There really is nothing like the feeling you get when your kid does something cool. I used to think that the dad reveling while watching his kid play football or piano or give a speech was just trying to live vicariously through their child – to live the life they never could. And perhaps in some cases that’s true.

But in most cases I bet that’s not what is going on. The amount of joy I get from watching Miles solve a problem, push a chair across the floor, or recognize the word I’m saying is immense. No accomplishment I’ve ever had, no mountain I’ve ever climbed comes close to giving me the kind of joy I get from watching him say “baby” when he looks in the mirror.

It’s not that he’s doing something I wish I could – I’m actually pretty good at getting the square peg into the square hole. It’s not a feeling of living vicariously through him – it’s much more visceral than that. And there really is no comparison that does it justice.

I once tried explaining to someone that it’s like finishing a project and admiring what you created, multiplied by a billion – and realized about halfway through the absolute absurdity of what I was saying. Equating your child to a website or science fair project or nice dinner feels hilariously wrong. But it’s the closest thing I can think of. It’s not even a feeling of “look at what I made” as much as it’s “I can’t believe that he exists, and that I get to be a part of it.”

I never got much out of the concept of God as a father until I had a kid, but I think about it often now. I think about the joy he must get when he sees me treat my wife well or help someone or give with happiness. I think that the joy I get watching Miles read a book is a faint glimmer of the immense joy that God has for his people.

Especially when he watches Miles.

She pushes me, in a good way. Never through words – everything that comes out of her mouth is supportive and kind and loving. It’s through her actions – the way she writes down a list of things she needs to do and attacks it. The way she reviews and re-calibrates the direction her life is going on at least a monthly basis, making more time for the things that are most important to her. The way that she actually is eager to get up in the morning – the woman woke up at 6am on Labor Day because she was so excited to take a walk by the water when the sun was coming up.

While I have a skeptical streak in me, she overflows with possibility and joy. She very seriously believes that most things in this world are good – which many people say they believe but their lives suggest otherwise. She gets just as excited when she gets a good review at work as she does about me buying her Raisin Nut Bran from the grocery store.

I read once that if you were to write down the five people you spend the most time with and examine their lives, that’s your future. And to the degree that you want your future to be different, you might need to spend more time with different people.

Which, if it’s true, means that I could not have possibly done better at picking a spouse. The last five years have been one big attempt to be good enough for her – and I mean that in the best possible sense. Not good enough because she demands or expects it – she actually thinks I’m pretty swell already. But good enough because she deserves someone who is her equal, someone who makes her feel the way she makes me feel.

A tall task, but I’m eternally thankful that I get to try.

Happy anniversary sweetheart.

Tonight we watched our wedding video, and I was struck by how long ago it seemed. While it was fun to reminisce about the day, I found myself not looking back longingly, thinking of those days as somehow better than today. In fact, I’d say the opposite was true. As great as that day was, and as great as our courtship in New York was, it has nothing on what followed.

I’ve said this before, and I’ll probably continue to say it. I’m a very boring writer these days. I don’t opine on my struggles mainly because my biggest problem is fretting that I have things too good. There are times when I worry that a hole is going to open up in the earth and swallow me – that I’ll be smited in an attempt to bring some sense of equilibrium to the relative blessings between myself and other people.

But that’s the great thing about it – I feel more secure in my happiness than I ever have in my life, and it’s because my happiness no longer comes from what I accomplish. While the majority of my semi-mature life has chosen to pursue acheivement and accomplishment and the respect of my peers, the past few yeas have seen a transformation, one that has only intensified in the last twelve months. In place of those temporary, inanimate, ultimately pointless pursuits, I get the joy of spending every day trying to make this beautiful, intelligent, unbelievably sweet girl happy.

Just about every night during the past six months, my heart has ached with joy. When I’m laying down in the dark, there’s no distraction, no noise, nothing to preoccupy my mind. And in those moments I constantly find myself thinking about how ridiculously lucky I am to have this girl next to me.

This is the greatest gift in the world. To know a woman who with every conversation, every loving interaction, every drop-dead gorgeous dress blows your expectations of perfection out of the water. To find someone like this, who challenges you and makes you grow, makes you want to be better than you ever thought you could be, makes you feel lucky to be alive. To find someone like this, and to have them make the choice to spend their life with you.

