Musing

today’s Musing written and published from south Calgary, near Fish Creek Park

walk report:-8C/17F, quiet, early light bathes the sky implying it will be another mild day, Gusta wanted to keep going but my schedule required I cut it short

I find it flattering and daunting - when someone asks me for advice; each time that happens it begs the question of ‘what do I have to give?’

I see clearly when things don’t matter to me, I see clearly when it is ‘someone else’s stuff’, I see clearly when it is someone else’s family, life, problems . .

when I view my own situation, sometimes I can’t find myself with both hands especially when I try to give unsolicited advice to my children; I don’t try it often, I’ve always done it in a way I thought was right but I don’t recall a single time when they thought so

it seems, in my experience, that people ask for advice they usually know the answer already but don’t like it, so asking advice is a way of being magnanimous while, on the other hand, giving unsolicited advice is like feeding cash to an investment gone bad – it hurts a little each time and the hopes of a favorable return are figments of imagination

I passed along many characteristics = I’m happy to have given them a work ethic, pride, compassion, humor, good teeth and empathy for those who cannot help themselves while, to my chagrin, I also passed along my ‘stubborn gene’

the legacy we leave children is not calculated numerically – it isn’t about things - we leave them a set of DNA driven characteristics coupled with experiences we share, good and bad; the legacy we leave is a basket filled with, hopefully, more joys than pain, more laughter than conflict, longer life, better life and a set of skills to help them along their way; the legacy we leave is pride in their successes and our own failure – a failure to be more, to have done better, to undo what cannot be undone

when my children were adolescents I came across a fantastic quote from Harry Truman I used to great advantage and tout as the single best piece of advice I’ve ever encountered on parenting: ‘I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.’

I did, I have, they have; now and then I trip over myself being me, when I forget Harry’s advice and mess things up a bit – so far it seems not to be a fatal but it is best embodied in another of his great quotes: ‘Intense feeling too often obscures the truth.’

To my daughter Krista: I’ll always think I am right and you will think you are right; what matters is not that we are stubborn or that we have a stalemate over something small but rather that we have intense feelings; as for our chat last night and my snot-o-gram e-mail sent earlier this morning, I’m sorry and I love you

Mark Kolke
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... with your voice, teach in order to learn


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