Tuesday, June 26, 2018

TO THE GRADUATES


Each year in this country, the doors of high schools open wide and the graduating class runs, walks, skips or saunters out to start practicing what they have learned over the last twelve years in school. It’s a process that has been repeated time and again all over this nation and I call it the great coming out. For many it’s just the culmination of the first twelve years of an education that will continue on for a few more years as they put on the finishing touches, toward a career they will embark on that will define them, for the rest of their lives. So it’s not the end but a beginning.

If you know what you want to do with the rest of your life at this tender age, then you are very lucky indeed because life is a smorgasbord and you have tasted very little of it. But hopefully your guardians and teachers have consoled you on this and you at least have a basic idea of what your choice is going to be all about. You have made an informed decision and now the process begins. A good many of you will change your minds many times in the next few years and that’s okay. To love what you do for your career, is a luxury not afforded to a lot of people. Look around.

I listened to two young people the other day telling me they both hope to be doctors when they grow up. They are in their younger teenage years and probably have little idea about the lives doctors live, the work they do and the commitment it takes to become one but right now there is nothing wrong to have that lofty goal. There is also nothing wrong with changing your mind as time goes on but at someplace in the next few years, at least for the graduates, push comes to shove and you must commit. Today’s world can have a way of hurrying you along in this process. Just remember whatever you do in life, you’re the one who has to be pleased.

Things will get in the way as you age so it’s important to get on the right path as soon as you can. Friendships become lovers and lovers become spouses and spouses beget children and responsibilities you never knew existed will come into play. But that’s the cycle of life. Your parents or guardians, who sheltered you and guided you for so many years, will become less and less a factor in your lives because they want you to grow your own wings now. Many of them will cut the cord with you and many of you will cut that cord yourself as you strive to become your own independent person and chart your own way for the rest of your life. Hopefully you know what you really want to be and have made some good choices.

I have three grandchildren who all have four-year degrees who don’t work in the fields they studied in. Was their education a waste? Not really because those unrelated degrees probably had a lot to do with the jobs they now have. I would caution you about one thing though and that’s try to not borrow a lot of money for school if you can help it. It’s easy to borrow and hard to pay back and that job your going to get right out of college. May not pay as much as you think for a while. I know I haven’t talked about those of you that have other plans such as the trades or the service. Whatever you do give it your all and someday you will reap the benefits of a good life, doing the things you always wanted to do.----Good luck and God bless.

Tuesday, June 19, 2018

WERE ALL IMPORTANT

                                                

I want to tell you about my father-in–law, a World War II vet, who came home from the beaches of Okinawa with several purple hearts. He didn’t come home, beating his chest and saying look at me. He came home and took up his place, right back in society where he left off before the war. A proud but humble man for his part of that hard fought victory. He had to have seen some terrible things and lived through some terrible times, after all he was wounded many times but in the years I knew him he never talked about that. He had a family to raise and a business to run and that was the crux of his efforts. I had many other relatives that came home from that war under similar circumstances and they pretty much acted the same way. The war was over and although they never forgot that they had once been a soldier, they quit being a soldier. They gratefully took the accolades that were offered them on Memorial Day and Veterans Day, as well they should have, but never sought them out and the only uniform they wore was the uniform of the day. They wanted to put the war behind them.

I was always told that all of us were as good as the next person but never one bit better. That some of us may have done some noteworthy things in our lives but that in itself didn’t make you any better then anyone else. You need to live your life in the present and not in the past.  What you did ten years ago does not give you a pass to quit living your life honorably. Humbleness, trumps narcissism every day of the week.

When I was in the Fire Service I had a woman tell me one day that she didn’t have much respect for police and fire people because they thought they were somehow special. I was momentarily taken back by that remark and later after thinking it over; I thought someone who was in public service and shooting off his or her mouth must have put her off. Most people that are in those jobs have to work hard at being regular people too, because the brass you are wearing, often times says you are something special, when those who do it, in their hearts, know they are not.

I went ice fishing once with three other men. A priest, a cop and a printer and all of them friends of mine. In the course of our conversation that day in the fish house I mentioned we should be well prepared for any emergency with a firefighter a cop and a priest in attendance. There was a moment of silence when I suddenly realized that I had put three of us out there in the limelight but forgot about my friend Jerry who was the printer and a very good man. For me it was embarrassing and I had no way to really rectify it without making things worse then they all ready were. It was Jerry who broke the ice, when he said. “Someone will need to tell the world about you hero’s.”  I learned a valuable lesson that day at someone else’s expense when it came to self-importance. My father-in-law was a war hero but he didn’t want to be. He just wanted to be my father-in-law, my wife’s dad, and our kid’s grandpa. He considered it an honor to have served his country and he wanted to just leave it at that. 

