Family Archives - Page 2 of 2

The Four Burners Theory of Work-Life Balance

May 1, 2019September 25, 2023 Nik

Imagine there’s an old stove in your house. It’s square and has four burners.

You know, the kind where you still have to light the gas with a match and pull your hand away really fast so you don’t get burned. Each of those burners represents an important area of your life:

Family.
Friends.
Health.
Work.

So far, so good. There’s only one problem. According to the original New Yorker article first mentioning the concept:

“In order to be successful you have to cut off one of your burners. And in order to be really successful you have to cut off two.”

Ouch. That hurts. But it makes perfect sense. It stings because it’s true.

Everything We Do Is Not For Today

March 25, 2019August 10, 2023 Nik

When the town’s crime boss wants a precious piece of land, he sends some of his goons to terrorize the school that’s built on it. First, they threaten the principal, then they torch a classroom.

Luckily, the local Kung Fu master saves the day. When he tries to acquire more help in form of the police, however, the chief says his hands are tied. His boss took the case. Corruption. After listening patiently, the master starts talking:

“The world’s not fair. But moral standards should apply to all. Those who rule aren’t superior and those who are ruled aren’t inferior. This world doesn’t belong to the rich. Or even the powerful. It belongs to those with pure hearts.
Have you thought about the children? Everything we do, they’re watching. And everything we don’t do. We need to be good role models.”

And then, master Ip Man says something important. Something we forget. Something that, little by little, seems to fade from the human story:

“Everything we do is not for today — but for tomorrow.”

How To Communicate Better: 7 Simple Lines to Express Your True Thoughts, Beliefs & Feelings

February 11, 2019July 19, 2023 Nik

Good communication is always simple.

What’s hard is having the courage to let it be. To say “I don’t love you,” rather than concoct some elaborate web of intricate, lesser truths — or even outright lies — hoping the other will stumble into it, trip, and fall over all on their own.

In the movie Hitch, titular character and communication expert Alex says:

“60% of all human communication is nonverbal; body language. 30% is your tone. So that means 90% of what you’re saying ain’t coming out of your mouth.”

It sounds intriguing, but I think it grossly underestimates the importance of truth. Even our subjective one. If you’ve ever sheepishly confessed something, shaking like a wet poodle, you know what I mean: A powerful sentence uttered poorly may be weaker than it could be, but it doesn’t turn the truth into a lie. People can tell what we tell. And they’ll react accordingly.

When I fail to communicate clearly, to say what I want to say, it’s almost never because of some complex combination of circumstances. It’s that I’m too afraid to say what I really — like really — think and believe. I have wiggled my way around questions, nodded my head when I should have shaken it, said “yes” when I meant to say “no,” shied away from asking for help, neglected giving compliments, and hated saying “sorry.” All in hopes of the truth magically finding its way to the light, which, of course, it never does.

Because it’s my job to take it there. The job, really. A job for all of us. The only one that matters. I’m not sure how much of what we’re saying comes out of our mouths, but I know that 90% of what does is a weak version of the truth. We may soften it to be polite, censor ourselves to maintain our image, or ask for less than we want because it’s more than we think we deserve, but, at the root of it all, there’ll always be fear.

There’s no way for me to bestow the power to act in spite of this fear upon you or even myself. It’s a war fought in countless battles over one’s lifetime, and you’ll need to summon the courage to be honest time and again. But it helps to keep some truths at hand. A little vial filled with beacons, all but ready to release. You’ll still have to uncork it each time, but at least it’s close by.

I’m only 27, but I’ve had — or would’ve had — to use all of these hundreds of times already. Here’s hoping that, in the future, you and I both will.

1. When you don’t know something, say:

“I don’t know.”

People will respect you for it. It’s a chance for them to say “I don’t know” too. And then you can figure it out together. We think of this line as an admission of defeat, but it’s actually the beginning of taking your power back.

2. When you don’t understand something, say:

“I don’t understand.”

