Dad's Counsel

My dad is full of wisdom and good counsel. Having him as a mentor has made it so that as I get older, the stage at which I bring a problem or a decision to him for advice gets pushed further and further down the line. I will admit, though, sometimes we as his children would roll our eyes when he would give us the same few pieces of advice over and over again. Almost without fail, regardless of the problem, a counseling session with dad would elicit his most famous phrase : "Just tell that person how it makes you feel. Say 'I feel ________ when you do _______.' No one can argue with how you feel." We thought it was the lamest advice as kids. I mean, what kid uses that sort of sentence construction? But lame as we thought it was, we remembered it. Just this morning, Tom and I were talking about how wise that counsel was and how we use it a lot now in our adult lives, though I think it's probably been years since either of us have heard those words from our father.

The other piece of counsel my dad frequently gave has definitely been a governing force in my life. He used to tell me, "You can gauge how much you want something or how important it is to you by the price you are willing to pay." That counsel used to frustrate me so much as a teenager (and even as a college student), because he usually said it when I just wanted him to give something to me or tell me the easy way or find some way to circumvent the path that everyone else had to take. I felt cheated at times, feeling that certain paths were not open to me because of one thing or another, when in reality many (not all) were closed to me because I was unwilling to pay the price.

As I've set about trying to make some pretty serious life decisions for myself the last couple of years, I have used both this counsel and the feelings of the spirit to explore and make decisions. I have had some idea in my mind of where I have wanted to go and what I have wanted to do, but have been frustrated by my lack of experience required for some programs or jobs as well as various fears, such as failure, standardized tests, being poor, choosing the wrong path, etc. Earlier this year I took a break from actively pursuing and researching various ideas. I figured I either didn't know myself well enough to know what I wanted (or what I wanted enough to sacrifice for it), or that it just wasn't time to move on from this particular phase of life. Instead, I chose to focus on other short-term things I knew I could be successful in, racing being one of them.

I got involved in some intense training and planning and even coaching a little bit. I became aware one day of all the time I was putting into this and remembered my dad's counsel. Clearly this was something that was important to me because of the time and effort I was putting in, and, while it was taxing at times, it didn't feel like sacrifice. I filed that feeling away (but not too far away) hoping to be able to access it when I felt it was again time to start exploring job and life options.

That time came not too long after. I think because the training experience was so fresh in my mind, and because I had been mulling over Dad's counsel, I revisited a path that had initially felt closed to me but suddenly became an option. And not only an option, but upon investigation was the obvious choice. The amount of work required to go down this path did not change, but I found that I was no longer daunted by the steps required. In fact, it has been fun and exciting, and I feel confident I will succeed.

I mentioned this all in passing to my dad soon after I had set the plan in motion. He listened to the details and then said, in that soft and low voice he uses when he's really proud and feels both rationally and spiritually that something is a good decision, "I think this is a really good path for you, Julie." I didn't need his approval to move forward but because I had used his counsel to make a decision that I felt great about, his reaction was so satisfying. And when he followed that up with, "I have complete confidence that you will continue to make good decisions for yourself," I cried just a little bit. The only words that came to my mind were, "Because of you Dad. Because of you."

I hope I will have the same unflagging courage (and capacity) to give unpopular but wise advice to my own children. I will always be grateful to my own father for his wisdom and courage to share freely what he knows to be true.