Happy Sunday.
Hard/Weird week for me. I’ll try to make this one short as possible but not quite sure how to do it.
Hard to explain how you can become good friends with a bartender you see once a year in Kona, but Kim and I became good friends with Tom Callero on our annual club trips with RPM. The guy remembers your name, asks about your kids, knows where you live, and knows your drink. You can tell with everyone he interacts with, they love him, he has a gift and its centered purely around genuine care for others. Granted it’s hard to be in a bad mood in Hawaii but he’s different beyond that. Our last trip a few weeks ago we talked about him adopting a special needs girl he and his wife had worked with in the foster care program, this in addition to his own two young girls. I was told Monday that Tom was killed in a head on collision leaving the resort last week. I’ve attached a picture to ensure this email isn’t a cliché of “you never know when it’s your last day”.
Kim and the kids were out of town wed-sat. I was grabbing a bite at the bar of our local club Thursday night, enjoying a little solo time, and a financial advisor I work with sits down (VERY SUCCESSFUL). He starts laughing about the fact that I’m stressed these days and he’s relaxed. He then starts explaining to me how he has figured out how to “kill time” by his routines….golf/cocktails/naps/dinner/vacation/repeat…etc…he’s really proud of this. Like I’m a wreck, and he’s got it figured out. His lesson to me is when the kids are gone, I’ll need to find ways to “kill time”…I finally leave and head is spinning. As I’m walking to my car, I watch a guy pull up in a new Ferrari….he backs in to this parking spot, he gets out, and admires his car for a solid 2 minutes, and then almost trips walking backwards looking at his car.
So now I’m alone, in my car, and I’m thinking about Tom, the financial advisor, and the guy with the Ferrari. It’s okay to have nice things, and it’s okay to relax but I think we all need to spend a little more time thinking about why we wake up in the morning, what’s important in our lives, and spending time on those things. Reality is you don’t know when it’s going to come to an end, but I don’t ever want to be in a position where my thought process is how to kill time, and be proud of it when I have the answer.
Hard exercise for me personally, maybe not for you, but write down the top 3 things that are genuinely most important to you, and then look at your calendar and see how much of your week is allocated to those things.
One other thought-I think the less time we spend thinking about pleasing ourselves vs. pleasing others (helping ourselves vs. helping others) the less time you have to think about how to kill time.
Say a prayer for buddy’s wife and daughters.