A Letter to My Grandchildren

A Letter to My Grandchildren (My Children and Others are Welcome to Read it, too.)

I’m at the end of my senior year of five decades since graduating from high school.  One more year and I will graduate from graduating. Again.

That may sound odd, and if it does, if you mull it around a little you may eventually understand what I am trying to say.  You see, in the last 49 years of my life since graduating from high school I’ve learned a few lessons, most of them the hard way.  I want to share them with you knowing full well that the likelihood of you having to learn them the hard way as well is fairly certain.

Lesson Number One: Be Yourself.  You will never be happy if you try to be someone who you are not.  You will never be happy if your measure of success is dependent upon the success of others, especially your peers, for there will always be somebody more successful in an aspect of life that you want than what you are.  There is more to success than a fat paycheck, a fancy title, an advanced degree, exotic trips, a nice home, and a car that doesn’t break down every time you want to go somewhere.  Success is not measured by the number of toys you have at the end of life.  Success has more to do with being content with who you are and being responsible and dependable.  It has more to do with character than cash.  It has more to do with the meaning of a handshake than a handsome paycheck.

A friend explained his situation to me at the end of his failed marriage.  He was a successful employee with a successful firm.  He made a good salary (one that I could only dream of) and had all the trappings of success that he wanted.  As we sat across a table from each other over lunch he stopped and placed his fork down on his plate and said that it was like he had climbed the ladder of success to the top only to find that the ladder was leaning against the wrong building.

I’ve heard that expression before and have heard it a few times since then, but this was the first time that it took on real meaning.  As a result of having his ladder of success leaning against the wrong building he lost everything.

Lesson Number Two: Be Patient.  I saw this with my own generation and I’ve seen it to a greater extent with the generation that followed me and with your generation.  People want it now, whatever it might happen to be.  People want the right job now.  People want the new house now.  People want the new car now.  People want the next promotion now.   People want everything now while giving little thought to what they need now.  Unfortunately, so often we confuse wants with needs.  For example, so many young people think they need their degree now so they can progress when in reality what they need is to experience the learning so they can obtain what they want.  This was an especially painful lesson for me to learn.  Let me explain.

I’ve had two careers in my lifetime, one in policing and the other in post-secondary education. Experiencing the lesson in my policing career helped prepare me for my second career.

I entered my first career as a rookie police officer.  After three years of experience I was ready for advancement.  I was past being a rookie and had a number of police officers on the department already who were my junior in seniority. There was an opening for a sergeant’s position and I decided to apply for it knowing full well that there were more experienced officers on the department who were better qualified for the job, but I went through the testing process anyway just for the experience.  I was not disappointed when I did not get the position.

Not long after that there was a second opening for a sergeant.  Since I had done well on the first exam and ranked rather high in the final selection process, I decided that this sergeant’s exam belonged to me.  I had learned what I needed to learn from my first experience and in my own mind my qualifications on paper would put me on the top of the selection list.

Shortly after I did not get promoted on the second round for the open sergeant’s position, a seasoned officer, Sergeant John Chapman, took me aside and explained to me why I did not get the promotion.  He said (as best as I can remember because I was still pretty bummed over not getting the promotion), “Greg, do you know why you didn’t get promoted?  I’ll tell you why.  You looked good on paper.  You have excellent credentials.  You got the highest recommendations from all the supervisors on the department and someday you will be promoted to sergeant.  But, there is one thing you lack.  It’s stick time.  You’ve only been with the department for a little over three years.  You are a good police officer and you will be an excellent supervisor in time, but you need a little more stick time.”  Stick time of course is experience.

It took another three years to obtain that stick time.  Unfortunately, I did not fully learn that lesson the first time around and I experienced disappointment after disappointment as promotions passed me by one by one.  But, one by one, promotions came with time.  With stick time.

Lesson Three: Create Your Own Luck.  Yes, sometimes some people just have good fortune falling into their laps.  Yes, there are those who seem to have luck on their side in everything they do, but for most of us such good fortune happens rarely.  Let me explain what luck really is.