People will explain again. Actually, most of the time, they’ll be happy to. It means they can double-check that they understood what they told you themselves. If you think about how comfortable you are with explaining things multiple times yourself, you’ll see why others will likely be too.

3. When you don’t agree with something, say:

“I don’t agree.”

People will respect your opinion. At least tolerate it. At least most of the time. Don’t launch into an immediate defense. Just plant your flag. Stand your ground. Stay still and watch what happens. Will they stand theirs? Start an attack? Or even join your side? Very few things in life can neatly be separated into right and wrong, which means very few ideas really need justification.

4. When you don’t want to do something, say:

“No, thank you, I don’t want to do this.”

People will find a way without you. They always have in the past and they always will in the future. No one is indispensable forever. Just like time heals all wounds, it makes everyone replaceable eventually. Spouses. Neighbors. Parents. Bosses. Leaders. Friends. You’re never too important to say no.

5. When you have a hard time going it alone, say:

“Excuse me, can you help me with this?”

People will be happy to give you a hand. Like “I don’t know,” asking for help makes people more likely to trust you, not less. After Benjamin Franklin borrowed a book from a rival legislator, they became lifelong friends. In fact, showing vulnerability is probably the only way to truly overthrow animosity.

6. When you like someone, say:

“I like you.”

People will like you back. Maybe not as much. Maybe more. But, when in doubt, most people opt to be friendly. They might not like you enough to kiss you, or to give you a job, or to go on holiday together, but they won’t stand in your way. And even if they thought about it before, now, they won’t cross you.

7. When you know you made a mistake, say:

“I’m sorry. That was my fault.”

People will forgive you. The word ‘default’ is made from ‘de,’ which means ‘out of,’ and ‘fault,’ which means ‘guilt.’ When we ‘default’ to doing something, that’s a safety mechanism meant to cover us in advance. We hate admitting mistakes more than making them and so our default reaction is to shamefully sweep them under the rug. True guilt, however, is too painful to just shake off. So we fess up and fix our mistakes. Therefore, it’s a feeling worth embracing.

In a world full of information, sending signals through the noise is more important than ever. In a world full of devices, it’s enough that the medium twists the message. And in a world where technology dominates everything, communication is a uniquely human differentiator. But only if we keep it real.

May the above sentences help you do just that. Oh, and whenever you find the courage to speak them, leave some room for one more thing: listening.

I don’t think the following communication expert had as much research as Hitch to back up his statistics, but then again, the numbers of nature never lie:

“We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.”
— Epictetus

Fall In Love With Someone, But Don’t Fall Out Of Love With Yourself

February 4, 2019October 1, 2022 Nik

We all have them. The friend that rode into the sunset and never came back.

That, one day, introduced you to their new partner, telling you you’ll see a lot more of them, only to disappear from the face of the earth the next day. It’s not like we mind. At least not initially. Their new blob-like, unanimous, hydra-esque coupleness was insta-annoying anyway.

First, you could only get them in twos, even when you asked just one person to hang. Next, they played the permission game, collecting approval stamps from their partner for everything from Friday night poker to scratching their ass. Finally, once they realized the toxic nature of this dynamic, they both settled into the friendless couple’s perpetual compromise: they stay at home.

And so it’s not just one, but two people that disappear. Until all you’re left to do is ask: what the hell happened? What happened is that two perfectly fine people fell out of life — and into co-dependency.

Can’t Blur What’s Not There

The reason the stereotype of the inseparable couple is so pervasive, so easy to recognize, is that most of us have been this stereotype ourselves. I know I have.

Your friends are too nice to point it out, you’re too in love to notice, and before you know, you’re cruising on autopilot on the relationship freeway, dreading not just your lack of friends, but the very thing you gave them up for, dying to take the next exit.

In Eat, Pray, Love, Liz Gilbert says it’s an issue of boundaries — specifically the fact that we tend to have none. And, often, it leads to the same result.

