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Rule 52: Write Letters

I watch my kids and realize that the way they communicate with one another has become a world of sound bites. Text, instagram, and twitter have become the preferred forms of communication with telephone calls being used for only the most serious of issues.   It feels like if you can’t communicate it 140 characters the feeling isn’t worth having.

I urge you to re-discover another form of communication, a letter. Some of the most interesting things I have learned about life have come from reading the letters of others.

Any true romantic has to read the letters between Elizabeth Barret Browning and Robert Browning, they defined the art of the love letter..

“And now listen to me in turn.
You have touched me more profoundly than I thought even you could have touched me – my heart was full when you
came here today. Henceforward I am yours for everything”

Love Letter from Elizabeth Barrett to Robert Browning
(10 January 1846)

Now that’s communication that will last, and defines you far more than the text…” u r hot” does. The letter helps you stop, and think about your feelings and find the words that capture the moment- it requires both effort and caring. Just the joy of of opening a hand addressed envelope, and anticipation of reading someone’s thoughts is wonderful to feel.

We named Abigail after Abigail Adams because of her letters to John. If you have never read them I encourage you to, she was a remarkable woman who lived in extraordinary times yet found time to express deep love for her husband.

“My Dearest Friend,

…should I draw you the picture of my Heart, it would be what I hope you still would Love; tho it contained nothing new; the early possession you obtained there; and the absolute power you have ever maintained over it; leaves not the smallest space unoccupied. I look back to the early days of our acquaintance; and Friendship, as to the days of Love and Innocence; and with an indescribable pleasure I have seen near a score of years roll over our Heads, with an affection heightened and improved by time — nor have the dreary years of absence in the smallest degree effaced from my mind the Image of the dear untitled man to whom I gave my Heart…”

That lady knew how to turn a phrase. I’m sure John was knocked off his heels when he read that letter. I also found it so cool that although John addressed his letters with things like “Dear Adorable” she always used “My dearest friend”, which I find amazingly romantic and sweet. Even after all the years since she wrote them they allow the reader to instantly feel the emotion at the time it was first written, and first read. It lasts.

I started thinking about letters today because of the anniversary of my Mom’s passing 15 years ago. And one of the things, among many others, that I regret is that I never took the time to write her a letter.  Oh. I’m sure I gave her cards with short notes in them, but I never took the time to sit down and really write her a letter of my thoughts about her, and how she impacted my world. So today I started to write a long overdue letter to her and intend to address it to myself, mail it and keep it sealed. ( you can open it after I’m not longer here… so in about 60 years)

I decided not to share that letter because letters are not like blog postings. Letters are extremely inmate. They express emotions is a raw way that the shotgun blasts of the internet would do an injustice to the words. I think they need to be private, and shared in the same format they were intending- one on one- a personal experience.

Also my Mom was not a very tech savvy person, and even with divine intervention she would be challenged to open the blog. And I’m sure Dad would not be much help as he struggles to find channel 8 on the cable TV of heaven.

She’s was a pen and paper type of person and I think I need to honor her as such and stay with that format.  But as a teaser to that future reading of the letter I do use Abigail’s opening of “my dearest friend”.

With Mother’s day approaching I can think of no kinder way of expressing your love and gratitude to a Mom than a thoughtful letter. Try to do it while they are still here, trust me it is a lot easier to write it then.

I do miss you my dearest friend.

Rule # 27a  D is for Done

A couple of my kids have been struggling with personal trials as well as academic ones. It has not been an easy couple of months, and at times like this I miss talking to my Dad for perspective. My Dad lead a remarkable life, and although he wasn’t much for fatherly talks , neither Donna nor I got many of those, he generally had a story or two for a situation. And on some special occasions the stories would actually be true. I miss those stories.

I encourage you to re-read the Eulogy given by Andreas Wagner pastor of  St Peters Lutheran Church North Wales ( rule 27). In the year since it was delivered I re-read it a number of times and have found comfort in Pastor Wagner’s discussion of “grace”.  His words gave me perspective on my life and my Dad’s.

Grace of God is at the same time the most complicated and simplest thing to understand. My Dad had the grace of God, but I don’t think he really understood it. He was just too damn busy.

I watch my son Stephen earn over 190 credits in Math and Physics with a 3.4 and struggle with the last two courses and feel overwhelmed. I watch my son Andrew work two jobs  (along with Ashleigh) and push so hard for a new home, and wedding through so much effort. All things which I am proud of them for having accomplished…but

I wonder if I ever gave the lesson of  God’s grace to them. That simple truth was that although their achievements are great, the love I have for them is unconditional as is the love from God.

