1) From his perspective our life situation is the ultimate dream - cars, jobs, house, family, security, etc. He asked - when you were younger did you ever imagine you'd end up where you are today? I told him I didn't know or just didn't think about it or something. But truthfully, the answer is yes. I think I always figured I'd eventually have a nice house in a nice neighborhood with a nice family and a stable life. Is that bad? Does that mean I'm not as grateful as I should be? Is it ok to expect those things of life? Is it some sort of indication of where I came from that those things are given base-level life necessities?
2) What sorts of things did you do to achieve your success? As I was contemplating this broad far-reaching question, June peeked her head through the door asking for help to put on her new favorite toy:
The McDonald's worker headset. She likes to put it on and wear it around everywhere she goes. So it just struck me as a little ironic that we give our kids toys to pretend they're McDonald's workers, just as if it's a fairy-princess dress-up gown. I'm not sure that if we truly expected them to be McDonald's workers we'd think it was such a cute toy. So is there a connection here? I tried not to emphasize it too obviously for Andre.
3 comments:
The answer is of course you expected to end up with a nice house, family, life. You would have accepted NOTHING less. And that is not a bad thing. That is how we acheive things. What Andre needed to learn when he was June's age is to reach for the stars, and then be blessed enough to have parents who actually believed that they would someday be fulfuilled. That's the biggest difference perhaps between you and Andre (although there are about 1001 other big differences as well). You had a support system that believed in you and told you you could do and be anything. June will too. And she can play with the McDonals'd headset for fun, becuase if someday she wants to be a McDonald's corporate exec, you would support her 100%. Playing with the headset as a youth will have taught her not to forget about the little guys on her upward corporate climb.
Interesting...someone with the exact same story but was from Chicago came selling magazine subscriptions at our door. I talked to him for about 20 minutes, ended up getting a 2 yr. subscription to Rachel Ray, and then about an hour later had buyers remorse and cancelled my order online.
But in answer to your question, I think it's so important to really know where you're going to end up, because if you don't then you'll be somewhere you don't want to be.
When you were younger...when did you know you were going to college and would graduate? Does Brenden know that now? The blessing in his life is that he is already acquiring the skills for it. Maybe magazine man's list gives a clue: cars, jobs, house, family, security... not bad but what about education and religion. Those two are core even though he can't see them parked in the driveway.
Post a Comment