The Targetizer

Over the weekend, a freinds father sadly passed away. I didn’t real know him, but I knew his kids pretty well and we all grew up on the same street. His father was a young, fit and healthy 65 years old and used to fix cookers - lugging them from peoples homes and back again. 

What I’d really like to share with you is probably one of the most profound but simple things I’ve heard in a long time that really made me sit up and think - about my life, my business and the people I come across and try to help.

As me and my wife went to pay our respects, my friend was about to leave with 2 elderly gentleman who I knew from the local community - the true pillars of society that are always on hand to help people in times of deep sorrow like this. They were leaving to go and arrange the details of the funeral and burial. I said I would like to go with them.

When we reached the funeral parlour we were ushered into a quite room where we sat and waited whilst the manager tried to organise all the paper work from the coroner’s office. As you can expect, it was quite an emotional time for my friend - indeed for all of us.

As we waited, one of the elderly gentlemen began telling us a story about his youth. At the end of his story, he turned to me and said “Son, whatever you do in your life just make sure you don’t waste your time.”

That message resonanted in my mind for many hours and it still makes me stop and think now. I know it was an emotional time and with my friends father passing away that message was even more poignant.

Even so it really made me assess what I wanted from life and how limited a time we all have to make our mark in life. In fact we don’t know how much time we do have, so that message is even more stronger.

We’ve all been told in our lives to stop wasting time and I for one have never ever considered it to have any meaning other than someone telling me to stop doing something I was enjoying - like playing on the computer or watching TV.

Only after hearing that old gentleman’s story and the wisdom in those words has it finally made any sense to me.

On reflection, I know I’ve wasted many years on doing things that have had no positive impact on my surroundings and the people around me.

I sincerely hope I can make up for lost time  - I know I’ve got a lot of catching up to do. 

This entry was posted on Monday, March 10th, 2008 at 6:33 am and is filed under Players, Coaches. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.