I wonder in my effort to encourage strong, hard working kids I forgot to teach them that embracing God’s grace is the end goal, not the goal of getting to the finish line. The example of building the businesses I have started, and working the way I have may have given them the impression that that’s what life’s goals should be.

For perspective..

I failed Biology in my freshman year at Penn State, at which time that felt like it was the end of my life.  I was going to have to become  ditch digger for the rest of my life and live in poverty. The failure defined me, because I let it define me. I didn’t understand what depression was back then ( remember this was years before Dr. Phil) but I think that is what I was going through.

In the perspective gained over the last 36 years since getting that F I realize that God had a plan for me and that plan included that F. I was being lead somewhere and the lesson learned from that failure taught me more about life than any C every did. Sure it felt awful while it was happening, but what I didn’t fully understand was that all of it…the A’s and the F’s , the failures and the successes, the money earned and lost …all of it meant really nothing. What mattered was the love of God and the  comfort of knowing I was living my life in his plan.

I miss my Dad and Mom everyday, this week is the 15th anniversary of the passing of my Mom. As I reflect in their lives I know that they loved me, and they were loved by God…and all the other things they did or did not do mattered about as much as that F in biology did in my life. Trust me, everyone reading this should be grateful I never was encouraged to be in any medical field- that F saved lives.

What makes a difference isn’t the money or grades, what makes a difference is the love of each other and the love, the grace from God.

I know you kids question the existence of God, and I know that this talk of unconditional love may sound strange from a man that helped set high expectations for each of you. But if all you understand is that I am most proud of you because of how you live your lives and not of what you accomplish, that is all you need to understand now. The rest will make sense later, with or without a belief in an All Mighty.

So as you work on that next final or wait on another table to save money, stop for a moment and recognize who loves you and embrace the grace. It isn’t the grade of some sad little college professor that defines us.. it is that grace shown in my love of you and the love from God. And with certainty I can tell you are both worthy of that grace and blessed with it.

Rule #34:  Be present

We live in a world where we rarely experience anything while its happening. Through the miracles of technology we can multitask virtually every moment of our lives. We have  the ability through i phones, i pads, net-books and notebooks to be in two places (at least mentally) at the same time. We don’t have to choose between answering office emails and watching our daughter’s soccer game, we can do both!

When I was a kid I didn’t have much of this technology, but do remember getting our first color television when I was 9 and the distraction it was to our lives. We now could sit as a family and watch TV, interacting first with what we were watching and second with the people in the room. Watching Hogan’s Heros in color may not sound cool, but it was way cool to a 9 year old in 1969.

I’m not saying my generation was any better, we embraced every new technology from the remote controls to the microwaves with the same passion as today’s latest i phone release. Technology is sexy. And its hard for any of us not to want the next better thing in the market. Cool is sexy.

I can tell you I have googled the new apple watch a dozen times, and stopped just short of pushing the buy button.

The problem isn’t the technology the problem is lack of focus.

The technology is addictive and it is easy fall into its trap. I had to struggle to think about when I really focus.

I enjoy riding motorcycles because it requires complete attention to the task at hand. You can’t text and drive ( although I’m sure some idiot has done it) , eat a quarter pounder or argue with your kids – the function of riding a motorcycle is almost hypnotic in its intensity of focus. 1-2-3  and your focusing on the experience to the exclusion of all else, or you die.

I think we need to find those hypnotic moments in our lives to really focus on what we are doing and who we are with at the moment.  Rarely do we have someone saying “1-2-3  taking you deeper, deeper…focus only on me”. But if we did wouldn’t be wonderful to be present completely with the person you are with…not worrying about what is happening with someone else, somewhere else but to experience that moment with with that one person.

As I have gotten older I have realized that when I am hypnotically focused on the moment I am in I have the best memories and experience. When Abby came home the other day after making the talent show at school ( go Abby!) and I took here upstairs, turned off the TV, put down the i pad and just looked at her as I asked her to tell me the whole story…I was entranced in the moment. The whole experience was important…her tone, her expressions, her word choices, her joy. I wasn’t experiencing a Facebook post, I was experiencing Abby. She was my hypnotist and I was her willing subject…it was wonderful.

