Getting My MBA

Well, I am anyway. The added effort and time for two classes (8 hrs/wk) and homework (2-20 hrs/wk) is adding up. And I’m just getting started!

My hope is that I will figure out how to hit my stride, that I’ll catch my second wind, and will be able to hitch onto those Chariots of Fire and keep the pace. Hmm, enough running cliches there? How about clearing the many hurdles and breaking the tape?

I think I had a point there. I’m too tired to remember … oh yeah, that was it. Tired. “What did you expect?”, I hear you say (ain’t the internet amazing?). “You’re the one who insisted on adding to your already busy life.” Well yes, yes I am the cause of my own distress. Thanks, I feel much better now.

The good news, though, is that one obligation is off my plate. My youngest son has finished his football season and I no longer need to wake him up at 5am, drive to cold, foggy football fields 45 minutes away, and get him ready to play — all before 7am. Also, my obligation to take pictures of the game and post them on the website is done. Granted, that was a responsibility I took on myself (noticing a pattern here?), but it was a lot of fun.

Well, if I survived it at 19 I can do it at 39, right? 19 and 39 are practically the same age, when you consider the billions of years that scientists say it took for life to evolve on earth. Heck, I’m a kid!

Now tell that to my eyelids…

My daughter is 13. She’s a very strong, intelligent, and independent person. I don’t know that many young teenage girls (except for her wacky friends), so I don’t know what’s “normal”. I do know that she’s a joy to be around and that she doesn’t let much get to her.

That’s why it hit me so hard. She was looking quite unhappy one day recently. I asked what was wrong. Typical teenage response, “I dunno.”

Something, I don’t know what, prompted me to ask, “Are you sad because your friends are leaving?” I’ll remember her look forever — a mix of sadness, loss, surprise that I had figured it out, and a last vestige of a childlike awe. Then she let me hug her.

People come and go in life. It’s normal and natural. It was my daughter’s first adult realization of what that means. Going into high school, her group of friends is scattering. Several are going to different private schools, a couple will be going to public school with her, and one has already moved several states away to go to a very prestigious school. My daughter is feeling this pain of separation with a new intensity, born of raw teenage emotions and a very adult understanding. She no longer sees it with the childish belief that things can someday be the same.

She’s growing up.

It hurts.

My parent’s didn’t want us to call ourselves lucky when something good happened. They preferred that we give thanks to a loving God or benevolent Fortune. They were wise and I understand their point.

Today, though, I beg to differ. I fully believe in a loving God, but I have trouble understanding why He would bless me and not others (or vice-versa). Deep down I know that He’s got bigger plans and He’s looking out for our best, not just what we’d like. The best is sometimes (often?) far beyond our current understanding and can only be comprehended looking backwards. Some things we won’t get until we see Him face to face. The danger is that giving God the glory, which He deserves, seems almost like taking it for granted. Of course He’s good. Of course He loves me. So it’s obvious that good stuff is going to happen.

As far as benevolent Fortune, that seems too impersonal — an idealized figure in a toga on a Roman frieze. A handsome, kindly face and eyes without pupils. It might notice you, it might not. It might just be some haze of goodness in the general vicinity, blindly bestowed on whomever wanders by.

Lady Luck, though, makes sense. A beguiling, teasing, cruel taskmaster that nevertheless bewitches. She’s arbitrary and capricious, but she’ll look you in the eye. Most of the time, she’s doing it to see what you do when she isn’t smiling, but she is taking the time to look at you. You can never get complacent; a loving God always loves you, but Lady Luck smiles only now and then. She can be wooed but never won.

So God, please understand. You really deserve the credit, but I’m saying I’m lucky to try to preserve the wonder.

I have an amazing family. I have a wife who loves me (and smiles on me slightly more often than Lady Luck does) and some great kids. Money is often tight, but we have a nice house and I never have to skip a meal because we don’t have food. I get to share my house and life with six other wonderful people who really are fun to be around. It’s not fun to try to get them to clean their rooms, but that’s normal. I enjoy playing catch, running sprints, going to the beach, or just talking to any of them.

I am blessed, fortunate, and lucky. I hope my MBA will enable me to do a better job providing for them.