I’m a sappy, deliriously happy mess of a man. It makes for terrible writing. But it’s better to live well than write well.

A little background – in college I had a project to create a business model. I created a book about how to meet women and sold it on the Internet for $50. It wasn’t spectacularly successful, but we sold a number of copies and got a good grade in the class.

The irony was that I was in the midst of a four-year relationship and had no first-hand experience of what I was talking about, but that was okay. The point of the book was to help guys who lack confidence (I had/have a number of friends who fit the bill) meet girls. It wasn’t about how to be a sleazy guy, but how the ‘nice guy’ can successfully compete with the sleazy guy while still being a good person in the process.

Anyway, one of the only unbreakable rules was that you never hit on the waitress. They’re paid to flirt with you, they get approached constantly, and the odds are very much stacked against you. Thousands of clueless, well-meaning guys think that in their case it’s different and take their chances. They’re almost invariably let down. It’s just not a good use of their time.

Until now.

As my colleagues and I were enjoying ourselves, an idea bubbled to the surface. An idea that could actually work was created. We got feedback from a number of the servers at the bar, from our wives and girlfriends, and over the past few weeks have been accumulating additional supporting evidence. All signs point to this being significantly more likely to work than anything we’ve heard of before.

We’re now at Phase Three before we officially release it - the human trial. Sadly, my core group of friends these days are all spoken for and none of us are able to actually try this. So we need your help. If you’re a single guy and you’re up for it, I’d like you to do the following:

1. Go out to dinner this weekend with your friends. Our feedback from waitresses suggests that the later you do this, the better. You want to avoid her busy times and ideally try the following shortly before she’s done with her shift.
2. If you get a waitress that you think it attractive, nice, witty, etc. and you think you’d enjoy hanging out with her, try to get her to warm to you. The key is to be friendly but not slimy. Don’t flirt with her, just be nice, crack a joke here and there, etc.
3. Near the end of your meal, after you order desert, say the following: “Listen Carrie, can I ask you a question? I want to tell you that I’m not going to hit on you. You and I both know that you get hit on all the time, and it’s a big waste of my time. But you do seem like a great girl, and I’d like to see you under some other circumstances where I could hit on you. How would you recommend I do that?”
4. Report back with your findings.

From what we’ve heard from waitresses, female colleagues and our significant others, we strongly believe that this has a great chance of working. We’re not anticipating a 100% success rate, but I want to hear what happens either way. If she has a boyfriend and tells you so, let us know so we can factor that into the results. Also tell us if you’re a) a slob with a body odor problem, b) wearing your Dungeons & Dragons shirt with the huge mustard stain on it, or c) with your mother when you ask. These will all skew the results.

Also, only call her Carrie if that’s actually her name.

On any given day, there’s a 50/50 chance I’ll be receptive. Half that time I’ll be the big magnanimous guy and help someone out. The other half of the time I’ll tell myself I’m too busy or don’t have the money or whatever.

Funny, after years of talking about this, I still walk right by people half of the time.

My heart is so hard. Why am I so unwilling to part with resources that could help someone out? I don’t know whether that guy really needed to get on the train or not – I know he bought himself and his friend a soda first from the stand outside of the station. But I know that $20 meant a hell of a lot more to him than it did to me – enough to give a stranger a hug. It wasn’t a sarcastic act of gratitude either – the guy was genuinely thankful. And I felt terrible – terrible because I knew he just caught me on a good day. Terrible because he was talking to me as I was taking my money out of the ATM and I was mostly ignoring him. Terrible because as he was going in for the hug I thought to myself “Oh no, I bet he smells awful.”

My heart is so hard. I had no problem parting with a few hundred bucks gambling in Lake Tahoe the week prior (at least in theory – we actually took her colleagues to school.) But half the time it’s a terrible inconvenience to help out someone else. And the other half of the time I do so, but secretly hope that the transaction can take place without any exchange of eye contact, without conversation, certainly without a hug. I probably would have preferred that he were behind one of those glass walls and I sent it to him through a vacuum tube.
Paul summed up Christianity, indeed all of life, this way:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

I have a lot of work to do.

The wife of a friend of mine was hosting one of those parties where the salesperson comes and shows the myriad of uses for candles in your home. My buddy was going to be the only male in attendance, so I volunteered to come up and represent the gender.