I think the superficial interaction of Facebook posts and texts have given us the impression that we can check off interactions through these surface interactions and never really need to become fully engaged in anything. My 12 year old hypnotist Abby has taught me different. There is something better out there, something worth spending time understanding and experiencing.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not burning my ipad or iphone…they are fixtures of my being and I am far too addicted to give them up completely.

But I think we all need to be aware of the opportunity to be hypnotized by the moments we are living , entranced by the absolute attention given to another person.

1..2..3…melting,melting…snap!

Rule # 53: Slot Machines and Parking Meters

“Here’s all you have to know about men and women: women are crazy, men are stupid. And the main reason women are crazy is that men are stupid.”
? George Carlin, When Will Jesus Bring The Pork Chops?    

I have been recently finding myself explaining my view of the nature of men and women to my family. As my children develop relationships they are constantly amazed at how difficult the waters are to navigate. I get a lot of questions about “why’ did this happen, or “what” happened? The nature of relationships are very complex , and I’m not claiming I know the answers, I’m just claiming I know how to survive.

George Carlin made it into a joke when he blamed most of the problem on men being stupid. And from what I can tell he is dead on. Men just don’t get “it”, hell half the time in discussions with women I don’t even know what ‘it’ is.

This is because men aren’t necessarily stupid, we just don’t know what we are talking about. For men things are what they are,  yes we understand the emotions associated with events and actions, but are blissfully unaware of the hidden meanings in things we are talking about.

When men get together and start talking they generally do so by starting to talk about concrete things like sports, movies or beer. We find common ground in how we like or hate Ohio State Football, and our views are not underlying some deep meaning they are just how we see that thing. When I say I think the Buckeyes suck its because I think they suck, I’m not trying to tell my friend he is stupid or mean, I’m just trying to them I think the Buckeyes suck.

But when women have the exact same conversations the questions center around thousands of other issues such as ” how” I said it, the ” tone” I used and what I “really meant” by what I said.

As a man I think it must be exhausting to think about all those other things…and to women we must appear really stupid to not feel any inclination to explore these other issues.

Men are basically parking meters. You put a quarter in and you get 20 minutes of parking, its always the same and never a surprise. Its simple.  You never get more than 20 minutes, and only rarely when the meter is broken do you get anything less than 20 minutes. It is what it is.

Women are slot machines. The input is the same quarter but sometimes you get nothing, other times small wins and rarely a jackpot. But slot machines are so much more exciting than boring parking meters. The uncertainty of the outcome makes you want find more and more quarters to put in because you never know what you will get.

Well you sort of know, because you know from putting in coins over time you aren’t going to lose forever, and you aren’t going to get 3 jackpots in a row. But each quarter offers that hope for a great outcome.

This uncertainty over time have men become less confident in their own judgments when women are involved. They become stupid.

When Bobbi is called by a friend to stop out for drinks on the way home she simply says yes or no because she understands the outcomes that will occur. She will simple email or call me and tell me she is stopping off for a drink and the she knows the parking meter response will be “no problem”.

She has often asked why I and my male friends always have to check with their wives to see what is we should do. Several use them say, ” I have to check with the social director” and will get back to you. My wife hates that, she says, “can’t you guys make a decision on your own?”

Short answer is no we can’t.

Well we can, but we really don’t know what the quarter will do when we put it in the machine. Sometime we will get ” sure no problem”, sometime we will get ” you idiot,  we have teachers conference schedule”, and sometimes you will get ” why didn’t you ask me if I wanted to go”. You just never know.

We don’t know because we have become stupid from playing all our quarters in the slot machine of women in our lives. From the man’s perspective the slot machines look like crazy machines that can do almost anything. They confuse us and make us look stupid.

When my kids talk to me about relationships and we are discussing how men react, I find myself focusing on that parking meter. Understanding why he was tried when he came home from work isn’t that complex, it has nothing to do with anything but being tried.  Understanding why he didn’t call you has nothing to do with anything more than he it just didn’t occur to him that after talking to you in school for 3 hours that you would have anything else to say to him.

When explaining the slot machine to the men I find myself saying, ‘”well you should have known better than to put another quarter in to a machine that isn’t paying off that day” or just simply saying ” its a slot machine not an ATM”.  Accepting the amazing variety of outcomes of a slot machine as  gift from God helps you to embrace the insanity of placing quarters into it in the first place.  Let’s admit to ourselves the slot machines are a lot of fun.