Luck involves serious planning and hard work.  It involves positioning yourself to be available to catch the apple when it falls from the tree.  It means learning how to catch.  It means knowing exactly what an apple is.  It means learning how to position yourself under the tree so that you can keep your eye on the apple and not let the sunlight in the background blind you.  It means learning the timing of the apple.  It means picking the right apple.  It means sharing the tree.  It means knowing what you are going to do with the apple once you get it and it means learning how to do with the apple what you want to do with it.

Luck for most of us is not happenstance.  Luck involves serious planning and organizing and executing the plan.  It involves knowing where to be and when to be there to get what you want.  It means being thoroughly competent in what it is you seek.

Lesson Four: Always Have Plan B in your Pocket.  Things don’t always work out the way you want them to work out.  Somebody will beat you to the finish line before you get there.  Somebody less deserving than you will get the promotion.  You will be laid off from your job.  Something inevitably will interfere with you Plan A and stop you dead in your tracks.  While you have your job somebody will stand in the way of your special project.  Funding will run out.  Program goals will change.  Your house won’t sell and you really, really want to move.  Something will cause Plan A to fail.  This happens to the best of us.  When this happens most people stop dead and flounder as they try to figure out what they will do next.  However, successful people already have Plan B in place as their contingency plan and position themselves so they can immediately implement it and move forward while others flounder.

So, you have a choice.  You can waste valuable time and effort trying to figure out where you will go when your Plan A fails or you can have Plan B in your back pocket ready to put into action when you need it and be that much further ahead than if you had to take weeks or months to figure out what Plan B is going to be.  I discovered many times that Plan B turned out to be so much better than Plan A.

Lesson Five: Respect Others.  There is no way around it.  Unless you are stranded alone for the rest of your life on a deserted Pacific island you are going to be surrounded to some extent by other people.  Getting along is crucial.

At the risk of sounding cliché, you come into this world naked and you are not going to get out of it alive.  And, having been around the block a few times I can tell you that before you are placed in your burial clothes you are going to be naked again.  You are going to be just like everybody else who comes into and out of this world: Naked and Dead.  It’s what happens between your first nakedness and your last nakedness that counts.

I think there is an important question that you should ask yourself.  It boils down to this.  How do you want to be remembered by family, friends, and acquaintances when you die?  Of course people are going to say nice things about you at your funeral, but what will they say two or three weeks after your funeral?  Perhaps even more important, what will they think and say about you two or three years after your funeral?  Only you can control the answers to those questions. 

It isn’t so much as to how many people know you or even how many lives you have touched.  Instead, more important is how you touched those lives that you have known.  Where do you stand in line with others around you?  Do you consider yourself to be better than others?  Do you expect others to drop what they are doing to take care of their needs, or are you willing to drop what you are doing to be of service to others.  Do you treat the person in a lower social status than yours as an equal or as a lesser person?  Do you pander to those of higher social status than yours to obtain favor?  Are you kind to all? 

Lesson Six: Be Trustworthy.  The Boy Scout Law has as its first point trustworthiness.  “A Scout is Trustworthy.”

Trust is such a fragile commodity.  You can spend a lifetime building it and break it in a heartbeat.  Once broken there is often the nagging thought left behind in the mind of the person whose trust you have broken: “Can I trust this person again?”  Once broken, how long does it take to rebuild that trust to the point it once was?

There are a few things that should be considered with trust, the first of which is honesty; not only honesty concerning things you have done or said, but honesty in your willingness to do things in the future.  If you make a commitment you must keep that commitment.  If you know or even suspect that you cannot keep a commitment, then don’t make it.  Do not make promises that you cannot keep.

Tightly connected to honesty is integrity.  Honesty and integrity is not the same thing, though it would be nice if they were.  A person with integrity is the same person in public that he or she is in private.  Private thoughts are public thoughts.  Private actions are public actions.  The person you want to be is the person who can be trusted with the simplest of tasks and the greatest of possessions.  That person is honest in all dealings with all others.

