I am afraid to admit this, but if push came to shove and my wife was forced to choose, odds are 50/50 – on a good day – that she would choose me over Facebook. She is someone who thrives on relationships, and Facebook is all about staying connected with friends and family. She has countless friends who would be there in a moment’s notice for her because she is that kind of person. She is outgoing, loving, caring, and just honestly loves interacting with people. I also enjoy being around people, but it can take quite a while before I warm up to new relationships. I don’t know if its insecurity, trust issues, or some other self-imposed hurdle that I have, but new situations tend to cause me some heartache. Andrea, on the other hand, could be dropped into a room of complete strangers and within hours she would have several new, meaningful friendships. That’s just who she is. I have always been impressed, and a tad jealous, of her ability to be herself, be outgoing and develop these great friendships in a variety of different situations. She was a “social networker” before there were social networking websites. Now that Facebook is around, she has taken it to a whole new level.

To be perfectly honest, I am a fan of Facebook. But just like overindulging in anything else, too much Facebook can lead to potential problems. Don’t get me wrong, learning that Susie in Wichita got a high score in Bejeweled and that Doug from Sioux Falls is happy it’s sunny is a great way to stay connected, but the bottom line is that I just want to see a bit more of my wife. She is a Facebookaholic.

At first, I thought it was just a phase she was going through, just reconnecting with old friends. But as time passed and Facebook became an increasingly important member of our family, I began to get a little worried. My wife is addicted to people, and Facebook is her enabler of choice. I knew we were heading for trouble when, upon returning late from a night out with friends, Andrea proceeded directly to the office to log in to Facebook to post comments to the very friends she had just spent the evening with, about the evening they had just spent together. Literally just spent together. Within roughly 2 minutes of them saying their good byes, 7 status updates, 15 wall posts, 172 comments and 37 photos had been uploaded and distributed throughout the Facebook community. The whole group was addicted.

As a short term remedy, I went ahead and created my own account, and thankfully she accepted my friend request. At least now I can send her communications that I am on my way home, I am downstairs, or on more than one occasion that I am standing beside her waiting for a response to a question I had just asked while she is fully engrossed in her Facebook world. I just can’t compete with the comings and goings of her 23,745 best friends. I think rock bottom for me was when I logged in and Facebook suggested that I reconnect with Andrea.

It seemed to be mocking me.

I do like Facebook though, because it is fun to catch up with people. It has allowed me to stay a little better connected to some old friends I had lost touch with. It’s nice. But Facebook isn’t the number one social networking site on the web, and its creator isn’t a gazillionaire, because it’s nice to occasionally catch up with old friends. It is successful, because people like Andrea, people who appreciate and understand the value of relationships, are totally hooked. It builds, or in some cases rebuilds, connections, and it allows people to easily stay in touch. At first, I didn’t really get it. I didn’t quite understand why anyone would care what I had eaten for dinner, how I felt about the current weather, or where I was going next weekend. I didn’t get the significance of the connections, or the importance of the relationships. Seemed like a cute idea, but kind of a waste of time if you weren’t careful. I thought about, as a joke, posting something along those lines as my status update, but I didn’t want Andrea to “unfriend” me.

The importance of relationships was made abundantly clear to me recently at work. During a staff meeting, a short video clip was shown and it really made me think. It was one of those videos that shows the earth from increasingly farther and farther distances. From a purely visual perspective it was very impressive, and I am sure it was meant to be motivational. That being said, as the camera panned farther away, I found myself getting more and more depressed. It felt like this:

- 1,000 meters: Beautiful mountain range, feeling good

- 10,000 meters: From the sky, still very impressive, loving life

- 100,000 meters: See the whole earth, love my planet, life is good

- 1,000,000 meters: Small planet, lots of other celestial bodies around, feeling smaller

- 10 light years: Sun, moon, earth just specs amid many specs, beginning to question my place in the universe

- 100 light years: Milky way just a cluster of lights, can’t see earth, can’t even really see the sun, feeling insignificant, beginning to wonder what the point of my existence is

