This August will be my twenty-first wedding anniversary. Of the many lessons I have learned in these twenty-one years, one of the most helpful has been that it is usually best to just get started.
Sometime in late 1993, I had a poignant conversation with my father, then about age 60. SueAnn and I had been married three or four years. I had just started my first job out of college. We lived in a small apartment, had one car, our first baby was on the way, and I made $10.24/hour. Seeking some kind of affirmation that I was moving in the right direction, I asked my dad if looking back he would have done anything different in his life.
His answer surprised me.
"You know, Tyler, I have spent my whole life waiting for circumstances to be just right so I could do the things I always dreamed of. Now I'm 60 years old and I still haven't done most of them. If there are things you really want to do in life, don't wait until everything is perfect. Just do them."
Being, like my dad, a person who wants everything perfect before starting down a particular path, the advice seemed simple enough, but was very difficult in practice.
Enter my wife.
SueAnn is a starter, maybe even an instigator. She always has been. She sees no error in starting a project even if conditions are not quite right, or the outcome is uncertain, or the method is not quite sound. For many years, this frustrated me to no end. I felt as if all I ever did was go around cleaning up after my wife. To be honest, I still feel that way sometimes.
But at some point (I'm not sure when) her "starting" taught me that no project could be completed, no goal reached, no dream realized without first starting. Just starting.
So although I have still not become everything I dream of, let me tell you some of the things I am.
I am a father.
I am a land owner.
I am a cowboy.
I am a farmer.
I am a mentor
And now I am a writer.
Move another item from the "Wish I Was" column to the "Am" column. And all I had to do was just start.
