Cary’s Corner
What’s Really Important? Part 2
The end of yet another year approaches. It seems as though 2016 has been a tumultuous year for most of us. So many crazy events have taken place; the wild election, police officer shootings, racial unrest, ISIS, Syria, Wikileaks, and all those celebrity deaths. If you let it get to you, it can jam up your brain. Not to mention your poor Facebook feed. But, wait! Are any of these wild events really going to affect you? Maybe, somehow, in a long roundabout way they might. On a daily basis, none of this stuff changes how we go about our day to day life. I still get up every morning, drink my tea (because coffee tastes horrible), hop in my truck and go make beautiful lawns. It doesn’t matter if Trump or Hillary is President or if some of my musical icons have died. I have a great job, my boss is awesome, I have a wife that ROCKS and I have many great friends. Life is what you choose to see.
That being said, life still throws us curve balls. This year one of my own celebrities died. You probably didn’t know her. She was a trailblazer, a leader, the matriarch of her family. She was a strong, opinionated woman that many people admired and patterned themselves after. Her name was Jan Pelkey. She was my wife’s grandmother. Pancreatic cancer robbed her of her life and stole her away from us too early. (See Cary’s Corner – What’s Really Important? Part 1 here) Jan had become kind of a pseudo mom to me since my own mother passed away in 2009. She was the “go to” person for everyone in the family, heck probably everyone that knew her. We all valued her thoughts and insights to the unsolicited problems we would bring her. Most of the time what she told us stung a bit, because let’s face it, the truth hurts. We all need someone like Jan in our life to keep us in check. Even if sometimes all it is is a mirror being held up in front of us!
So as we all start a new year, I ask, “What is really important to you?” Hold on to it. Cherish it. Live a beautiful life and as one of my good friends says… SMILE!
