Quotes of the Week from Me:

“How many lessons did you learn today?”

“Cherish your time.”

“Love the mundane.”

“When you work, everything else might too.”

Another poem:

“The clouds caught me

So, I stayed awhile,

Knowing they never could.”

Quotes of the Week from Others:

“This is our big mistake: to think we look forward toward death. Most of death is already gone. Whatever time has passed is owned by death.” – Seneca

“The same boiling water that softens the potato, hardens the egg. It’s about what you’re made of, not the circumstances.” – Unknown

“The problem is people are being hated when they are real, and are being loved when they are fake.” – Bob Marley

“If the why is powerful, the how is easy.”  – Jim Rohn

“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.” – Aesop

Quick Optimism:

In sport, every team trains. They lift, condition, and prepare for competition. Every single team. The importance lies not in the training itself, but in the height of the standards set while doing so.

Question of the Week:

What do you cherish?

I caught myself spacing out this week. This time with a smile. Initially, I thought to myself, “I must be really tired,” but in reality, I was cherishing the moment I found myself in. What’s even more amazing is it happened several times.

It happened on an airplane and then in my kitchen at home. I kept running into little things that brightened the day just a little bit more. I hope you can find these things too.

As a parent it is hard to find things the emulate the experiences we have with our kids. The emotions hit harder. They matter more.

One thing my wife and I have been trying to figure out is how to spend quality time together as a family. It has never made sense to me honestly. All of the time we get feels like quality time.

As Jerry Seinfeld put it,

I am a believer in the ordinary and the mundane. These guys that talk about “quality time” – I always find that a little sad when they say, “We have quality time.” I don’t want quality time. I want the garbage time. That’s what I like. You just see them in their room reading a comic book and you get to kind of watch that for a minute, or [having] a bowl of Cheerios at 11 o’clock at night when they’re not even supposed to be up. The garbage, that’s what I love.

I couldn’t agree more. This past week I had some garbage time at home and on the road for work. I got to watch the kids playing together. They weren’t actually doing anything, just showing and sharing toys with each other. I watched from out of sight. More smiles.

Then while on my way home from North Carolina I had some garbage time of my own. I was due home by around 11pm. Then my flight got cancelled. Suddenly I had a lot of time on my hands. It led to a taxi ride, a dinner solo, and a poor night’s sleep in a hotel bed squishier than a sponge.

If you can find the best moments in those situations, you are doing all right.

Love the mundane, especially while on garbage time.