For the past few months, one of the greatest sources of smiles for my two boys (now ages 12 and 9) has been a computer game called Minecraft. The game is basically a computerized 3D lego world, and playing it clearly gets my kids’ creative juices flowing. Strangely, my boys both spend far more time talking about the game (with each other and with their friends) than actually playing it.
Whenever my kids are really into something like this, I always try to make an effort to learn a little bit about it so that I can understand their conversations and perhaps offer some suggestions. A few weeks ago, I sat down and watched them play the game for half an hour and I was mortified to see how much trouble my home PC was having running the game. Minecraft is certainly not a very demanding game, as the graphics are very simple and retro, but my system clearly couldn’t handle it. The amount of lag and crashes that the boys were having to deal with in order to play the game was just painful for me to watch (full disclosure: I do work on computers for a living). ..
In the past few weeks, I have been writing a lot about the effect that having children has on your decision making process. Michelle and I have two boys, ages 12 and 8, and a sweet little one year old girl. Every day I come home from work and try to give all of them a little bit of my attention. I try to remember to hug them and tell them that I love them every night, and I consider it “mission accomplished” if I somehow find a way to make them laugh at some point in the evening. As I look into their beautiful faces, I know that these tiny humans and our ability to provide a positive future for them, really does mean everything to me.
We try to teach them how to make friends, how to be good people, and a better place. We share with them our loves and our passions, our hopes and our dreams, hoping that seeing the fire inside of us, will motivate them to be willing to work for their own goals one day. As we have spent the past year struggling to learn about money and working to get rid of this burden of consumer debt, we have shared this journey with not only you all, but also with our kids. At the same time, we have taken steps to show our children the correct way to relate to money, and to understand the difference between wants and needs, so that they can avoid going down the same rocky paths when they enter adulthood. ..
I have a confession. I really don’t like to think about my own mortality. Deep inside, I know that death is lurking in the shadows and that my days on this planet are numbered, but even still, I am in denial. Any night of the week, I can turn on the local news at 10:00 and get a detailed of rundown of who has been shot, run over, or burned in a fire. But I politely decline. I have no interest in hearing the daily death toll that makes up the real-world Hunger Games.
While I understand and accept the fickle nature of life itself, I have trouble accepting the possibility that death can happen to me anytime soon. There are just too many people counting on me, and leaving them here alone is not an option. I am thirty four years old, and not even halfway done with this life. I still have places to go, and I still have to see my kids grow up and start families of their own. And I still want to meet my kids’ kids. And THEIR kids… But how easily I lose perspective. A colleague of mine at work who is a father of three (just like me) passed away last week from a respiratory infection gone wild. Rest assured, he had every intention of getting to meet his grand-kids one day as well. And he didn’t even get to see his kids graduate from high school. Scary stuff. ..