Repaying the Gifts Given to Us…
It may feel quite awkward at first when you dive into the thought process of repaying the gifts that have been given to you in your lifetime. I’m not talking about the physical gifts, or presents, that you’ve acquired in your lifetime. It’s the life lessons that have found their way into your heart and then found a permanent home in your character traits that I’m hoping to have you ponder today. Your life is worth a few moments of pondering.
I found myself pondering the repayment of life lessons learned deeply having just listened to a classic song by Dan Fogelberg entitled “Leader of the Band” which tells a story of an inspirational band leader and the impact he had on his son who was a member of the band he led. While it’s a moving, emotional, and sad song in many ways about the relationship between a father and his son, there’s one particular line in the lyrics that caught my attention. The line is: He gave to me a gift I know I never can repay. While Fogelberg wrote the line to trigger our emotion called sadness, and it does, I feel like he could have gone a completely different direction with it and provided us all a positive life lesson. Let me explain.
We’ve all learned valuable lessons in life. Many came from our parents, and when we learned those life lessons there was never an expectation that we would repay them for the lesson. The life lesson was given to us as a gift with the expectation that we would be able to avoid mistakes and put the lesson to good use in our life as we pursue our own personal happiness and joy.
The commitment to sharing life lessons with our children most often begins at their birth where we are overwhelmed with the miracle of a child entering this world, and that they’ve been given to us with the understanding that we will do our very best to care for them and help them navigate the things that most assuredly will occur during their early life and through their teens. While I know this doesn’t describe everyone’s path to adulthood, I sure wish it did.
When asking many others what they wished for their kids when they became adults, nearly everyone replied, “I just want them to be happy.” When asked to define “happy,” most couldn’t find the right words that could be used to define any type of strategy. Some wanted their children to be successful, referring to monetary measures. When people responded with happy and successful, it became difficult for me to figure out their motives. My wife and I had some heartfelt discussions about our own motives. This is where we both agreed that our Faith life provided really worthwhile guidance. And we both read…a LOT always seeking strategies that had worked well over the course of time. We’d then share stories about what we had learned with our kids.
At some point, we felt strongly about being focused on building the character traits in our four sons that would allow them to experience happiness and success the rest of their life. That was the primary gift we wanted to share with them. We knew it wasn’t a gift we would ever expect them to repay to us, however, we strongly encouraged them to pay it forward the rest of their life by sharing their life lessons with others.
My parents gave me the gift of many, many valuable life lessons. Some were simple like It’s better to be kind than right, the two most important commandments are love God and love your neighbor, and the highest level of joy comes from helping others. My parents were pretty plain and pretty simple, and it’s their plainness and simplicity that makes me feel like I hit the parent jackpot. While they were on this earth, almost unknowingly, they gifted my four siblings and I solid character traits, never wanting to be repaid but always with the hope they we would all pay it forward to the best of our ability. And we do pay forward the lessons we’ve learned to the best of our ability. It brings us all great joy.
My wife and I recently became grandparents for the first time. In preparation for this significant event, I asked every grandparent I could what they most loved about the experience. A wise friend of mine shared that during the first 6-12 months, there exists a great opportunity to watch your child and their spouse be parents. While I love holding our new grandson, I’ve fallen in love with watching our son and daughter-in-law embrace the life lessons we’ve gifted them as they’ve already begun to focus on the character trait gifts they’ll share with their son. The real point here is that watching our kids pay it forward is the best repayment that we could ever hope for.
So, what about You? I specifically wrote this to have you ponder the “life lesson gifts” that have been given to you during your life and then ponder whether you’ve paid those gifts forward. If you’re wondering where to find those life lesson gifts, sit down and make a list of the character traits that define who you are. When you’ve created that list, ponder all the ways you’ve utilized those character traits to help other people. Even count the ways that might seem insignificant. If it was as simple as treating someone with kindness, count it. First, you’ll be showing yourself the very best side of yourself. Second, the joy it will bring you will make you want to do even more of this “pay it forward” stuff. So, get busy with the character trait list that was built from the life lessons gifted to you and then get busy putting those gifts into action. Hey…I Believe In YOU! GiddyUp!