During the party I met about a dozen women in their late 20s and early 30s. Most of them were married, most either had kids or were getting ready to. And most were shockingly negative.

They went around the table for hours discussing how one’s love life comes to an end once you marry or have kids or buy the house or whatever. They talked about how you should enjoy life while you can, because once the young ones come around you’ll be poor, tired, bored, busy, out of shape, stupid and lonely.

It was a sad prognosis, but one that appears to be extremely common among women in our country. They were talking about the staggering number of housewives who have become meth addicts, about the number of housewives who cheat on their husbands, about the number of wives who are diagnosed with depression.

What in the world is going on here? Why is marriage the cause of such destruction?

Before I got married, I spent a long time thinking about what it meant, what my vows that day were truly about. It didn’t really occur to me until a few weeks before the wedding how big a commitment it is – I mean, I knew it was important, but I don’t think it penetrated the core of my being.

When most of us talk about marriage and what it means, it tends to be pretty surface level. We talk about someone who we enjoy hanging out with. We talk about someone who is beautiful and intelligent. We talk about someone who has similar interests or ideas about the world. We talk about how “in love” we are.

I’ve written about this before, but the Greek language has four different words for love. The most common is the word eros, or erotic love. It’s that euphoric feeling we get when we most often talk of love. I’d be willing to bet it’s the only kind of love that most of us have ever felt. And sadly, it’s probably the only kind of love that exists between a great many couples who decide to take the plunge.

There’s another kind of love called agape – and it’s love from the soul. It’s the kind of love that characterizes Christ’s love for the church, and it’s the kind of love that he calls husbands and wives to share for each other.

It’s a love that is about much more than ‘good feelings.’ It isn’t about being ‘in love,’ about the things that so many of our movies and songs and poetry are preoccupied with. It is a lifelong devotion that surpasses all other things in this world. It is very literally considering the life of the other person as being more valuable than your own, and doing whatever it takes to ensure that their life is cherished and cared for and treated the way God would want it to be treated.

I honestly believe that there are many marriages out there that lack this love. They lack the fundamental foundation that defines a solid marriage – indeed, they lack the purpose for which marriage was created in the first place.

It’s the only explanation I have for why “life” is allowed to get in the way. I know all about the demands of work, and I do feel as though I can understand in some way the demands that having children and mortgages and the like can have on a couple.

But for a marriage that is based on agape, none of those things could ever upset that balance. They could certainly cause stress or concern and would likely involve discussions that are sometimes heated when trying to come up with solutions. But as powerful as a house payment or a child crying in the next room or a three week sales trip is, it is not strong enough to overthrow the power of agape.

Agape means that regardless of the situation, no matter how stressed out I am at work, I will still make it a priority to let my wife know that she is loved. I will go out of my way to make sure her needs are cared for – not just financially, but physically, mentally, emotionally, interpersonally, vocationally, spiritually.

Agape means that when there is a conflict, I will do whatever I can to make sure it gets resolved constructively and mutually. It means that I will not get bitter or angry or say something that I don’t mean. It means that I will happily compromise instead of digging in and holding my ground for the sake of holding my ground. And it means that if an impasse is reached, I will consider her needs above my own, make her needs my needs.

Agape is completely and utterly selfless. It is perpetually tuned into the needs of the other person. It is the surest way I know of to keep a relationship happy and healthy.

Some would say that they’ve never seen agape, and certainly have never experienced it. Some would even argue that it goes against our basest human desires and needs.

I agree – while in one sense it is something that requires a lot of work to acheive and maintain, in another sense it is something that we can never possess or feel by working at it. I believe it is a grace that is given to us, something given out of love from the One who understands agape in all its fullness. It’s not human, never was. It’s a gift.

Marriage isn’t about fuzzy feelings or being in love or about forming a family unit or about tax breaks. It’s about being given the immense privledge of trying to practice agape in our little ways. It’s about being able to see a small echo of what it’s like to love someone the way God loves us.

It’s about having agape, that fire of divine love, and doing everything in your power to keep that flame alive. Like a candle.

Or like a cheesy, contrived metaphor.

I believe certain events in your life unlock certain new discoveries. And the engagement process, especially the past few months, have made me realize there are two kinds of love in the world – one is the euphoric feeling that you’ve given me every single day since I’ve met you. I have no doubt that our lives will continue to be full of that first kind of love – if the past two years are any indication, our marriage will marked by a consistent joy, passion and excitement for each other.