“I disappear into the person I love. I am the permeable membrane. If I love you, you can have everything. You can have my time, my devotion, my ass, my money, my family, my dog, my dog’s money, my dog’s time — everything. If I love you, I will carry for you all your pain, I will assume for you all your debts (in every definition of the word), I will protect you from your own insecurity, I will project upon you all sorts of good qualities that you have never actually cultivated in yourself and I will buy Christmas presents for your entire family. I will give you the sun and the rain, and if they are not available, I will give you a sun check and a rain check. I will give you all this and more, until I get so exhausted and depleted that the only way I can recover my energy is by becoming infatuated with someone else.”

All relationships need compromise. But if you never take a break from it, if you never put yourself first, you’ll live in a constant, self-induced state of being undermined. And, since suppression only ever ends one way, we eventually take the most extreme break we can think of: we break up. Or, worse, cheat on our partner.

In the meantime, we’ve managed not just to lose touch with a lot of folks we care about, but we’ve also completely forgotten who we are. Who we were. And what path we were on. Because we only stayed in the carpool lane.

There are a lot of problems with this, some too subtle to notice, others too obvious to point out. But there’s one we almost always miss when we’re completely self-, nay, partner-absorbed.

It’s not just you who loses. It’s literally everyone.

Finding a False Positive

Art isn’t a competition. With more good art, everyone benefits. There might be a lot of art that few people find interesting and much art people wish was better, but none of those hurt anyone by merely existing. At worst, they’ll leave us indifferent. So generally, the more art the better. Especially if you define art the way Seth Godin does:

Art isn’t only a painting. Art is anything that’s creative, passionate, and personal. You can be an artist who works with oil paints or marble, sure. But there are artists who work with numbers, business models, and customer conversations. Art is about intent and communication, not substances. An artist is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artist takes it personally. Art is a human act, a generous contribution, something that might not work, and it is intended to change the recipient for the better, often causing a connection to happen.

When you disappear into a relationship, it’s not just a matter of you losing your sense of self, it’s also a matter of us losing your art. That’s because self-discovery can’t happen in a vacuum. Art is a side effect of finding yourself.

When we’re single, we’re obsessed with creating our own path. With learning, sharing, improving, making. When we begin a relationship, we often stop.

We stop discovering ourselves because we’ve discovered someone. But that someone’s not us. It’s another person, and it’s no reason to quit our own little journey. But we forget and get lazy.

I see it all the time. People are writing or volunteering or really enjoying their dancing class and poof, they stop. It’s Resistance in its worst form: love. Now, all this energy that used to go towards discovering themselves and their larger place in the world is spent on affection for just one.

Until it all fades away.

All Your Wonderful Gifts

Transitioning from singlehood into a committed relationship isn’t easy. But it’s easy to gloss this over when your stomach is full of butterflies. To forget a transition is needed at all. But it is.

You don’t need to nail it or do it all at once or even get it right the first time. But don’t lose yourself in someone’s eyes, someone’s heart, someone’s life. Your time here is yours and yours alone.

If you give up too much of it, you won’t get what you want out of anything. Especially a relationship. Don’t make your partner the center of your life. Make your life the center of your life. Include not just your romance, but everything that’s in it.

Work. Purpose. Family. Friends. Loneliness. Confusion. Discovery. Art. Us.

If you stop changing yourself, finding yourself, reinventing yourself…you stop being yourself. You’ll stop being who your partner fell in love with. And you’ll rob us of all your wonderful gifts.

So go ahead.

Fall in love with someone. But don’t fall out of love with yourself.

Why You Should Trust People First

November 30, 2018May 8, 2022 Nik

We used to be best friends. Now, I hadn’t heard from her in six months.

My last “Hey, how are you?” had disappeared in the vast nothingness universe of unanswered WhatsApp messages.

Eventually, I thought she didn’t care anymore. That she had silently deleted me from her life, just like we now nuke our relationships by unfriending people on Facebook. You know, without ever telling them.