The relationship pain we feel in life is when we do one of two things.

When we expect parking meters to give us anything more than 20 minutes of parking. No mater how many quarters a woman places into one its never going to have a jackpot.

Or when we place money into a slot machine and expect to have a win every time. As with Vegas the house always wins, and the moment you accept that as the only certainty of life  everything becomes increasingly easy.

Too much of our lives are spent trying to get men to behave as woman and women to behave as men. It will just make men appear more stupid and women more crazy. Accept that we have different responses to the quarters being put into us, and embrace who we are and who they are.

Oh by the way, The Buckeyes still suck.

Rule # 51: Somethings are worth dying for..

You have a legacy in our extended family where one great grandfather was a machine gunner in the the world war II and another great grandfather a prisoner of the Japanese  in the Philippians, and a survivor of the Bataan death march. A legacy of men you sacrificed the full measure of their youth and risked everything for the freedoms we have as a country.

Their principals mattered, they cared about the liberties and values of this country and were willing to die to protect them. We owe them for everything we have today.

Because of them I never had to take up arms to to defend our country. Because of them I have lived my entire life without fearing the loss of my life or freedom because I believed something different than someone thought I should. My freedoms came cheaply to me because my parents and grand parents paid so dearly.

There are millions of men and women who risks their lives today to preserve this freedom and most of their actions go unnoticed to us because they do it so well. The sacrifices don’t connect emotionally to us because we have just come to expect that we are free.

This week without a shot being fired we gave up so much that have fought for us to keep. With barely a whimper of resistance we just handed over our freedoms.

The movie ” The Interview” was pulled from our theaters because a foreign government said it offend them and they would blow up our theaters if we showed it. So, we gave up and stopped it. No fighting for our rights, no outrage- we just handed over what Bobbi’s Grandfather spent four years in a prison camp to save without even a word. The fear of being threatened by another country was too great to risk, we hid under our beds and prayed they would go away.

Two days later our President traded spies from Cuba for a prisoner. Our President told us that keeping Cuba isolated, was a failed policy and the brutal dictatorship that kills thousands and suppressed virtually every human right was not going to change and we would just have to accept them as they are..evil, but with really good cigars and beautiful beaches. He gave up the fight because it was too hard, and the cigars too good.

I’m worried that you are hearing the message that freedoms and values don’t matter. When we have to sacrifice to keep these freedoms either too much or too long, its better to just give up those freedoms. Because our safety matters more than anything else…who cares if we don’t see a movie or smoke a cigar that pays to keep an innocent in prison.

Kids it does matter. Somethings as your grandfathers and great-grand fathers have taught us things matter. Sometimes protecting our freedoms are worth the cost, no matter how great and painful.

I worry about your future because we have leaders who seem to think everything is negotiable including our basic freedoms. The message you are hearing is wrong, and you have obligations to your family’s legacy of sacrifice to not let this go by without speaking up.

Honestly I don’t think this is a President Obama problem, because he is just of creature of our desires and fears. He is doing what he thinks you want…giving up when the fight gets too hard. He’s not a bad president, he is just responding to a society that has no fight left in it. He couldn’t do these things unless we allowed him to, this isn’t his problem, this is all of our problem.

But there is a “rule” that has become clear in all of this which is an important one. Somethings are worth dying for, and you need to really think about what those things are and be prepared to defend them.

Sometimes it does matter.

Rule # 28: It’s not you it’s me

” Honey, it’s not you, it’s me.”

” I need time to work on me”

” I love you but I’m not in love with you”

At sometime in your life we will hear one of these phases, maybe all of them in a single conversation. You will be in relationship and things are swimming along, and all of a sudden you get hit with the ” babe, we need to talk” line.

I have seen my kids and relatives suffer through trying to make sense of these conversations and what to do next. I’ve see you suffer through ranges of emotions from sadness to anger and everything in between. I’ve worried about you sinking into depression or not being able to find your legs after a breakup.

There are some universal truths, which you will ignore now, but may prove valuable.

1. When its over its over

I’m a strong believer in counseling and rehabilitation of committed marriages when they are under stress. I have spend years in therapy in my first marriage and although it did not save my marriage I believed it gave me the tools to live a healthy life post the relationship.

I however, know that its important to recognize that marriages with children are significantly different from dating in your teens and twenties. Before you make a life long commitment to each other you have time to evaluate and decide if this person is a life partner. You should expect to find many people that just aren’t good fits with you. And you should expect that part of the time they will recognize its not a good fit before you do.