But that love isn’t what today is about – it’s about a second kind of love. A love marked not by feelings, but by actions. Today is about making very real promises to you, in front of God and everyone here today. Promises that last our entire lives. That love is what I pledge to you.

I promise to thank God daily for your presence in my life. I promise to never let a day pass without you knowing in no uncertain terms how much you mean to me.

I promise to never tell you that you have too many shoes.

I promise to spend my days serving you, leading you where I can, building you up when I’m able, celebrating your many victories and encouraging you in setbacks.

I promise to always respect you – to friends, coworkers, family, strangers. I promise to remain devoted to you, to not wonder what else is out there, because I know without a shred of doubt that there is nothing else, no one else out there that could possibly hold a candle to you. I promise to do whatever I can so you never question my loyalty, love and devotion to you.

I promise that our house will have a consistent reserve of chocolate and flowers available.

I promise to give you my energy every day of my life, to make sure you never feel lonely or heart-broken. I promise to continually put you on the pedestal you deserve, to make sure you understand that you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever laid eyes on.

I promise to fight for our relationship, no matter how life decides to test us. I promise to love you tirelessly, regardless of our circumstances, in prosperity or destitution, in good times and bad, in sickness and health.

I promise to make sure you have plenty of dresses to wear – which is more of a promise to myself, because you look really pretty in dresses.

I promise to treasure your life above my own, to put your interests in front of mine. I promise to protect you from harm, to protect your heart from being broken, to protect your spirit from being shattered, as best I’m able.

I promise to laugh with you, cry with you, pray with you, eat a variety of cheeses from all over the world with you.

I promise to love you, in both ways, as long as we both shall live.

I’m tired of living in a culture that tells me it’s okay, I can do what I want. I’m tired of being told that everything is subjective, tired of being told that I can rationalize away my worst thoughts and deeds. I’m tired of being able to chalk my lowest moments up as ‘learning experiences.’

I’m tired of seeing people make commitments to each other with no intention of honoring them. I’m tired of hearing about couples getting married only to divorce within a few months. I’m tired of flippant, off-hand comments about someone cheating on someone else, as if such behavior is natural, expected, normal.

I’m tired of being let off the hook.

I want to meet people who don’t insist I put on a mask to hide my faults. I want to meet people who are willing to call me on my bullshit.

I write one day about the perils of greed, and the very next I pass right next to a guy asking me for help. Call me on it.

I say something in jest that makes someone feel a little less respected, a little less honorable, a little less beautiful, a little less amazing than they are. Call me on it.

I cut corners on a project because, hey, it’s not like anyone else is giving 150% anyway. Call me on it.

I write something clever. People tell me it’s clever. I puff myself up like I was the source of my ideas, my intellect. Call me on it.

Don’t tell me that I’m being too hard on myself when I point out my faults. Help me work on them, help me become a better person, help me keep the curtain pulled back. Don’t make it easy for me to slip back into normal habits. Expect better from me.

And then take the next step. Expect better from yourself as well. Don’t put on the mask. Someone asks you how you’re doing – tell them. Show your warts. Talk about your demons. Ask to be held accountable.

It’s so much easier for us to slip into a mode that says everything is okay, as long as we’re happy. It’s easy because no one expects anything more from us. Because if they expect more from us, they have to take the next step and expect more from themselves. And that’s a difficult thing to do.

I don’t know how to change the world for the better. I don’t know how to convince our leaders to make intelligent, moral decisions.

But I do know that if I want to hold them accountable, I have to start with myself first. I can’t rail againt my leaders or my friends or my family for lying or cheating or stealing or boasting or hurting others unless I’m willing to first confront myself.

And when I do confront myself, openly, honestly….I find a lot of dirt.

There are so many things I do – daily – that I’m not proud of. Things I’d like to do differently. I screw up all the time. I’m not strong enough to live the way I know I should. Not on my own.

I need someone to hold me accountable. But the person holding me accountable can’t do so unless they first examine themselves. And once they do so, they find a lot of dirt. They discover that they too need someone to hold them accountable.

Our lives, the organism of humanity, appears to me to be more and more related to accountability. We are not islands. The decisions we make impact us, often in the long term, almost certainly in the short term. Our decisions impact those around us, those we love, those we don’t even know exist.

