When I was a child, the most important part about Mother’s Day and Father’s Day was to let my parents sleep. So why am I typing this blog post at 6:23 am on Father’s Day while my wife and five-year-old daughter sleep upstairs? Why don’t I enjoy the guilt-free extra few hours of sleep? I even slept in the guest room last night because my daughter fell asleep in my spot of the bed last night and I wasn’t about to wake her. Wow, I must be dad of the year.
No, I’m just Daddy. And I’m the happiest one on Earth.
I wasn’t going to write about Father’s Day this year – hence the tardiness of this post – but when I woke up this morning with a smile on my face, I had to write something. You see, fatherhood has given me a different perspective. And that’s what I want to write about this morning … my perspective since early 2013. My new field of view on life has given me joy beyond anything else, and it’s a vision anyone can attain. Even though becoming a dad at forty-three years old shifted my perspective, anyone can have it.
What is my newfound perspective? Well, it’s overly simple and probably anticlimactic to you. However, at the risk of disappointing you, here it is …
While I used to look back on life, I now look forward.
It’s not that I never looked into the future before, but my views were superficial and shallow. How much would I need to retire? What was I going to do in my next role? How were the Gators going to do next fall? On the flip side, I’d spend hours thinking deeply about the past – the memories that I enjoyed and the lessons I learned. While before my daughter was born I’d reflect on my childhood, twenties, and thirties, I now look forward to my seventies, eighties, and nineties. Once she was born, I started thinking about the life ahead of her. It was a pleasant exercise, and I came along with her. I’ll be sixty-one when she graduates high school, in my seventies when she has kids, etc. That’s the first time those ages became real to me.
That’s it. It’s so basic that it may seem like I’m conning you into buying a pill that will give you the same euphoria that I have. Nope, that’s all it is; and it’s changed my life.
Why has this perspective brought me joy? I don’t really know. I think it has something to do with overcoming the fear of aging and dying – when one thinks about something it goes through a cycle becoming real, then scary, and then minimal. I think it has something to do with my new lifestyle – my nutrition and workouts now have a purpose of sustaining my health into the next fifty years instead of trying to recapture my strength of the previous thirty. I think it has to do with time slowing down. Really, since I’ve had deep conversations with the future (sounds crazy, doesn’t it?), time has slowed down for me. Our daughter is off to Kindergarten in August and while everyone keeps saying “Oh no, slow it down”, the years haven’t really been flying by for me. They used to. It seemed like I was playing kickball in Mr. Young’s sixth grade class on Tuesday and celebrating my fortieth birthday on Wednesday. Not anymore. I think it’s because I appreciate the present moment. We all appreciate the moment when reminded, but now I don’t just know but I feel that this moment will never be again.
Finally, I think that the perspective of looking ahead rather than looking behind has brought me joy because I’m starting to build an authentic relationship with God. I don’t know what that term means, but I use it because “God” has always been the name to use and it helps me. I now accept that I don’t know, and that’s ok. Since looking ahead to the rest of my life, I now feel like I can have a relationship with God without knowing, and that feels real to me.
By the way, it’s now 7:31 and my daughter just came downstairs to give me her hand-written card – a piece of notebook paper with nine hearts, her name spelled correctly, and a butterfly done in crayon. Talk about joy. Ok, back to finishing this post…
So, whether you’re a parent or not. Whether you’re eighteen, forty-five, or eighty, start looking ahead at the finite life you have. It’s terrifying at first, but it evolves into a wonderful experience. I had a little girl inside my wife’s belly shock me into this shift of perspective. You don’t need that. Begin your own journey and watch the joy flood into your life.
