Lessons from my Dad

Recently, I attended the life celebration for a dear friend. The memorial services have put me in a very introspective place. I thought about something that happened to me recently and that led me to remembering some advice my dad gave to me when I was a young man.

My dad once told me that most people do the right thing 95% of the time because the right thing to do is also the right thing for them.

But 5% of the time, doing the right thing comes at a personal cost. Those are the hard decisions. He said that this is the true measure of a person. It’s in those moments that we find out who we really are.

Those words stayed with me.

I can’t say I’ve always done the right thing in every situation. In fact, the moments where my judgment, ego, or emotions got in the way of his advice are the moments that tend to stick with me the most.

My dad also told me that because doing the right thing is hard, people will disappoint you throughout your life. Sometimes even people close to you. He said I should try to have grace for people because, in those difficult moments, they’ve usually justified their actions to themselves.

I’ve found that to be true.

My dad was a pretty smart guy. I miss him.

I’ve been thinking about this recently because I dealt with a situation where longtime business and personal associates treated me disrespectfully. My first reaction was to feel angry, hurt, and annoyed. But then I thought about what my dad said about grace.

So I simply moved on.

Writing this is part of how I process things.

I started thinking about moments in my own life where I may have hurt people while convincing myself I was justified. Looking back, in almost every example, I really wasn’t justified. I had simply acted outside of my principles. If I could go back, I would handle many of those situations differently.

That’s part of growing older. You gain perspective. You begin to realize that being “right” and acting with character are not always the same thing.

Have you ever been through something like this?

Looking back, would you have handled it differently?

Have people disappointed you? And is disappointment even the right reaction?

In the end, we live and learn. We try to gain perspective, live as close to our principles as possible, and when we fall short, do our best to clean up our transgressions when we can

Sometimes, grace for others starts with honesty about ourselves first.

Related: Really? Again?