My Latest Role

Like all human beings, I have been asked to perform many roles in my life. I have been a child, a teenager, and an adult, each of which carried its own set of expectations. I have been a son, a brother, an uncle, and a friend. I have been a husband and a father. I have been a student, an employee and an owner of a business. Each of these required a specific skill set. Some of them came natural to me, others stretched me.  Over the years I have excelled at some of these roles, and failed miserably at others. More often than not I have excelled and failed at the same role over a matter of days. Life can be hard to carry off without mistakes. I have made my share.

For a long time my primary role, the one that dominated my thoughts and energy was that of businessman and provider for my family. It was the last thing I thought about at night and my first thought every morning. It shouldn’t have been that way. I should have lived a more balanced life in those days. A faith and trust deficit was largely to blame. I worried too much, about things that in hindsight I had no control over anyway. Those periods of stifling anxiety were all wasted moments that I will never get back. But, you move on.

Now I feel like I am entering a new phase of life, one which will require a new and challenging set of skills I’m not sure I possess. At some point soon I will begin winding down my business life, not retiring—that pathetic and terrifying word—but more a reordering of my schedule which will yield an abundance of free time. This will require a change in lifestyle. I hope I’m ready. One day I will take on the role of grandfather. I have been shamelessly auditioning for this role for several years now. Hopefully I will one day get the call. I’m sure that when the time comes I will be delighted, however, my children might be terrified by my grand-parenting style which I’m sure will be wildly out of compliance with all modern grand-parenting protocols. I plan on making up for any mistakes with lavish financial gifts.

Throughout all of the roles I’ve played in my three score and four years, some personality traits have remained in tact. No matter if I was 16 or 60 I have always been a sarcastic, trash-talking, practical joke-pulling, inappropriate joke-telling man child. I have been accused of such by enough people to be forced to admit that it is true. In addition, especially in the early days of trying to establish myself in business, I have often had to battle a blunt, aggressive, forceful style of communication. You will notice the lengths I have gone to trying to avoid the word rude. Although this is something about which I am not proud, neither do I spend a lot of time beating myself up over it. The fact is, I have gotten better with age. It is a flaw I have battled to temper, if not fully eliminate, from my personality. But, some things are just a part of your DNA. Anyone who ever spent thirty minutes with my mother on a bad day will understand the cruel power of genetics.

But life is about making transitions. The great thing about human beings is that we have the astonishing ability, unique in all creation, to transform ourselves from one kind of living to another kind literally overnight. A human being can live a certain way for forty years then one day wake up and say, “I’m tired of this,” pick up, pack up, and move somewhere else and start over. I heard a speaker talk about this one time. He said, “Suppose you were a tree. If you had sucked up all the nutrients in the ground where you were planted and were tired of the view you couldn’t change location.  Because you’re a tree. You’re stuck! Not so with human beings!” I’ve never forgotten that illustration. Which brings me to the point of this post…the changing roles of life.

I think I know what I want to be for the rest of my life. I mean, I’m still going to be sarcastic. I’m probably still going to blurt out inappropriate things at times, and I’m sure I haven’t pulled my last practical joke. But I want to spend the rest of the time I have left being an encourager. There aren’t enough encouraging people in the world. Everybody’s a critic because its easier to be one, especially with the anonymity of the internet. But being an encourager takes intentionality, the ability to follow through. How many of us have had the thought pop into our head that “that person did a really nice job with that presentation”, or “that was awfully nice of her to do that.” The hard part is the follow through…letting the words come out of your mouth, taking the time to write the note or send the email. And it’s so stinking easy! What does it take…a minute? A mere word of affirmation has incredible power to transform someone’s day. We have no idea what the people around us are going through at any particular time. Someone might be at the end of their rope when you come along with a box of donuts and an iced coffee. How cool is it to think that you might have inadvertently been someone’s life line?

Here’s something I’ve learned about this encouraging thing. It is tremendous fun! Seeing the smiles on people’s faces when you show up with treats, reading their replies to your notes, sometimes seeing the tears, is truly a beautiful thing. It makes you feel like you’re doing God’s work…because that’s exactly what you’re doing. Being a blessing to someone is about as wonderful as life gets in this crazy screwed up world. And yet, too often I’m so caught up in myself I miss opportunities. Either I’m distracted or lazy. When this happens everyone loses. If I’m going to do it, it can’t be a part time gig. But, like every other role I’ve gotten to play in my life, I’ll get better with practice.