I was on my way to somewhere. I forget where. The airport was choked with hurried humanity, also on their way to somewhere. And, like me, most of them were apparently away from their families. I sometimes find myself watching people in airports, wondering what their stories are. How many of them have children at home wondering when daddy will tuck them in bed again? How many mothers, on their way to urgent business meetings in distant cities, are thinking about the families they’d much rather be with?
That’s the way life is today for many parents – a series of carefully calculated trade-offs negotiated in an effort to strike a balance between providing materially for the family yet giving them the time and attention they need. Some parents successfully walk this tightrope. But far too many tip the balance in the wrong direction, leaving behind shattered relationships and neglected children.
I had a few moments between flights, so I poked around some of the mall-like stores lining the terminal walkway. One of them catered to the would-be successful businessperson. The walls and counters were lined with framed posters featuring success-oriented slogans and motivational verbiage. Some touted the virtues of teamwork, others the value of striving to be the best. Most all of them were geared toward those ideals that the successful businessperson, presumably, could not afford to be without. No doubt the store did a brisk trade with the airport crowd. But one of the posters stood out in sharp contrast to the others – a photo of a small girl in profile standing on top of a grassy dune. In the background a soft yellow sun sank beneath the calm, blue waters of an ocean. Beneath the photo were these words:
“A hundred years from now it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove…But the world may be different because I was important in the life of a child.”
I’d never read those words before but later learned that they were written by the editor of Scouting Magazine, Forest Witcraft and appeared first in the October 1950 edition. Their truth hadn’t faded with time and, in fact, were perhaps even more needed in our world today than at the advent of the 50s.
As I glanced again at the other framed slogans mostly about material success, I wondered whether this one sold poorly to the business traveler market. I asked the man behind the counter, “Which one of these posters is your best seller?” He turned and pointed to the slogan with the little girl. “No question about it,” he answered without hesitation. “That one’s our best seller.”
Amidst the rush to succeed in business that I was witnessing around me at the airport that day – and, admittedly, I was caught up in – this photo and slogan and its popularity with the business crowd revealed what most of us know but all too often forget in our rush to pursue less of life than is available to us. There’s a far more important, more satisfying, more lasting pursuit than that of temporal success. To be sure, providing for our families both materially and emotionally/spiritually is a necessary and often daunting balancing act. And it’s not an either/or proposition. But regularly evaluating where we might need to find a more enriching balance, then making the necessary adjustments is an invaluable practice.
From the book The Magic of Cultivating Positive Emotions by Rod Robison. Available at www.TucsonMagician.com/books.