- 10,000 light years: Millions of tiny, barely visible specs, supposedly one of them is the Milky way, woefully depressed, wondering why I even get out of bed in the morning

- 1,000,000 light years: Nothing but tiny specs of light, a new-found appreciation for just how insignificant I am, impressed by the scale of the universe, but fully convinced that there is absolutely no point in getting out of bed ever again

Given the positive and encouraging environment within which I work, I know for a fact that this was not the intended takeaway, but I couldn’t help but feel the weight of my insignificance in the grand scheme of things. The only analogy I could think about was that of ants. I thought about ants and how they toil away endlessly in search of food. I suddenly felt like a tiny little ant toiling away for food, money, validation, you name it.

On a positive note, I realized just how ludicrous it was for me to stress out about some of the relatively inconsequential details that I often worry about. Suddenly the 20 pounds I have been wanting to lose seemed to matter far less. But the downside was an overwhelming sense of “what’s the point”?

After I moped around for a day or two feeling pitiful and insignificant, Andrea pointed out to me that I was better than an ant because of the relationships in my life. For as long as I can remember, I tied the value of my life to what I had accomplished. The goal was to always get ahead in a measurable fashion – raises, degrees, promotions, titles, money. The reality of the situation is that if I didn’t have any one to share the successes and failures with, the entire journey wouldn’t have been as rewarding. The friends and family I have in my life are what make it all worthwhile.

My relationships are the answer to the question “what’s the point” – they are why my life is significant. And the more meaningful, rewarding relationships I am fortunate enough to develop, the better. Suddenly, and part of me hates to admit this, Facebook made a lot more sense. At some point in the near future, I will admit this to Andrea, but I am too tired to log in right now and make it my status update. Maybe tomorrow.

For the better part of my life, I thought I knew it all. It feels a little weird to admit that, particularly given my relative abundance of random insecurities, but it’s true. It’s not like I walked around announcing to the world that I thought I knew everything, I just worked incredibly hard trying to convince myself that I had it all figured out. I am not sure of the exact genesis of this particularly charming personality trait – who doesn’t love to be around a know-it-all – but I actually think a lot of it developed as a result of some of my basic insecurities.

We all have various ways of compensating for our shortcomings. I chose an approach that was about as subtle as a driving a lifted monster truck with humongous tires. Growing up, I often felt as if my best was never good enough, so I chose to overcompensate by telling myself that I knew everything. Eventually I got to a point where I started actually believing it. Luckily, with age, a little maturity (very little) and some humility, I now realize how absurd my story had become.

The wonderful thing about humility is that it can make its presence felt in a variety of ways. It can come roaring into your life like a tornado and leave you with a worthless 3” black and white television, or with the patience of Ghandi, it can continually remind you of your hubris through subtle signs and patterns. You might not always see the signs, but in my case, I have found that humility will not stop until you do. Having a lifetime of “I know it all” under my belt, I was not particularly well-equipped to properly interpret the signs of foolish pride. After all, my life had been built upon a constant desire to be perfect, to have all the answers. What would it mean to admit that I didn’t know it all? What would I find if I really took a “good, hard look at myself”?

As a man, I have been blessed with an innate, incredibly accurate sense of direction. I would go so far as to say that you could drop me anywhere in the world, with neither a compass nor a map, and I would be back home by dinner. With groceries. At least that is what I have long believed about myself. I am sure there are many people, men and women, who can make that claim, but sadly I am not one of them.

Don’t get me wrong, it pains me to admit this. Only a couple of months ago, had Andrea questioned my sense of direction on any one of the countless times I had taken a wrong turn, I would have blamed everything on incompetent city planning. Oh, the power of denial.

The universe first attempted to make me aware of my inadequate geographic sensibilities while Andrea and I were working in Europe. One weekend, we rented a car and were planning on driving to Germany. Given that we were working in Switzerland and the countries shared a border,

I thought this seemed simple enough. I was confident I had it all planned out. Even though I felt like it was a waste of money, I even bought a map.

