Too Busy or Not Too Busy That is the Question

     Yes sports fans I'm back.  Sorry it has been so long.  It's been a busy month. But here we are on a Sunday morning and I thought I'd share a few thoughts about being busy. 
     They say(whomever "they" are) that to get something done you need ask a busy person.  Seems contradictory.  If you are busy you don't have time to do anything else.  But seems not to be true.  There are lots of people who use the excuse of being busy to say no to a request for this and that but I have found that when I ask individuals to help out with the programs that my students are involved in it is always the same people who do everything and the same people who do nothing that claim they are too busy.  I don't get it.  In a discussion at an event a parent of one of my students and I were discussing how too many parents do not attend their children's activities.  Whether it is a soccer, baseball or football game.  Concert, play or recital the excuse is always "I'm too busy".  We both agreed that those parents should not have children.  Why have them if you were not going to participate in their life?  You and they can do without the newest electronic gadget or the Mercedes.  We have our children for such a short time and then they leave and build families of their own.  No one remembers when they had the latest in material things.  What they do remember is when Mom or Dad was there to see them score the goal or perform the result of hours of hard work. 
    I'm not saying that it isn't difficult to be there every time your child participates in an activity.  I remember driving from Santa Clara, California to Tustin, California in a mini van way too fast to make my sons first baseball game at his high school and he and I remember that more than when I bought him his first glove.  I remember being the only Dad in a sea of mothers at a performance of my daughters' in a local theater.  We both remember that with the mere mention of the musical act that was there and laugh about the day, not what she was wearing or even what she did.  I think it was a monologue from somewhere.
     I guess my point is that if you make the decision to have children ( in this day and age it is a choice) then participate fully.  Be at their concerts, don't just drop them off, as long as they are involved. Don't just go when they are very young but all the way.  My Father-in-Law was at my concerts and my sons games all the way until his death at 81.  He was a fixture at my sons baseball games as we also are.  Now my son and daughter are all grown up.  Unfortunately, my daughter and our grandchildren are too far away to participate in their activities but my son and our grandchildren with him are close by and we try to be at it all.  We are never too "busy" to be supportive of the children we chose to have.  They are with us for so short a time, my iPhone is of little importance in the grand scheme of things.