You'll Be Surprised

Posted Wed Mar 12, 2003 in

I’ve been reading some today, amongst the other things that demand my attention. I read this over at JimFo. It reminded me of my dad and something that he said, sometimes frequently, when I was a teenager. It took a long time for me to understand it. Now I think I do.

He’d say to me: “You’ll be surprised at how much I learn over the next ten years.”

Those words carry much wisdom and ring of the truth. I like to think that I’m smarter than that, that is, that I always took what the old man had to say, but it wouldn’t be entirely true. The truth is that he did learn a lot over those next years and now I understand why.

Over those ten years, I learned to seek his counsel whenever I had important decisions to make. He never gave advice unless asked. My father-in-law is that way too and I love him for it. I didn’t always take the advice, but I always listened to it and weighed it against my own thoughts and experience.

I have one more child, Young Son, to get through the process. He’s only 12 years old, but I suspect he’s going to be surprised at how much I learn over the next ten years. I’ve told him that and will tell him again.

I think the older two were surprised at how much I learned over their ten years.