Acceptance that dating and relationships are a process where you expect many outcomes lead to dead ends is an important lesson in life. In the world where everyone gets a trophy for just showing up this may be hard to accept. But sometimes you don’t win, and sometimes you don’t get to have want you want even if you ask really nice. You have to accept that every romantic feeling you have isn’t valid just because you have it. Just because I think Halle Barry should love me doesn’t make her do so. Trust me I’ve tried.

You have to accept the hard fact that maybe she’s just not that into you. Yes, you are handsome, charming and a good dancer- but its not a fit.  The keys to personal happiness in relationship is to do healthy things and realize when its over, its over.

The mistake people make in their early relationships is that they believe like with their mothers, if they ask often enough, and in enough different ways they will change their minds and realize that you are the love of their lives. It didn’t work for me and Halle and it won’t work for you.

In fact the constant ‘talking’ through the problems and never ending texts just makes things more unhealthy. In these non-committed ( no marriage or kids) relationships this type of obsessiveness in trying to “fix” things leads only to bad feelings and restraining orders.

When its over its over- negotiating your way back into someone’s life demeans you  and annoys the other person.  When its over, accept it gracefully and move on. Your love of your life is out their you just need to find her. You’ve learned it wasn’t them and narrows down your search, be grateful for not wasting more time.

2. Love isn’t always LOVE

A phenomenon I’ve seen in the last decade is that the use of the word love has started much earlier and much more intensely in a relationships. In my entire life I have told  5 women I love them, and meant it each time. Some people say it to five different people a week, some five a day.

But many people have grown up in a world where divorce is common, relationships are fluid and loving a person is emotionally the same as loving a good cheeseburger.

Love is not a universally defined emotion, I’ve learned over time that love is personally defined by actions not words. Its how you treat someone, and care for them that defines love not words.  Love without care is empty and meaningless.

I’m hearing people now in their 20’s declare love after the first date or after a good  romantic encounter. There should be a rule that you should not be able to say that you are in love until you taken care of the other person with an intestinal bug. Nothing says Love like cleaning up projectile vomit and getting back in the bed and holding the person it came from.

Words are cheap, and are getting cheaper by the year. Don’t evaluate your relationships based on promises of love, evaluate them based on caring real actions.  Everything else is just words.

“But she said she loved me” is wishful thinking. If the words came without caring they are meaningless. Don’t be mad about the emptiness, but realize that understanding they are empty before you invest your life in a committed relationship is a gift.  Finding emptiness ten years into a relationship is much more sad  and difficult to deal with emotionally.

3. Self-Pity isn’t sexy

You got slammed to the curb by a girl that you thought was the love of your life. Your world is shaken to its core, and you are trying to figure out what happened.

Your next step is to not focus on what has been or what could have been, but on what will be. Take a trip, learn a new instrument, take a dance class, volunteer at a hospital…anything but sitting there and feeling sorry for yourself. Because the world won’t care, and girls will avoid you. People want to be around moving forward, positive people- focusing on what was just slows you down from finding our what is next.

Having people feel sorry for you gets you chicken soup and warm sweaters, moving forward  get you a date. Dates are better.

I wish I had words to spare you the pain of relationship and words that would heal a broken heart- I don’t. Look to Taylor Swift for that type of advice, I just don’t have the inspirational words to make sense of a bad relationships or sell 10 million albums.

What I can do is clearly tell you that the words ” it’s not you it’s me” are lies, because in the end it is you and only you that determine your own happiness. It  only you who can choose a path of positive, healthy actions that will lead you to a positive, healthy partner to share your life.

Yes, it didn’t work out for Halle and me, but I got over it and so will you.  I hear she is a very difficult person to live with, and I dodged that bullet.

Rule #21: We seek dignity

Dignity from the Latin word “dignitas” meaning worthiness.

In my 50’s  I am seeing most of my friends dealing with the illness or passing of their parents. I watch them, as I did, struggle with caring for those that have cared for them.

I found that with my father and mother all the unresolved issues of childhood came rushing forward from your sub-consciousness, and l felt both a helplessness and fear that that I was doing the wrong thing for my parents.

After their passing I realized that my parents told me long before they got sick what to do with their home, with their belongings and their healthcare but never what to do with these feelings.  I knew exactly who to call for the funeral but had no idea who to call for understanding of what they really wanted as they finished their life.