I was sad for a bit, but these things happen. Friendships die. Connections fizzle out. The shared culture you’ve developed takes on a life of its own and, once you stop tending to it, spins out of control. It slowly circles from meaning into emptiness, ultimately landing right next to that last WhatsApp message.

Ironically, one of our last talks had been about just that. The fact that losing touch is a sad, but sometimes healthy and necessary, part of life.

Then, two weeks ago, I stumbled over some old Tinie Tempah songs. Instantly, my mind slingshotted into a nostalgic flashback. I remembered the time we spent raving in clubs with the gang. I remembered how we yelled “tsunami!” all the time for no reason. I remembered how we blasted his songs driving around in the summer.

And so, in a moment of vulnerability, I sent a message:

You’ll always be the first person I think of every time I hear Tinie Tempah.

She replied:

That’s the best message I got all week!! So glad to hear from you!

We started chatting and caught up. Before I could even start to wonder why she didn’t message me all this time if she were so excited about talking to me, she said something that perfectly explained it.

That same week, she had met a mutual friend of ours, who, like her, had recently entered the workforce. After the usual “how’s your job,” “fine,” and “what else is new,” my friend confessed she was having doubts. That not all was great at work. That she was having second thoughts about her choice.

Suddenly, the girl she talked to opened up. She too wasn’t happy.

And then my friend said the sentence that stuck with me: “I think she just needed a trust advance.”

As it turns out, so did my friend.

A trust advance is reaching for a stranger’s heavy bag on the bus and saying “let me.” They might flinch, but they’ll usually be thankful for your help.

A trust advance is shouting “hold the door” and hoping the person in it won’t take your out-of-breath-ness as a threat. They’ll rarely shut it in your face.

A trust advance is admitting that you just don’t feel like it when someone asks you to join their spontaneous soirée. That you’re not in a good place.

A trust advance is not deflecting the “why” that follows. Because the only way to find out whether they meant it or not is to give an honest answer.

A trust advance is being the first to say that “some things about my job really suck,” to deliberately turn off the highlight reel and start with the real stuff.

A trust advance is picking up a loose end even if someone else left it hanging.

A trust advance is saying “I’m sorry” before you’re sure you screwed up.

A trust advance is texting “I miss you” without context because feelings don’t need one. They’re true the second you have them.

A trust advance is choosing to show your private self in public, even if it means you’ll be exposed. But maybe you’ll get others to show theirs.

A trust advance is tearing down a wall without knowing what’s on the other side. You might be carried away by the wind, but you also might make a new friend.

By and large, we live in a world where our biggest concerns are our careers, our relationships, and our happiness. Most of us are not running through the wilderness trying to survive. More people in the world die from too much food than too little. More from self-harm than violence.

As a result, cooperation now carries disproportionately greater reward than competition. It’s what allowed us to create this world of abundance in the first place. We haven’t figured out how to allocate it best, but we’re getting there. And while the world isn’t perfect and never will be, cooperating humans win.

Therefore, most of the risks we take are risks of rejection, of being exposed and vulnerable. But they’re not risks of survival. They’re problems of ego, not existence. Being laughed at, being told “no,” being rejected romantically—these are not matters of life and death.

Trust advances multiply. You hand out one, and they’ll hand out five more.

We forget this. Our brains haven’t caught up. They still equate “I’m sorry,” “I miss you,” and “I need help” with “I’m gonna pet this tiger.” But they’re not actually dangerous. We fear these things because we can’t control them. That they’re really unlikely to happen doesn’t register. We’d rather have a definitive threat we can respond to than a vague improbability that’s out of our hands.

When I reached out to my friend I felt weak — but actually, I was the strong one. Sending that message felt like caving, like giving in. In reality, I was the one showing up—the one saying “here I am.” Yes, I exposed myself. Yes, I was vulnerable. But it was an act of courage, not defeat. And in today’s world, at least most of the time, courage is rewarded, not rejected.

