Where it’s at

I just spent over a week and a half with my family. It was an interesting vacation. The first official day of vacation I wasn’t so sure I wouldn’t have preferred being back at work. No need for details, but I felt I was failing just about everyone’s expectations, including my own. But, to quote Monty Python, “I got better!” (Or is it “be’er”?)

Life in a family is far from free of stress and trouble. Every member of a family will test you in ways unique only to them. But that’s only half the picture. Every member of a family will also bless your life in ways unique to them if you give them the chance. By the end of my vacation I was aware of just how much I love my family.

Certainly raising a family is not easy. It takes sacrifice. Anyone who thinks it won’t is either in for a shock or is not going to find it all that rewarding. Family is like any investment. What you put into it determines what you get out of it. While it’s true that by not having a family you can avoid a lot of heartache and pain, it’s equally true that there is a lot of joy and satisfaction that never be realized.

That’s not to say that accolades and acknowledgements at work aren’t great and all, but it sure feels good when one of your children nestles up against you and tells you they love you. Or when you see them succeed at something they’ve been struggling with. Or when one of them, when asked who they look up to the most, answers “My dad.” (I’d have been almost as pleased with “My mom”, mind you.) Or when you find out second or third-hand that one of your kids made good decisions even when you weren’t watching.

Of course their poor decisions can really make your heart ache, too.

I know it’s not polite to criticize the life-choices of others, and I really shouldn’t say that those without kids are missing out. But I will say that there are certain experiences and joys in life that can only come from engaging in the work of raising the next generation. The nature of those experiences and joys will change over time, but they will never stop coming.

Companies come and go. Career paths change. The job I’m in at work didn’t even exist when I started college. In two hundred years pretty much every system I ever worked on will be long forgotten. But somewhere there will be posterity who, perhaps without even knowing where it came from, will still be showing signs of my influence as a parent–for better or worse.

And that’s where it’s at.