Wednesday, June 13, 2018

HAPPY FATHERS DAY

                                              

I wanted to write a letter this Fathers Day for all of the dads out there. Especially to the ones who have been there, for their spouse’s and children every step of the way. I want to say thank you to those dads who came home tired from work but still drug themselves out into the backyard to teach a little girl how to hit a softball off a tee and catch it in a glove. To those dads who took their toddler son and put him in his wagon and walked him around the neighborhood-- mostly just to show him off. To the dads who sat at the kitchen table and helped a confused child make sense of their schoolwork. To the dads who laid down with their child at bed time and read to them until they went to sleep. But mostly to the dads who were just proud to be a dad and loved their kids and spouse.

I had a neighbor who lost his wife to cancer and raised two little girls by himself He was a relatively young man at the time and several years later I once asked him if he ever thought about dating again. He didn’t answer me right away but finally he said this. “My wife left me a lot of things in the brief time I had her but the thing she left me that was the most precious is these children. Maybe someday when the girls are older I can think about that, but for now, I owe it to her and the girls to not complicate their lives anymore then they have already been.” He was a good dad, and I was almost ashamed I had asked the question.

When I graduated from high school my father told me it was time to get a job or go on to school but in any case it was time to move out. I was the oldest of eight kids and they needed my bed and my spot at the table. My grandfather lived in the same town and I tearfully told grandpa that dad had bluntly told me to leave. My grandfather said, “He wouldn’t have told you that if he didn’t have faith that you would find your way in the world. He did his part and now it’s your turn. He believes in you Mike. He told me so” I remember sitting on the end of his hospital bed 40 years later, holding his hand and crying as he was dying. It was then, that I realized that the cord, I thought we had cut all of those years ago, had never really been cut. He had just given me some slack. I still needed him and even though he wasn’t physically there for me much during those forty years, he was always there in sprit and he had given me the biggest gift of all. He believed in me-- and that had made me a better man. He never achieved a lot materially in his life of hard work but yet the example he gave me and left with me was not just the man he became. It also was the man he always meant to be and by definition that is what a real father is all about. Yes, at some point he had quit telling me how to live-- but he never quit showing me how to live.

As dads we all need to be that good example to our kids that they will take with them after you are gone. Just having that on your mind each day, doesn’t just give your children someone to emulate. In effect it makes you a better person for everyone, not just your kids. To my dad and to all the dads who have gone to their just reward or are with us, I have always realized that anyone can become a father but it takes a lot of love and work to be your dad.


Wednesday, June 6, 2018

THE ROYAL WEDDING

                                               

I’m an early riser as has always been my habit. Some days earlier then I want to be and on Saturday May 19th,it was one of those mornings and there I was, wide awake at five a.m. Bored and restless I tuned on the television-- and yes-- I have one in the bedroom. But this morning instead of the usual bad news and self-serving news commentary, it was the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markel on the tube. I hadn’t intended to watch it, but this morning I seemed to be drawn to it. Maybe that’s what it takes to get my attention sometimes. A new morning with a fresh mind, uncluttered with the usual parade of problems we all have.

I have never been much on royalty during my life. I guess I felt we were all born as equals in Gods eyes and that no one is more excellent then anyone else. Born into poverty myself, my father always told me to hold my head high. That I was as good as the next man-- but not one bit better, But then I also had a thought that asked-- “Who said the Royal Family thought they were better then anyone else.” That on one hand they were fortunate to be born into royalty and on the other they were given the unenviable task of living their entire lives in the public eye. That like it or not, the eyes of the world were upon them, every moment of their lives.

For the most part the Royal family has always tried to show their best side. To be an example to the rest of us of how to treat others. To be a living lesson on how to live an honorable life, with love and respect towards others. Yes, they have faltered sometimes but after all we can’t take the human factor out of it can we? A faltering made even more unforgiving sometimes by the relentless scrutiny of a media that forgot a long time ago that the royalty were such things as human beings.

I couldn’t help but think while watching all of those people in England, dressed in their best finery and witnessing this wedding, that somewhere this morning in Syria or Yemen or a thousand other places there were other human beings dressed in rags, on the verge of dying from starvation and sickness who weren’t even aware of this grand celebration, because each day is just another day for them, to just fight for survival. It seems nonsensical that the hate that seems to permeate this world can’t be overcome by all the good that comes with simply loving one other.

Maybe that’s what our sick country needs to get our minds off of the corruption and political greediness of the way we do business here. We need somebody here amongst us, in the flesh to lead us and be that guiding light. Someone who doesn’t care about more wars, money and power or some corrupt political Ideology. Oh, there are people like that here in our mix, don’t get me wrong. I think either they are too scared to get into that political fray, for fear they might have to become like them, or they feel as I sometimes do. That the pendulum has swung so far off the centers to ever get it back where it belongs, and now it’s next to imposable and they, like the rest of us, are now in a survival mode. After World War II the rest of the world once looked up to this nation and its people. Believe me, we squandered all of that good will a long time ago and today were not a good example for anybody.