Although I still fully intent to live forever, in the unlikely case that my plans do not work for immortality, I thought you should  share my perspective learned from my parents passings. Its a perspective that required both the loss of my parents and a major personal heath issue. Looking over the end of life requires you to come to the cliff’s edge and dangle your toes over it fully understand it.

When my parents were fading I first thought they wanted to understand my most stupid actions in life and be reassured of my love for them. I found myself apologizing for not being caring, grateful, diligent, loving, kind, and a thousand other personal failures that I felt would be a burden to them. I felt I needed to apologize to my Dad for how I treated him during my first marriage, how I didn’t include him in enough major life events, and how I sucked at virtually every sport that he loved to watch. I was saying I was sorry for the F in biology in my first semester of college and for the time I crashed my first car the day I got it, and then again a week later.

The reality was this was all wasted energy, because he didn’t want to hear any of these silly apologies, he wasn’t sitting in the hospital bed lamenting his son’s inability to catch a fly ball, he was just scared. Scared at losing control over his body and life, and scared about not knowing what came next.

I know you, my children are mostly certain, at this point in your lives, in the fact that God does not exist. You are convinced that through the big bang theory a a number of other of scientific analysis God can be dismissed as an unnecessary fable.

But sitting at the bedside of my passing I promise you will be thinking about that fable a great deal, at that moment the shifts of real and unreal in our universe occur- the true reality of our existence is felt. It is when clarity is given to us. I can not promise you that it will change your view on God, but I can promise you that it will change you. And I can promise you will see real fear.

I was given the gift of being with my Dad several months before he died and was able to understand in the process what I believe was important to him, and will be important to me. It is the quest for dignity. It is through dignity this fear is lessened.

My sister, Donna has been involve with the The Center for Advocacy for the Rights and Interests of the Elderly (CARIE) for many years and has long said that the loss of dignity leads to the loss of self. Without dignity we lose ourselves.

Death sucks. And dying slowly sucks even more.

Yes you get rice pudding, a comfy bed and the occasional sponge bath. But in general it sucks.

The only times I could remember my Dad enjoying himself was when a young, good looking nurse would be assigned to him – and he would be hoping for one of those sponge baths. My regret is that I wasn’t able to get more of them for him.

(For future reference for me remember less rice pudding and more sponge baths)

In those final months it was having dignity in his life that mattered, dignity that both illness and the medical system robs from us. I think all people crave is being treated with a degree of worth. I found the best doctors were the one’s that allowed him a sense of control and respect. As people deal with the fear of the unknown, it is this control of their lives that will allow them to find peace on their own terms.

As you deal with my death and others death close to you, you should not be asking what else you can do to save our lives, because you will fail- you can only stall and never win this battle. Often the stalling is more about what you want than the person dying wants.

Your thoughts should be about living with dignity, making sure that everyday is filled with a verification of their worth as a person. Things like control over the clothing, food and in the case of my dad the TV remote are the critical issues.

Seek dignity for those dying and you both will find peace.

Oh, and do please keep Christine the candy striper on your speed dial for my sponge baths.

Rule #57: Believe in Cow Tipping

My father would tell me about the  times when he was a teen in Nebraska he would go out into the fields with his friend and tip cows.

For those of you that have not heard  of the ” cow tipping” this is the practice of sneaking into a farmer’s field and finding sleeping cows to push over. Its supposedly a lot of fun, especially when you have nothing else to do on a hot summer night in Nebraska.

He told me the story at least 20 times in his life, and I believe every word of it.

Yes, I know that cows do not sleep standing up, so to find a standing sleeping cow is impossible.

Yes, I know that cows are extremely sensitive to sight, sound and smell and can be startled easy, especially by a group of intoxicated teens.

Yes, I know physic studies have shown that is impossible to “tip” a cow with one person, and would require at least 4 strong guys to do this, if at all.

But I really liked my Dad’s story and I choose to accept it as fact.  He told the story to make me happy and to let me know what his life was like as a child. Yes, maybe some of the story  ( the cow, the tipping and the event) may have been expanded to make a better story, it is none the less very true. His truth.

In life people create themselves into the people they eventually become, some have great back stories, others have to create ones to cover up what is a less pleasant reality.

I talk to people all day long in my business and the thing I like most is the stories. Some tell me about their travels, others about their families and still others about their hobbies.., all of which are interesting. A lot of times I know I am listening to stories like my Dad’s cow tipping adventures, some part of which are absolutely true. A lot of times they are just great stories.