Lesson Seven: Choose your Consequences.  It is important to remember that you do not operate in a vacuum.  For every action you take, for every decision you make there is a consequence.  Choices create consequences.  Some consequences are immediate while other consequences don’t come home to roost until years later.  Some consequences keep on giving and giving and giving.  It is irrational to say that you did something or said something without thinking.  The correct thing to say is that you did something without thinking of the consequences.

When you do something without thinking of the consequences you may very well not like the consequences. It is always best to choose the consequences first in determining a course of action that you want to take or a comment that you want to make.

One of the most important things you can do for choosing consequences is to invest your time, energy, and resources carefully.  Be careful how you spend your time and who you spend it with.  Be careful with the amount of effort you want to put into your own and others’ projects.  Unless you have unlimited wealth you will always have to be careful how you allocate your resources, whether it be money, talents, or property.

Lesson Eight: Listen More than you Talk.  People spend so much time trying to get their point across, which would be alright if the rest of the world wasn’t interested in getting their own point over.  Perhaps it is because so many people are self-centered.  It is called selfishness.  All they think about is themselves and making sure that others know what is important to them.  Everybody has a voice.  People are so stuck on making sure that their voice is heard that they not only think that others don’t have a voice but that they don’t care about others’ voices.

There is so much to learn.  You are but one dot, a single pixel on the picture of the world’s population.  Yes, you are an important dot and have every right to have your voice heard, but it is O.K. to exercise a little restraint and hear what others have to say without getting your voice heard first.  Besides, somebody else just might have something more important, more revealing to say than what you have.

Along those same thoughts is the tendency to listen to defend yourself rather than to listen and learn and accept responsibility.  Listening to defend yourself and not accept responsibility is an act of dishonesty.

Lesson Nine: Love Yourself.  There are three great commandments.  The first great commandment is to love God with all your heart, might, mind, and soul.  Implied within the second commandment is the third commandment.  In that second commandment is the direction to love our neighbors.  But that commandment doesn’t stop there.  The Lord goes on to say that we need to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.  There is that third great commandment: To Love Yourself!

I don’t think that this means that you are supposed to be infatuated with yourself or stuck on yourself or anything like that.  I think it means that you need to remember that you are of infinite worth.  You are that pearl of great price.  As such, you have a requirement to protect it, to cherish it, and to never let it lose its luster.  You need to polish it and put it on display as an example of righteousness; not as a “better than thou” sort of thing.  But, you should reflect honor and dignity in everything that you do.  You need to be an example of godliness in thought and in word and in deed.  The words meek, humble, submissive, kind, benevolent, virtuous all come to mind.  You should never stoop or lower yourself to the standards of the world.  You should remember that you are sons and daughters of God, your Heavenly Father, who knows you and who loves you and who has great expectations of you.  You are a royal generation.  You are of infinite worth.

May I return to that second commandment for just a minute?  I am not going to dwell on this, but I do want to make it perfectly clear that there are some neighbors that you should never under any circumstances stop loving.  Those neighbors would be the ones closest to you during your early years of life.  Those neighbors would be your parents, brothers and sisters, eventually your spouse, your own children, and hopefully your grandparents will fit into that picture somewhere.

Lesson Ten: Love God.  The first four of the Ten Commandments spell out what our relationship should be to God.  There are other commandments that apply to our relationship to God, but the fact that the very first four of those ten are the basis of our Judeo-Christian belief should tell you how important it is to love, honor, and respect God.  He should be a big part of your life each and every day of your immortal and eternal existence.  You need to learn to rely on Him, but you also need to learn the ideals for living that He has given us through the scriptures.

You may outgrow your reliance on your parents, but you will never outgrow your need for God.  And, how do you show love for God?  Well, how do you show love for your parents?  Isn’t showing more than saying?

Final Thoughts

There is much more I could pass on.  Maybe from time to time I will pass on additional thoughts, but for now, these are things that a grandpa feels like he needs to tell his grandchildren, and maybe even his children and friends.  Most of all, know that I love you.  I worry about and for you.  I pray for you.