We hit the road and within 20 minutes we were lost. Switzerland is known for many things, one of them being their quaint open-air marketplaces with shopping and dining. For being a patient and neutral people, the Swiss get surprisingly angry at tourists who drive through their pedestrian-only marketplaces.

I am not sure exactly how it happened, but I made a wrong turn and the next thing I knew I was navigating through shopping booths and people sitting at tables eating their dinner. I would have put the car in reverse, but it was a European model that I had never heard of. Plus, the driver’s manual was written in German. My knowledge of the German language was limited to finding a bathroom and ordering a sandwich, but rather than admit to the rental agent that I couldn’t put the car in reverse, I just decided that this would be a “forward only” trip. As a result, I had to embarrassingly drive a complete loop through the entire marketplace in order to return to the street through which we had entered. If anyone ever tells you that the Swiss never get upset, they are lying. All it takes is driving a car through their restaurants.

My nerves finally began to calm once we found our way back to the highway. Once again, we were on our way. The road signs were difficult to make out,

but I was confident we were still on the road to Germany. Further along our journey, it began snowing. Snowing hard. I began worrying in earnest when we seemed to drive straight uphill for hours. By this point it was pitch black, snowing unbelievably hard and we were apparently trying to crest Mt. Kilimanjaro in a small sedan on our way to Munich.

I was down to my last frazzled nerve, when through what had to be divine intervention, a gas station miraculously appeared. We pulled in to find only one other car, which had a small group of – believe it or not – Texas-sweatshirt-wearing Americans. They seemed unfazed by the blizzard we were in, but that probably had more to do with their four wheel drive vehicle with chains than anything else. As a native Houstonian, Andrea happily went to ask for directions. I would have asked, but I was sure that Munich was only a few short miles down the road. Surprisingly, Munich was still hours away. We were in Austria.

You would think that an experience like this might make me begin to seriously reconsider my beliefs about my navigational savvy, but it didn’t. Nearly running over a few shocked Swiss diners could be chalked up to coincidence, but it is hard to deny the significance of missing your destination by an entire country. I should have learned my lesson and realized my limitations, but happy to be alive, I just blamed it on poorly made maps, horrific road planning and terrible road signs.

Undeterred by my obliviousness, humility began a more methodical approach to revealing my foolish pride. Years of forgetting where I have parked, getting lost running simple errands and having to “agree to disagree” with people (usually over things that I eventually find out I was wrong about) have finally started to sink in. As badly as I still feel like I need to know everything, I am finally getting to the place where I can comfortably say “I don’t know”.

There is something incredibly liberating, at least for me, in saying “I don’t know”. It takes a lot of work trying to convince yourself and others that you have it all figured out. Not to mention the fact that it is impossible. Admitting that I don’t have all the answers has given me the freedom to try to find out who I really am, and what I really know. It has become apparent that I know much less than I thought I did. And I am okay with that. That’s why we have Google, Wikipedia, and even Facebook. If I ever need to know something, I can quickly find it.

It took a while, but humility finally showed me the depth of my foolish pride. There are things I know, things that I am good at, and there are countless things that I don’t have a clue about. I used to worry about what people would think about me if they knew I was just as clueless as the next guy. The reality is that many of the relationships in my life have improved as I have started getting more and more comfortable with who I really am. No one has asked me for advice about driving through Europe, but the people I care about still seem to like me.

There are times when I am simply blown away by how thoughtful my son Tyler can be. Out of the blue, he will give me a drawing, a card, or a simple hug and tell me that I “make his heart happy”. Sometimes, when he doesn’t know I’m there, I will watch him play with his sister, and I am astounded by how gentle and caring he can be.

For the most part, he is a sweet little angel. For the most part. That is why I am having such a hard time comprehending why he is trying to drive me insane.

One of the hardest lessons I have learned, as a person and as a parent, is that there is a time and a place to keep my mouth closed. Never one to shy away from sharing my opinion, I have recently concluded that the time for silence is far more often than I originally thought. Whether at work or home, with friends or adversaries, resisting the urge to blurt out the first thing that comes to mind has proven quite beneficial in virtually all of my relationships.