Unfortunately, our nature seems to lend itself to screwing up. Nobody’s perfect, and that’s probably on purpose. But the answer to screwing up is not to be let off the hook. The answer isn’t to rationalize it away. The answer isn’t to call it life and forget about it. The answer is to strive to be better – to resolve to lie to each other less, steal from each other less, hurt each other less.

And the best way I’ve found to support our push to be better is to have someone to hold us accountable. Someone who loves us enough to not let us off the hook, to cheer us on when we succeed, to rebuke us and build us up when we fail.

Are you willing to be held accountable? Are you willing to examine yourself? Are you willing to hold someone you love accountable n similar fashion?

If we did so, I bet the world would very quickly become a much different place.

With the move just completed and a wedding fast approaching, with countless projects piling up professionally, my mind has been all over the place. The two years I spent in New York blessed me with an unusual amount of focus – I was able to concentrate on tasks, get things done, make things happen. Create, create, create.

I knew that leaving the city would impact the options my fiance and I would have from a social standpoint (what do you mean there are only a dozen restaurants on this block?) But what I wasn’t prepared for was the impact uprooting my life would have on my….brain.

I can’t concentrate. I can’t focus on anything for more than a few minutes. The fire that I’ve enjoyed that compelled me to tackle a myriad of activities simulatanously with consistent vigor seems to have gone into hibernation.

Granted, I am about 10 days away from a wedding. And granted, planning said wedding has been as involved as everyone said it would be.

But nonetheless, it’s been about a month since I’ve felt really “on,” in my professional life. It’s been about a month since I’ve had anything interesting going on in my brain, anything I felt warranted time discussing. It’s been about a month since I felt anything less than dry in my spiritual life.

Perhaps this is a good thing – one could argue that if I were focused primarilly on my work or on being a clever writer I would be distracted from the biggest day of my young life. Indeed, the only thing I’ve found myself able to get excited about lately is the wedding, and that might be healthy.

But as much as I’m looking forward to next Saturday, I can’t help but feel like I need a shot in the arm in other areas of my life. I long to have words, thoughts, ideas pouring out of my brain again. I long for the desire to get up at 5 in the morning, to greet the friendly baristas at Starbucks right as they open, to knock out a day’s worth of work by 10 in the morning.

Instead, I find myself in Colorado, with a television set for the first time in two years, clicking the channels with the rapidity of a seasoned couch potato. A month ago, I downloaded a video game to my computer and have since spent WAY too many hours playing it.

In the past month, I’ve seen a glimpse of the life that I used to silently (or not so silently) chastise others for living. A life seeking mindless distraction, a life not constantly looking for ways to grow and stretch, a life not interesting in using one’s abilities to their absolute limit. I’ve seen a glimpse of the life I swore myself I’d never have.

There are a number of realizations I’ve made as a result of this glimpse. First, my life’s direction has largely been dictated by where I’ve been and who I’ve surrounded myself with. The past two years of my life were the most productive, most enjoyable I’ve ever had. And I’m convinced that my life’s trajectory moved the way it did because of the city I was living in and the woman I was spending my time with.

Colorado Springs is a sleepy, sleepy town. I have yet to have a conversation with someone (other than my father) who has been pursuing a big, bold, audacious dream here. Someone who was doing something that they knew to be insanely difficult but infinitely more satisfying than the status quo.

Chicago seems similar – I’ve managed to find a group of supremely talented guys there in a very short time, and I feel exceedingly fortunate to have done so. But the city as a whole lacks the energy that New York had – no longer can I go to a bar or restaurant and be virtually assured that whomever I talk to is living a life on the edge, consciously deciding to see how far they can stretch themselves.

What that means is that I’m going to need to make a concerted effort to create that feeling for myself. I’ll have to think through how I structure my days (now that I don’t have an office to go to) and how I design my surroundings to be conducive to dreaming and doing, not sitting and vegging. It means that, though my social calendar is likely to be significantly more spare than before, I will continue to live without the distractions of television, will delete the football game from my machine, will continue to spend my waking hours working, learning, growing, dreaming, reading, contemplating, writing. It’s easy to relax, to let my guard down, to allow the curtain to slowly fall over a mind that longs to dream and learn and reach. But I must not let it happen.

