. Finding unique coins along the unexplored paths. After awhile you can read the next landmark, make a slight adjustment to stay on track. But soon find that the map is hard to read again. So, you decide which path to take on your own. Finding small treasures along the way.
#dadlife is just a hashtag, but through all the hurdles of this dad’s life, I am happy to share both the sorrow and joy of a life lived.
Sometimes, things don’t go as planned. We were looking forward to the first weekend where we only had one activity on the calendar. I was going to get grades caught up. Spend time with the family. Watch the Super Bowl. Enjoy the downtime.
It started as a little tickle in my throat when I woke up Friday morning. We had a teacher in-service that day so the morning routine was relaxed. At lunch time we were going to pick up my blood pressure medicine. I got some cold and flu medicine, too. I thought it would be best to nip the scratchy throat situation before it got worse. By the end of the day I told my wife that I was going to get some rest when we got home.
I wasn’t feeling horrible, but I was tired. I thought part of it was the cold and flu medicine. Things turned for the worse. When bedtime arrived my throat was feeling tight and scratchy. I thought I just needed another dose of medicine, a good night’s sleep, and everything would be good in the morning. I was wrong.
We would go to convenient care in the morning. The doctor would talk about the option of draining my uvula if the antibiotics didn’t work because it was so swollen. I had strep throat. But I didn’t know that Friday night. I had one of the worse nights of my life as my throat and uvula worked together to make me feel as if I was choking on something all night. I would drink some ice water and the sensation would go away for a few minutes. I would close my eyes only to be jolted back by the closing of my throat.
I could not find a position that would alleviate the sensation. Your mind starts to panic in the darkness of the night. So many thoughts ran through my head in that darkness. At one point I did panic. My heart raced. I couldn’t stop thinking something was terribly wrong. But I survived. The night passed.
I would spend all day Saturday and part of Sunday in bed. Away from the kids. Away from the routine of my life. I could hear the laughter and conversation at dinner. My little girls would stick their head in to say they loved me. My wife would fill my water for me. (I drank so much water!)
My sickness reminded me of a few things.
The first is that family is about routine. Now, not in the boring definition, but by what you do everyday. Each member of the family has a role. A family is the whole of all the parts. A family changes over time. Children grow, routines change and adapt to new situations. But the definition of a family is founded in what each person does. That is why I felt so sad as I listened to my family enjoy dinner Saturday night. They laughed. They talked. I missed that. Dinner time is part of our family definition, part of our routine.
The second aspect of life that was reinforced actually came during my struggle Friday night and maybe because I am only a few years away from being 50 and maybe because we have read the poem, “The Road Not Taken,” in class. (I have written about the poem before in the post, “Only Time Will Tell.”) But time doesn’t wait for your dreams. Time doesn’t wait for your happiness. Time doesn’t wait for anything.
Ironic that I wanted Friday night to end quickly, but it didn’t. But the saddest belief we have is that tomorrow will make our dreams come true, that we will be happier tomorrow. I see this in different ways. My seniors believe that they will be happier next year. I live it every time I pass up an opportunity to fulfil my goals. But time will pass no matter what. Time doesn’t care.
I am going to go against the grain today. I am going to ask a hard question. And I ask you to not jump on the inspirational bandwagon.
I can predict your answers… at least the first ones that flood your mind. Don’t give up. Follow your heart or dreams. Stay the course. We can’t forget the Thomas Edison quote, “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
But I ask you to think about this question for a minute. To consider some ideas before answering the question about giving up.
The first concept to consider is Passion.
Jon Acuff in his book Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work that Matters brings up an interesting question regarding this idea. Does your dream get you up early? Here is his blog post on the idea.
If you don’t have the passion to actually go after something, then it is time to let the dream go. There is no use in working on a dream with minimal effort. It is a waste of your time. Spend that time on something else.
Another concept to consider is the Cost.
Achieving anything has a cost to it. In the example above the cost is time (and sleep). But don’t take time lightly. We can not do everything. If we spend time on something, that means something or someone is not getting that time. And Time is not the only cost. There is also the cost of money, energy, and relationships to highlight a few. If you are not willing to pay the cost of achieving a dream, then it is time to give up.
The hardest concept is Failure.
If you are not making progress on your goal, it might be time to give up. This is a tricky concept because we all do hit a wall, which I discuss at Stop Doing Nothing blog. Failure alone is not a sign you need to give up on a goal. And I can’t give you a time table to follow so that after six years you should quit. I do believe failure tells us that something is wrong. It could be timing, our approach, or a simply a bad day. But it can also be the wrong dream. If nothing is working. Failure is all you are experiencing. It might be time to let the dream goal.
When do you know it is time to give up?
If your goal doesn’t drive you. If you are not willing to pay the cost of achieving your goal. If you are experiencing nothing but failure. If all three of these concepts ring true. Then it is OK to give up on a dream because you can go accomplish another goal that has been waiting for you to achieve.
It is graduation weekend for many schools. I wonder how many speeches will quote Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken”? You know the lines:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
These lines have been posturized, quoted, and even used in commercials to express the idea that choosing a different path will change your life.