The best thing you can do to be of service; to be a good friend, partner, parent, even stranger; to be the person we all want to be around, is to be vulnerable.

There’s this popular line that “everything you want is on the other side of fear.” But fear is nothing I can act on. I think everything you want is on the other side of being vulnerable. That’s something I can do. I can always hand out more trust advances.

No one spends their day obsessing about having to buy toilet paper. We’re all thinking about deep stuff, all the time. Let’s use our time to talk about these things. You might still get hurt, but the risk pales in comparison to the reward.

Being vulnerable tears down walls between humans. Behind those walls are trust, love, honesty, joy, resilience, friendship, and lots of other magical things. What’s more, each wall that crumbles hands more people a hammer. Trust advances multiply. You hand out one, and they’ll hand out five more.

Give trust first, and the world will shower you with trust in return.

The Day I Realized I Couldn’t Beat Time

October 3, 2018August 10, 2023 Nik

Today would’ve been my grandma’s 76th birthday. Sadly, she’s been dead for ten years. Cancer. Ugh. I hate the very word. And while no one should lose their grandma at 17, let alone a parent, people do every day. That’s life.

Luckily, I had a great time with my grandma while she was here. She taught me a lot. I guess all of the people closest to us can, if only we pay attention.

Grandma was born in East Germany even before East Germany became a thing and she embodied that mindset down to the clichés.

She was very frugal, downright cheap at times, but it kept the household and my grandpa’s architecture firm together. Except when it came to making gifts, where too much was never enough and she always gave freely.

First and foremost, however, my grandma was a comic. She was kinda clumsy, so she’d always get herself into some mess and then laugh at it from the bottom of her heart. One time she backed right into a stall at the farmer’s market, sending fruits and veggies all over the place. She’d often drop things and laugh at everything that happened whenever we played board games.

She dipped literally all foods into her coffee, from cake to cookies to ham sandwiches. Nothing was safe. She also had the sweatiest feet anyone’s ever seen and she laughed at that too. I can’t think of anyone who lived more by that famous quote:

“Life is too important to be taken seriously.” ― Oscar Wilde

Laughing at life is the thing my grandma taught me that’s most worth remembering. But there’s another big lesson I wouldn’t have wanted to miss:

None of us can beat time.

How To Be Kind in a World That Never Taught You to Be

June 6, 2018September 17, 2023 Nik

“Well, some things you just can’t get for money.” The older I get, the more I think this is just something we, the not-yet rich and successful, tell ourselves to feel better. There is almost nothing money can’t buy. Because even for what you can’t trade straight for dollars, there’s almost always a proxy.

You can’t buy time, but not having to work 40 hours a week sure helps. You can’t buy health, but I bet your cancer treatment fares better if you can drop $2 million into it. You can’t buy happiness, but there’s a material sweet spot around $75,000/year.

Money makes the world go ‘round. I don’t think that’s bad, it’s just the way it is. Capitalism isn’t perfect, but it’s helped us do good things, and I believe for many, the struggle for money is the right choice. But I also believe in being kind along the way. Work hard, be nice, win. There’s enough to go around for everyone.

And that’s where the road forks, because most people don’t think you can do both at the same time. Not every struggle is a battle, but if your only options are competing and conceding, they might as well be the same. If you tend to view the world as this dark place that you have to fight tooth and nail against to get what you deserve, I feel for you.

We don’t agree, but I have an idea where it came from. And it’s not your fault.

303 Life Lessons We All Learn But Keep Forgetting

April 8, 2018September 17, 2023 Nik

I used to think beyond 7th grade math is only useful for physicists and statisticians. After the rule of three, which allows you to calculate discounts on prices, diminishing returns start to kick in fast.

I’ve remedied that view a bit; geometry and calculus have led to some of histories strongest philosophical insights, but I still like to imagine a world in which our high school table of subjects includes:

Human behavior.
Relationships.
Communication.
Body language.
Personal finance.
Etiquette.
Career discovery.
Work habits.
Creativity.

