Happy Sunday Everyone:
A friend of mine from high school passed away a couple of months ago. Like many relationships as time moved on we grew further apart and our lives went down different paths, but I saw him around town a few times a year, always said hello, and always enjoyed seeing him. I also knew his family, my dad and his dad worked together a long time ago, my folks were friends with his folks, more so in the past than today but everyone is still around town.
Why am I telling you this? I was traveling when his celebration of life took place and I had it on my to do list to write a long note to his parents explaining how I felt about Matt and what kind of a guy he was. I haven’t written the letter yet, and I haven’t reached out to his parents. This past Friday, I ran into Matt’s dad at Starbucks and my heart sank. Here I am seeing my friends dad for the first time and I hadn’t reached out yet to express my condolences to his family. Our interaction was fairly cold, small talk, “I’m sorry”, and then good bye. As I sit here and think about this, please know I’m not trying to make this about me….I have absolutely NO idea what he’s going through and whether or not our interaction had anything to do with anything other than the fact that he lost his son two months ago. What I do know however is that I wish I had written that note before Friday’s encounter.
I’m not beating myself up on this one too much, it was a mistake. I have plenty of weaknesses but caring about people isn’t one of them. This is not normal for me but to still reflect on what caused it to happen, I can tell you, procrastination. Procrastination is at the root of so many “I wish I had”, “I should have”, “I will at some point”, “I’ll do it tomorrow”, “I’ll put this on the to do list I check monthly, or never at all”. Procrastination sucks. For me it’s typically the root cause of any anxiety I have at any given point in time.
This is also a hard but good reminder for me to show people you care. it’s the notes, the phone calls, it’s being proactive about all of it. Showing Matt’s parents I cared would have been a proactive letter in the mail, not defending why it hasn’t happened yet. Proactively returning someone’s phone call vs. having them call you a second time (you all know that feeling “I was just about to call you back”). Big life stuff and tactical daily actions all come down to being proactive, which in the end leaves no doubt to you caring. I never want to be second guessed as to whether or not I care about something, so if I do care about something, being proactive always, is the one way for us to guarantee people knowing we in fact care.
Learning from my mistakes creates more reminders for me than the wins. This experience will be burned into my memory bank for all important things where I considered putting them on the back burner. The concept of “time is of the essence” is alive and well.