Celebrating with Dad on his 84th Birthday!

I was fortunate enough to be able to celebrate my Dad’s 84th birthday with him and my mom this past week. Luckily my Spring Break always falls around his birthday so I take that time to visit. This year, as usual, we had a good time. Many say I am like my Dad, I hope I can be as good a father to my girls as he is a father to me. He has helped me by teaching me to always do my best and by being a good model to follow. To show our similar thinking, twice while I visited we put on similar clothes. One day I had on my ECU T-shirt only to find had chosen the same shirt. ECU represents East Carolina University where I am a professor. The next day I found we both wore  MIT T-shirts. MIT represents Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the school he graduated from in 1953.

How he handled the situation after my near fatal car accident demonstates how he always helped move forward. The car accident put me in a coma when I was 17. Despite the situation, he believed I would be fine. I wrote about that experience in, “The Power of Positive Health: Why I am So Passionate about Wellness” if you want to learn more about what happened. In that situation…

The doctors did not recommend I go to college because they didn’t think I could make it. Interestingly, my parents never lost hope. I had previously applied to college and had taken the SAT’s early. While I was in a coma, my acceptance letter came from Purdue. In the belief I would be fine, my father went ahead and completed my application and sent it in assuming I would go to college that fall despite the fact I was in a coma when he completed my papers.

To celebrate his birthday we went out to dinner. While we were celebrating his 84th birthday another family was there to celebrate their daughters 2nd birthday. In seeing the baby it reminded me of my girls and how fast they have grown up. They are now 19 and 17 about to be 20 and 18. Where did the time go? Although I addressed this issue in a previous post, What did I used to do with all My time?, the little girls parents told me something to capture that concept even better:

                   The days are long but the years are short.

To me it is a great reminder to do all we can to create interactions to benefit everyone and everything now because all the time we have is today. I look forward to hearing about how you made today great with Selfish, Selfless, Synergy!