I am also going to quote this poem in my post, but an entirely different section for the same idea. You might just see the above quote in a new light.
As I have taught this poem over the years I have come to believe the heart of this poem is about choosing a path for the day, but like many of Frost’s poems there is a quiet depth in his lines. I think his deepest statement comes in the first stanza.
It is easy to make decisions when or if we can see it clearly, but that doesn’t happen very often in life, and Frost knew this. “…as far as I could / to where it bent…” Life is not a straight line, we are only allowed to see so far ahead in our lives. We can plan. We can dream. But tomorrow is the bend in the path. We have to make our decisions without knowing what lies beyond that bend. That takes faith. That takes courage.
No matter what you choose, as Frost said, you will be “telling this with a sigh.” What type of sigh? Only tomorrow knows.
Last week I had a great opportunity to conduct a workshop with Central Community College professors.
My oldest son went to the driving range with me on Saturday and my second son was my caddy on my last round of golf.
My wife and I took our two little girls grocery shopping with us on Thursday and we took the three oldest kids back-to-school shopping on Friday.
Some days at work I spend the whole day on one project, and yes sometimes it feels like I am playing with a new toy.
What do all these examples have in common? Time.
The professors commented that they never got the time to actually work on things. Something I also hear from teachers at workshops.
As a dad and husband, nothing says “I love you” like spending time with family.
As I have mentioned before, my job gives me time to explore new tools to use in my classes or to show to other educators.
Time.
Time is used differently in school, especially high school. It is separated into chunks by the ringing of a bell. And every teacher has had that bell interrupt a great lesson.
Everyday life makes us feel frazzled at times. I can feel exhausted at the end of a day when I don’t actually get much done. The worst part is that my attitude can then affect the rest of the family in a negative way, and if I’m not careful it becomes a habit for the household.
Time.
Life takes time. Learning takes time. People need our time (especially those we care about the most). We all get 24 hours in a day. But do we use those hours for the best? Time for our students to think? Time to share a joke at the dinner table? Or to just sit with the person you love and watch the sky fade to night, happy with how you spent the time given to you?
For all the hours I’ve spent on the road, all the years living in Nebraska and Wyoming, I have never hit a deer or an antelope. I have had a number of other car accidents, but I’ve always spotted the deer while driving before anything bad could happen. Until this morning…
Right now, it is completely dark for most of my commute. This morning the moon accompanied me on my drive. I was in between Doniphan and the interstate (as the picture below shows). Things were going fine, music on, cruise set, and I was checking traffic to decide when to go into the left lane so I could merge onto the interstate. I just crossed the bridge when the deer appeared.
Image from Google Maps
I was still in the right lane when the deer appeared on the passenger side, just in the fading part of the headlights. Both of us were caught in that eternal second. Because of the light the deer looked like a ghost, faded, almost transparent. I could see his head snap back and his black eyes widen. I swear his expression was, “What the….”
I did nothing. Which was the best thing. The deer and I caught up with time. It seemed my car lurched forward to do it, getting ahead of the deer to miss him. I looked into my review mirror but could not see if he crossed the road or not.
No matter how much we try, we cannot control Life. We have control of our attitude, or work ethic, and our smile. But Life, it is like a box of Ping-Pong balls dumped out on a concrete floor. We will get knocked around, sometimes drastically. This got me thinking about dictionaries…
As an English teacher I forever get the question, “How do you spell that?” I would always respond with directions to the bookshelf where the dictionaries sat waiting to be opened. Even when my students had computers I would get that question. At a time when answers are sometimes just a click away, why did my students still ask that question?
I think part of the shift we are experiencing, in school and our own lives, must include the ability to react (or know when not to in my case) to Life. That is a grand statement, but I’m not sure I have had a whole day where something didn’t go wrong. Where a Ping-Pong ball didn’t knock something off track. Or a deer run out in front of you. Are you prepared to react, to adapt? Are students prepared?
“Today is the moment when your past and future meet.”
I have been struggling with how to articulate this idea with out writing some deep philosophy book. Simply stated, what I’ve learned is that our past is important, but we don’t handle its power well.
On the extreme edges we either ignore it or let it cripple us. Somewhere in the middle is where we can use it to improve today and build for tomorrow. Our past affects us, even if we don’t always recognize it.
The crazy part is it doesn’t matter if the past was 10 years or 10 minutes ago. Over the years I’ve seen how the past affects my students. I’ve seen how the drama of the last class took 10 minutes for them to get focused, to the way a movie we watched in class brought back the pain of the loss of a parent.
I have been guilty of not seeing my students fully. Wondering why they just did that? Or frustrated with their work ethic. I am guilty of not considering their past and how it might play a role in their behavior. To use my English teacher vocabulary, we all are round dynamic characters in this life. We all have a past, we all have dreams and goals we want to achieve. And today is the moment when our past and future meet. If we are aware of this I think we can tackle issues with a clearer objective. If we can help our students see that, maybe we can help them build a better future.
It is all Connected 