Until that happens, however, I’m grateful for people like Alexander J.A Cortes, who compile the curriculum of such a school of life for us to learn it now, as adults. On February 25th, he shared a tweet storm previewing his next book titled Untaught Truths of Adulthood, which went viral.

As I read through his nearly 100-tweet-long outpour of life lessons, many examples from my own life popped up in my mind. It’s only natural, for all of us learn many of these things, but we never articulate them. I reached out to him and asked whether he’d be up for a collaboration: The result is his treasure trove in long-form, with my experiences as backup to his insights.

Why Life’s Biggest Limitation Will Make You Happier

December 6, 2017May 18, 2022 Nik

One of Gandhi’s most popular quotes is this:

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”

Once we’ve gotten some much needed distance to whatever our education system forced us to remember, most of us rediscover the joy of voluntary learning at some point. Whether you like to research stocks, tend to your garden, or read books, self-improvement has many benefits.

Beyond satisfying our curiosity by regularly spending time in flow, we can use it to become better people, get what we want and solve problems. It seems so universal a tool that its usefulness feels limitless.

But that’s not the whole story. No matter how much we’d like it to, self-improvement isn’t a magic wand we can wave to cause whatever change we want to see. That’s because no amount of reading, learning, or even discipline can ever change that life still consists entirely of tradeoffs.

It’s like that line: “You can have anything you want, but not everything.” Choosing one thing always means not choosing another, so even if you’re the most dedicated person in the world, you still have to decide what to dedicate yourself to.

No idea highlights this problem better than The Four Burners Theory.

Two Out of Four

Imagine a stove with four burners on it, which represent the big aspects of your life:

Family.
Friends.
Work.
Health.

Now, the theory says that in order to be successful, you can only turn on three burners at a time. If you want to be exceptional, it’s just two.

The second you hear this theory, you know it’s true. Take a moment to think. Which burners have you cut off? For me it’s friends and health. If I had to put percentages on it, I’d say work is at 80%, family at 15%, and friends get a crippling 5%. Almost out of oxygen. Ouch.

This theory explains why we’re frustrated, no matter how much we improve. Sooner or later, we find out self-improvement isn’t the universal remedy it is often claimed to be, and we want answers. Why can’t I have everything? Why?

Of course we never could, we’ve just fooled ourselves into believing we can over time.

The Four Burners Theory was originally just mentioned in passing in a New Yorker article, but James Clear popularized it. He also offered different views on what you can do about this problem.

Be imbalanced. Sacrifice your health, or friends, or work and say “screw it, that’s just what it is.”
Be mediocre. Do turn up all burners, but just enough to get by. As a result, you’ll go long in life, just never far.
Outsource stuff. If you make more money, you can hire a chef, or a trainer, or pay a nanny to take care of your kids. All of these have limitations of their own, of course.
Set constraints. “I’ll work 70 hours a week on becoming a millionaire, but not a single one more.” “Monday night is date night.” And so on.

All of these feel like weak attempts at bypassing the problem. If you’re a dedicated self-improvement nerd like me, you want a solution. Luckily, it seems there is one.

A Life for All Seasons

James says our default in which burners we turn up is to imitate the inspiring figures in our lives. If your boss is a workaholic, you’ll likely turn into one too and if your fellow students mostly hang out with one another, so will you.

That’s nice if those burners happen to match the ones you would’ve chosen, but if not, you have a problem. Life forces you to choose either way, but if you’re not the one picking, you’ll end up with a lot of regrets.

Besides starting to make the choice, Nathan Barry suggests living your life in seasons. Yes, it sucks to compromise, but no one said you have to stick with one compromise for the rest of your life.

In high school, my friends and family burners were turned up all the way. In college, that shifted to friends and work, then work and health and now, I’m on work and family. Next year? Who knows.