What I have learned is that everyone has a certain degree of BS ( keeping with the cow tipping theme) in there stories to help create the person they want to be, rather than the person that fate has made them.  And as I see it my Dad’s cow tipping story made my Dad a little more interesting, a little more human…and I liked that he kept telling it.

I’ve said it many times in this blog, life is hard.

And we as a family, along with the people we interact with need to help each other become the people they want to be and tell the stories they need to tell. Part of loving someone is to recognize their BS when it is happening and pretend you don’t smell it.  I know my Dad knew that I didn’t entirely believe his story, but he knew by me not challenging and ruining it I was showing him both love and respect.

I don’t think we can get past our failures in life without reinventing ourselves from time to time. Most people I know that our successful in life are always reinventing themselves and in part their stories.

Truth is extremely important, but if someone wants to tell me about their high school football adventures, the amazing fish they caught or how big of a tomato they grew- I’m all ears.  I embrace these drifts from the harsh reality of life, and want to believe that our lives can be filled with happiness and success. I honestly like that reality more than the one we have live.

With my children I’ve heard lots of stories, many of which have drifted from the absolute truth.  I always ask myself, if its important that I “call you out” on the story and make you tell the true story  or to let it go. In 27 years of being a parent I’ve let thousands of stories take their own shape. Letting the little stuff go is an important part of survival, not every issue needs to be exposed and resolved. You need your own cow tipping stories.

I miss my Dad’s Cow tipping story, and I’m 100% in for anyone that wants to go in the middle of the night to some farmer’s field and push a couple over.

Rule #15(a): Legacy Matters

With the passing of my father in May the most startling reality for me is that I will likely not have the time complete every dream or hope I have in my lifetime.

Although  I am still working on my plan “A” to live forever, plan B” is gaining ground all to fast and I may not be climbing Everest to celebrate my 120th birthday. So I, like my parents, have to look for my dream live on through my family, friends and colleagues. I have to be sure that the values I have received as a gift from my parents live on particularly through you my children.

Within the passing of my father God gave me a gift to see what that legacy is shaping up to be in the eulogies of my two oldest sons- Matthew and Andrew.

Each delivered their speech different ways , Matthew off the cuff with 4 or 5 words on a paper and Andrew with a written notes. Both proved  without a doubt that my fathers legacy has been handed off well, and these two remarkable young men with very different paths in life, will be remarkable old men one day carrying my fathers legacy for many generations.

Here are their messages:

Andrew Hill:

” Thank you all for coming to help celebrate my grandfather’s life. I know it would mean a great deal to him that so many friends and family members could come today. For those of you who do not know me, I am Andrew his oldest grandson.

I was fortunate to have my grandfather part of my life. As I grew older I became closer and closer to him. Though he was always in my life, certain memories will always stick out. His Master’s degree, his devotion to community and his family. These memories highlight his core values and beliefs that define who he was and who I want to be.

My earliest memory of him is walking in the Lansdale Parade with the Lion’s club. We were giving out candy. I got in trouble for throwing candy at people, but it was still a fun day. It always amazed me how involved with the community he was. I went to many different dinners, plays and events with him growing up. Often with the Lion’s cub or another one of his many organizations.

His love of travel never weakened. A sense of adventure stayed with him. Different countries, different continents. But it wasn’t just the places but the people. People are what are important in life. Friends, family and a sense of community.

However, the memory that will always stay with me is of him and his wife Peggy. Even though I was young, I knew it was absolute love. They were a team, travel companions, and best friends. As he took care of her it was nothing short of devotion. You could see it in his eyes. No matter what comes, I am here. Day in, Day out. That is a man. That is a husband. That is how you love someone.

This is the lesson I will always carry with me. While it was hard for me and my family as he reached his end, he never stopped fighting. Stubborn as he was, this gave me a strange comfort. His will stayed strong. He was too busy to be sick, too busy to be tired.

Don set a high example on what it meant to not only be a grandfather, but a father, a husband and a friend. This world is be better place for having him, and a sadder one without him. But his memory will live on through everyone he knew, especially his grandchildren who all miss him very much.

Thank you everyone.

Matthew Hill:

“Hello, I am Matthew, another one of the grandchildren from the big Irish family. And I think that I speak for all of the grandchildren and family when I say that we are thankful that you all could be here.