As a parent, I feel like I spend the bulk of my time trying to keep my kids out of harms way. I encourage them to try new things and develop new interests, but when push comes to shove I feel like I am constantly saying “don’t do that”, “get down” or “be careful”. I am a real joy to be around at a park.

I seem to forget the joy of flying off of a swing or hanging upside down from the monkey bars. I spent the majority of my formative years with various bumps and bruises, and I lived. I try to stop myself, to let them have fun and fly, but I seem to have a reflex reaction to tell them to STOP. Once I have blurted out the words, my dilemma arises. If they push back, or more accurately when they say “no” or “why”, what do I do? Do I retreat, admit the ridiculousness of my request and teach them to disregard what I say? Or do I dig in, fight the good fight and end up with a house full of tears that often include my own?

In certain respects, watching what I say with the kids is easy. Real panic sets in when Andrea throws out the occasional, “do these jeans make me look fat” question.. From what I can tell, there doesn’t appear to be a right answer to this. You would think that quickly saying, “no way, they look great” would be on the right track, but you would be wrong. Apparently if you answer too quickly, you don’t care enough to sincerely evaluate the jeans. On the other hand, if by chance, you make the fatal mistake of pausing to consider how the jeans in question actually look, you might as well book a hotel room.

Every once in a while, there comes a time when I must speak my mind. With a few years of parenting under my belt, I feel like I have learned the value of keeping quiet unless the issue at hand is actually important. Or at least if I think it is important. Like sitting down for meals. Since Tyler was born, he has been physically incapable of sitting still for a complete meal. I was fairly active as a kid, so I empathize with his plight. But as his dad, getting him to sit down and eat a complete meal with his family is something I consider to be important. And so, on one fateful day over 3 years ago, I said with full parental authority, “Tyler, sit down on your bottom and eat your dinner.”

I had no idea what I was getting into at the time, but the great “sitting still at the dinner table” debate is still raging in our house. We have tried a variety of methods to get him on board, but all efforts thus far have been futile.

Once, he said that he needed a seat belt on his seat, so I quickly obliged.

Child Protective Services, if you are reading this, I assure you that this was his idea, and we all had a good laugh.

Objectively, it really is quite comical. He just can’t sit still. Within seconds, he has one cheek off the chair, then the other, then he is under the table, then he is standing on the counter. I am sure that anyone else in the world would have a nice laugh watching him dance around the dining room. As the father who is trying to get him to listen to my words, do as I say and get a healthy meal into his system – with a pinch of my own obsessive-compulsive behavior thrown in – it is driving me into the looney bin. I try, with all my might, to stay calm, but each meal typically consists of me saying “Tyler, please sit down in your seat” well over 200 times. By the 180th time, my blood pressure is well over the safety zone for someone my age.

Sometimes I find myself saying things just because my parents told them to me. It’s times like this that learning to pause for a moment, to really think about why I am about to say something, can significantly impact my overall happiness and well being. As an example, Tyler had a cold recently and he ended up with a runny nose. After he sniffed a couple of times, I told him to get a Kleenex to blow his nose. “Why?” he asked. I wanted to say “because I told you so”, but that doesn’t seem to work in my house. Instead, even though I am not a doctor, I informed him that if he didn’t stop sniffing he would get an ear infection and would have to go to the hospital. It had to be true, that’s what my parents told me when I wouldn’t blow my nose. To be safe, I threw in a “Daddy knows best” for good measure. That conversation took place about 4 months and roughly 17,218 sniffs ago.

Originally, I didn’t really care that much if he sniffed or not, but now I am locked in an epic battle of wills with a 5 year old. And I am losing. Every sniff is like a punch to my stomach. And I hear every single one. Every time we have to stop whatever we are doing, debate the importance of blowing our nose and get a Kleenex. At the end of the day, I just want him to be healthy. But now, because this has blossomed into something much bigger than it should be, I am probably less than 40 sniffs away from losing my mind.

I have tried everything I can think of to explain to him the physics behind sniffing, and how it is not good for him to do, but it has not sunk in. At one point, I even appealed to his common sense.

