Uncle Steve’s Wisdom
Steve is one of those friends I appreciate so much, and not just because he’s an adopted uncle to my daughter. We all need a personality like his in our corner. He encompasses what I would call the four corners of friendship. First, you actually enjoy being with them. The best friendships are effortless. You could be off on the adventure of a lifetime, or sitting on a porch, enjoying the evening’s fading light with barely a word said. It might seem oversimplified, but scroll through your list of friends in your head, and identify how many of them are fun in all circumstances. Steve is invited to all seasons of my life.
The second corner of friendship is built on mutual trust and support. When you care about someone, you want the best for them. You feel invested in their growth and are happy to put your efforts toward whatever they need. Likewise, you can count on them to show up when times are tough. During your greatest accomplishments, or worst moments of regret, a good friend is available and engaged in all of them.
Which brings me to the third corner of friendship - honesty. This is where Steve really hits his stride. He calls it brutal honesty. He believes in telling the truth in all circumstances. I wish I could say that sarcastically, like it’s some sort of joke, but unfortunately that is not always part of the world we live in. Somes days, when you scroll through the internet, it feels like half-truths, bent sentences, and moral backflips are more common than good old-fashioned honesty.
Steve says it this way, “telling the truth hurts once, lying hurts every day.” The greatest friends aren’t afraid to offend because you know they are committed to the best for you. I’ll never forget when Steve called me out of a fractured friendship in my life, and instead of doing the easy thing and only listening to my side of the story, he skipped all my excuses and went straight to the truth. I needed to be better, and I needed to fix things. I respected Steve, listened to his advice, and that ruptured relationship became better than ever.
The final corner of friendship is a kind of space and time paradox. We all know it when we experience it. It’s the old friendship that picks up right where it left off. Maybe it’s been months, or even years since seeing each other. That time evaporates once you are together. The old jokes make their appearances, the reflective stories come out to play, and that closeness slides right back into place. Great friendships don’t have to be sustained by constant contact.
So what is the great wisdom Steve passed along to me? It came after a slight lament at the fact that our families don’t spend much time together anymore. It was just a blank statement, more concerned with conflicting schedules than a lack of desire for camaraderie, but Steve didn’t miss a beat. He told me,
“We are doing exactly what we should do. These years are for our kids. We should be focused on our wives and families. Ten years from now, our kids will be out of the house and onto the next phase of life. You know what we will have then? Mountains of time. Our schedules will open up, and we will all be back together having dinners and giving each other a hard time. This season of life isn’t for that. We only have these few years, and they are the most important for loving and shaping our kids. Just keep focusing on the right things, and we will meet up afterward.”
So simple, yet so profound. Nothing is wrong, nobody is missing anything. We should be focused on our kids. Engaging with my daughter as she goes through middle school and enjoying a few free moments with my wife - this is the blessed life.
You know the best thing about wisdom? If you accept it, it will grow. The idea of setting the right priorities goes beyond just family time. I recently hired a few employees for the masonry business, and it’s been a lot of work. Each week, I have been splitting my energies between stonework and family, and there hasn’t been much time for anything else. So when I noticed that writing has completely fallen off a cliff, instead of feeling disappointed, I listened to Steve’s voice in my head telling me to relax and stop stressing. At present, writing is a hobby that I greatly enjoy, but it is just that, a bonus. Taking on employees is like adding to the family, and I need to make sure my family is taken care of above all else. With time, things will settle, I’ll adjust to the new schedule, and get back to writing more consistently. But at this present moment, my newly expanded family gets most of my attention, and that’s a good thing.
