Like a Sponge...........

Today at work was a little different from most. My boss gave me a special assignment. My task was to spend the day with a new assistant general manger teaching her everything I could about business planning, profit / loss statements, financial analysis , etc. This assignment came my way because I am good at this stuff. Seriously...

One of the things I have enjoyed the most at my job over the last 8 years is hiring and training young people and seeing them grow and learn. In some cases, actually "grow up" as is the case with my own assistant manager whom I hired as a part timer at 17 years old and is now married, owns his first home and with any luck will one day take over my position.

Anyway, today was different. The new hire was a total stranger and I had no idea what to expect. As it turns out, she was , as she put it, a sponge, soaking up all she could in one short day. Eight years of experience on this job plus another 25 or 30 years of learning to think analytically and methodically. In one day.

Impossible ? Probably. But at the end of the day I felt that she "got it". She told me she got it. Said she got a lot out of our time together. I hope so.

My little daughters are like little sponges as well. Rielly-Anne, almost four, is very smart for her age due mostly to the fact that Mary "teaches" her things , encourages reading to her, imagination, and well, just plain works at being a great Mom. Now Cecilia has come along and we are both amazed at how fast Cecilia is learning. Faster than Rielly-Anne did and why ? Because she spends all day following Rielly-Anne around wanting to do the things her big sister is doing. Rielly-Anne didn't have that. Cecilia is taking full advantage of it though and learning at an amazing rate.

As parents we want to teach our children all about the world and about life and as toddlers and young people they are only too willing to learn. Then they become teenagers and think they know it all already...the willingness to learn is all but hidden amongst all the world has to offer them. Then one day you wake up and they are grown, gone, out on their own and the opportunity to teach is, for the most part, over. I know because I have them at every age !

As adults , most of us have realized that if you are smart, you never stop learning. You can learn something from everyone and I do mean everyone , you come into contact with each day. There are lessons we have learned that have taken some of us most of a lifetime to master. What we hope for is that we can pass this knowledge along to our kids in a more timely manner. For whatever reason though, the "sponge" is hard and just doesn't absorb like it did when it was new. Most times , grown children are listening, and years down the road they will say ...." you know , you were right about that " . I have said those words to my own parents. Usually right after I ignored some good advice and found out the hard way that I should have listened to them. Instead, we assume we know better or that "this is different" or "times have changed" or we simply aren't interested in the opinions of parents or others. And sometimes, a person just has to go their own way and as parents we get to warm the bench unless called upon. It's hard but you don't get a choice. Try as we might, we cannot save them from the school of hard knocks and experience.

It would be so much more simple if the older ones would still follow an adult around like Cecilia follows Rielly-Anne , learning all the time from a big sister....
Children, young or old can fall down and get hurt and for parents that is a frustrating thing no matter the age. When they are young a band aid or even a few stitches will usually take care of it. When they are grown, the stakes are usually a little higher.

In the end though, more often than not, young or older, the results are the same. They get through it, they heal up, they learn something and life goes on. What the parents of grown children have to learn is to have a little confidence, learn how to hold on "loosely" and remember that we made mistakes too. What we might view as a bad decision by our child ....well , we could be right.But it might be the right decision for that person at that time as well. Just because a decision has bad consequences doesn't mean it is a wrong decision after all. All decisions have consequences.

My decision to reverse my vasectomy and have children late in life had some major consequences. Some people have openly told us it was a very bad decision. But even though I am personally only too aware of some of those consequences in the form of Parkinson's it was not and is not and never will be a BAD decision in my eyes. Sometimes life is just like that. A good decision has some not so pleasant , serious consequences. Like I said earlier, we can ALL learn something every day. Today, I learned that while I might make a different decision than someone else given the same situation it doesn't mean either party made a bad decision. While there may be consequences with any decision those consequences or even the lack of consequences cannot define a decision as good or bad. Hindsight is always 20/20 and only time will tell. Too often we judge another person's decisions ( especially our kids ) when all that is required is that we support them be there if they need us.

I guess I had a really good day today. I learned something.

Shaaky