Tyler: – SNIFF -

Me: “Tyler, please blow your nose.”

Tyler: “Why?”

Me: “I have told you why. It isn’t good for you to keep sniffing. You need to blow your nose.”

Tyler: “I’m not trying to sniff.” – SNIFF -

Me: “Look, Tyler, why are you sniffing?”

Tyler: “Because my nose is runny.”

Me: “Your runny nose is your bodies way of getting rid of the stuff that is making you sick.”

Tyler: “EEEWWWW”

Me: “I know! So, why would you want to suck that back into your head?”

Tyler: “I don’t.”

Me: “Exactly.”

Tyler: “Thanks Daddy!”

Me: “Your welcome buddy.”

[Pause]

Tyler: – SNIFF -

I think that his sniff has stayed around for almost 4 months just to provide a growth opportunity for me. I have never heard of a sniffle lasting this long.

And, ironically, not one trace of anything wrong with his ears.

I have heard it said that silence is golden. I think, for the first time, I actually understand the implications of this statement. In many occasions, silence has given me the opportunity to really think about what I am about to say, and what the ramifications of my words might be. Sometimes I still have to say things that I don’t really want to, but I understand that I must, and I am ready for whatever comes. Other times, I have been able to catch myself from saying things that really don’t need to be said. I think there might be something to the old adage, “think before you speak”.

To say that I was raised in an environment where independence was valued would be an understatement. It wasn’t just that my parents preached self-sufficiency, they firmly believed that needing or asking for help from anyone was a sign of weakness. I am a strong advocate of being independent, but when it is taken to an extreme, the results can be troublesome. Don’t get me wrong, I like being able to tackle the countless projects around the house that Andrea comes up with – the subtle difference between “tackling” and “completing” is a subject that we often debate – on a daily basis. It’s just that, over the past few years, I have realized that the “me against the world” attitude I have developed since childhood, is flawed.

Regardless of the task at hand – chores, sports, school projects, etc. – I worked my buns off to ensure that I could do it on my own and wouldn’t have to ask anyone for help. To this day, I am still not sure if it was foolish pride, needing my parents’ validation, or what, but I can’t even begin to count the number of times I made things much harder than they needed to be. One time, I even strapped a full-size sleeper sofa to my back with a bungee cord and carried it up a flight of stairs, just to avoid the embarrassment of asking for help.

The sense of accomplishment I felt when I was finally able to get the couch up the stairs was drastically overshadowed by a partial hernia and the fact that I was unable to walk upright for nearly four days. Well done.

Unfortunately, it seems as though the “insurmountable obstacle” is always looming and eventually, a challenge arises we can’t handle on our own. For me, it happened when, out of the blue, Tyler started having seizure-like episodes. I have never felt as helpless in my entire life as I did during the 4 – 6 weeks when he was ill and no one could figure out why.

Prior to this, I felt like I could fix just about anything. But this time, my son needed me and there was nothing I could do. I was resigned to pleading with doctors, nurses, testing facilities and insurance companies trying to schedule whatever was necessary to figure out what was wrong. With my ego aside, I begged anyone and everyone for help. And they did.

The response we received from friends, family, coworkers, doctors and everyone in between was overwhelming. People brought us meals, prayed for us, babysat Kailey while we ran Tyler to appointments, researched possible explanations, gave me paid time off at work so I could focus on Tyler, everything. I had spent my entire life refusing to believe that I needed help from anyone, but I was wrong. I never would have survived without all of the help that I had previously been too proud to ask for.

Since that time, I have come to realize that it isn’t me against the world. Or at least if I continue to think like that, I know that I won’t get very far. The people in my life, and the relationships that I have with them, have gotten me where I am today. There is a part of me that still struggles with admitting that I need help, but sometimes I do.

Often, there are challenges that I face that are overwhelming, or where I simply don’t have the right skills to get the job done. Having a strong support network has allowed me to reach out and get help when I need a hand. And it hasn’t made me less of a person, I feel like it has actually made me stronger.