It’s a little tweak to that line from earlier, but it makes all the difference: “You can have anything you want, maybe even everything, just not all at once.”

Right now, I’m laying the foundation of the rest of my working life and spending what little time I have with the people I care about the most. In exchange, I can’t see my friends every day and I might not be in perfect shape.

I can be okay with that. And that’s the whole point.

Half of Happiness

When you work hard in your career, on your body, for your relationships, you can achieve a lot. You should. But if all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.

Don’t expect your dedication to becoming better to absolve you of all problems. Self-improvement, like all tools, is imperfect. Embracing the Four Burners Theory can make you happier, because it allows you to not fret over what you’re temporarily missing out on.

That’s the solution, I think. We don’t need to look for a bypass. We can just accept the problem and that’ll do.

Half of happiness is being okay with what you don’t get.

Sometimes, it helps to remember that, in spite of what Gandhi said, tomorrow will be another day.

My Uncle Died in His Sleep, and It Changed Me Forever

May 16, 2017May 7, 2022 Nik

On January 21st, 2016, my uncle Martin did something that changed me forever. At 7 AM, he woke up, walked to the bathroom, went to the toilet and then back to sleep.

He never woke up again. At 52 years old, he died peacefully in his sleep. No pain, no heart problems detected. He had lost 60 lbs the year before and was in better shape than ever.

Seneca said that “life is long, if you know how to use it.” But sometimes life truly is short. Not everyone gets the time they may deserve.

Since I didn’t know how to deal with his death, I did what I always do to process things: I wrote.

One of the saddest things in life is that often, it takes a tragedy to pierce our clouded vision. In his case, I could only now see stark and clear two powerful lessons from how he lived his life:

1. Stop doing shit you don’t like.

Just two days before, he sat in our kitchen and had his cappuccino, like always.

Carnival season was coming up and his in-laws (my Mom’s parents and sister) are huge carnival nerds. My grandpa founded the local club so all year round, they plan and prepare for carnival week.

It just wasn’t Martin’s thing. He hated the dressing up, the music, the corny jokes. So he wouldn’t have any of it and that was okay.

2. Spend time with family and friends, because you never know how much you’re gonna get.

What quitting things you don’t like or just feel obligated to allows you to do is to focus on what really matters.

So while the rest of the family was carnivaling all over the place, Martin was content to stay at home, relax, build a play house for my cousin or a new fireplace to have BBQs at, since he was a carpenter.

Screw tending to C-class relationships or that one, half-related aunt of yours who only complains and tells you to “get a real job” every time you see her anyways.

When you think about the people you call family and friends, who really feels like family? Who really feels like a friend?

Only if you cut out 90% of the people that don’t matter can you show the 10% that do the love they deserve.

Family is not an important thing. It’s everything.
— Michael J. Fox

Mom, Dad, Sis & Me at her graduation. ❤️

Two songs were played at my uncle’s funeral, one he would’ve picked and one my cousin selected.

The first song was Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.” You couldn’t find a better song to highlight the first lesson if you tried.

I’ve lived a life that’s full
I’ve traveled each and every highway
But more, much more than this
I did it my way

The second song played as we all walked to the grave and said our last goodbye. “See You Again” from The Fast & The Furious. As if I needed another reason to cry next to Paul Walker driving off into the sunset.

Just like Paul, my uncle didn’t get the 70, 80, 90 years most of us nowadays take for granted. But just like the Fast & Furious movies, Martin’s life was all about family. Real family.

How can we not talk about family when family’s all that we got?
Everything I went through you were standing there by my side
And now you gon’ be with me for the last ride

Every time I listen to one of those two songs now, it stings a bit inside. But after the sting, a rush of gratitude floods my heart. It’s a constant reminder.

“Life is short Nik. Use it well. Don’t do shit you don’t like. Be with family. You never know how much you’re gonna get.”

That’s what I learned from my uncle and it’s changed me forever.

Category: Family