

Intergenerational Bonding
For the sake of intergenerational bonding,
there may also come a time in our careers that
we would have enough confidence in ourselves
and our achievements that we could honestly
say that true happiness in our lives may be one
less promotion, one less title, one less
advancement, one less transfer. After all, what
good is it to dedicate a career to making a
name for ourself if our family doesn't know who
we are.
Conversely, we need to nudge our young
people toward the direction of developing good,
marketable skills. If we are going to get
involved in other people's lives to do good, it is
going to take time and money. And we will
have neither time nor money if we don't have
unmarketable skill; we will be working at two
jobs seven days a week, and we won't have the
time and energy to do much good for anyone.
We need to be there for our children in
those formative years. For a decade, Mom and
I spent many a boring evening in a hot, steamy
gymnasium around our state because our son
or daughter's ball team was there. Sometimes
their evening was spent keeping the other end
of the bench from flying up when the coach sat
down. And yet, at some point during the
evening our child would give a faint wave to us
from across the gym. And that meant,
"Thanks, because if
you
weren't here, my
parents missed it."
Mission accomplished.
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