The second lesson is that I’m even more lucky to have Michelle in my life than I thought. I’ve had girlfriends before (some for a very long time) and for the most part they were sweet, loving people. But I didn’t admire them, didn’t respect them, didn’t look up to them the way I do my fiance. I met this girl and immediately my life took a new direction. I met a woman that doesn’t need me to support her, was never looking to be a trophy, and in most ways is my superior. I’ve never before been in a situation where I looked up to the person I cared about the way I do her.

Being in a relationship built on intense love, on mutual admiration and respect, does something to a person. It makes them want to reach for mountains that previously seemed insurmountable. It makes them want to make the most of the time they are given.

I do very well when I have her around. I do very poorly when I don’t. I often joke about her being my muse,but I find myself drawing a significant amount of my energy from her. Being near her, talking with her, laughing with her, even working with her give me a boost that no cup of coffee possibly could. I want to be my best self because of her.

We’ve been apart almost two weeks now (and with the previous trips to Chicago, an organizational trip to the Hamptons and Vegas it’s been much more than that) and I’m struggling. I need to see her to feel like everything is right in the world. I need my fire rekindled and I now know that she plays an integral part in that.

I’m excited about my wedding and the honeymoon in a way I’ve never been before. But I’m also excited for what follows, when my life regains some semblance of structure and consistency, when I can look forward to seeing her every night and can tackle the following day with intensity and passion and life.

I’ve had to learn through a ton of thought and tearful reflection about my failures as an elder brother. My brother was in many ways a contradiction – at once fiercely defiant of authority and desperately looking for someone to lead him. For many years, that person was me. But on too many occasions to mention (and likely a great many more that I fail to remember,) his desire to be with his older brother, to go where I went, was rejected.

In grade school we were in day care, and I’d start some spy club or ninja club and recruit other kids. He’d do his best to try and win my approval, wanting to be a part of something together, to be the Robin to my Batman. And for no apparent reason, I’d reject him. I’d cast him to the outside, force him to go find someone else to hang out with.

I don’t like to think of myself as an evil person, but then I imagine this 6 year old kid with knee high socks and shorts and light brown hair, small for his age but big in heart, eyes wide open to the world, looking to learn from someone. I think about my friends and I running around obstacle courses and giving ourselves pats on the back for being so cool, too busy trying to be accepted by my peers to notice (or care) that there was someone out there who already accepted me, who thought that I was pretty much perfect. I think about the intense sadness that must have been a big part of my younger brother’s life, as he tried to follow me around, tried to win my approval, tried to be loved the same way he loved. I think about that sadness, and how he eventually learned to deaden it as he attached himself to other kids who were happy to lead him into a great many adventures, often of a questionable nature.

The past few years, I’d sometimes hear stories about what my brother was up to, how he was trying to figure out where to take his life, trying to answer questions about what it means to be a man, about how a life is meant to be lived. My brother has always looked for the answers to his most important questions by finding other strong people, folks who seem to have life figured out. Makes sense – after all, he learned long ago that he couldn’t ask me – I wouldn’t be interested. I’d probably call him a loser, tell him to stop wasting my time. And so he does the best he can, making decisions on his own or looking to his circle of friends. Often those decisions are ill-timed or poorly judged in my opinion, but it doesn’t matter – I lost the right to tell him how to live his life a long long time ago.

I’ve thought about this often lately because I’m about to become a husband. Some day after that, I’ll likely become a father. And just as I did when I was a young seven year old, I’ll possess the power to tremendously influence a small, fragile person’s life in a dramatic way.

I know it’s an altogether different situation, being a dad versus a young older brother. But I’ve learned that we carry a great many of our character flaws with us as we age – they sometimes shift and permute and become more subtle, but they’re very difficult to eradicate.

How do I make sure that my young son or daughter knows every single day that their love is valued and appreciated? How do I go out of my way to make sure they never ever ever feel the sense of rejection that my brother felt when we were so young?

If I have multiple kids, how in the world do I convey to a 7 year old how powerful their opinion and attitude towards their younger sibling can be? How do I make it clear to them that the young kid tagging along, following them wherever they go, desperately seeking their approval will someday represent one of the most important people in their lives? How do I teach them to suppress the childish selfishness and insecurity that so often marks a young person’s life? How do I teach them to exchange those feelings and the actions they create with a heart that is loving and accepting of those who look up to them?

How do I make sure they don’t screw it up the way I did?