I have been seriously looking into this art of being lazy. It seems it is not something that comes naturally to every individual. For some, there must be a series of practice leading up to successfully doing nothing. This is the case for me.

I had always been accused of never sitting still. My mother complained vehemently about it all throughout my youth. My elementary and high school teachers further added their critique to my resume of restlessness. Eventually, my wife and my children would come to mock me anytime we went somewhere where relaxation was supposed to be the call of duty. Cottage stays in our cabin up north frequently turned into work sessions where I would find projects, one after another, to keep myself busy. Admittedly, many of those projects weren’t found, they were created. And if the projects didn’t fill my relaxation time, then work did. I would swear I was not going to respond to that annoying ding on my cell phone as another email or text beckoned me, but seriously, how could I not?

But then I retired and that should have solved the problem. Doing nothing was suddenly almost demanded. What obligations did I still have? But I am a restless person and as such I needed an outlet for all that time. Find somewhere to volunteer, that would fill the need. And so I did and all my old work habits followed me. Now it wasn’t paying clients and employers reaching out to me on vacation, it was non-paying clients and fellow volunteers seeking my time. When would I ever start practicing the art of being lazy? I was too busy to find the time to practice not spending the time getting in the way of my time to be lazy.

I am coming off of two weeks at the cottage with all of my family members in tow. There are nine of us ranging in age from one month to, well, my age. I promised I would be lazy. Week one……FAIL, fixed the deck rail, repaired the pontoon seats, repaired the window screen, and replaced the gas connections on the grill. But in my defense, I had shut down my volunteer job, almost. It was a brief meeting and ended with the warning that I was signing off and was not going to be returning any requests for the next two weeks. So, some success. I might be getting closer.

Here is the good news. After that last project and that last meeting, I did pretty well. No more projects, not even looking for one any more, and some pretty mind numbing do nothing days. Admittedly, three days of rain tended to help, but I hiked with my grandkids, held my newest one as she slept in my arms, and did a little serious fishing. All in all, I felt pretty darn lazy. I might be getting the hang of it.

The art of being lazy is just that, an art. Like all good art, it takes effort to create a masterpiece. I am a far cry from claiming my Davinci of Lazy, but I am making strides, and I might add, enjoying the effort to be effortless. I’d write more but I am being lazy and the campfire demands some serious staring into the flames.

I returned last week from my fortieth Indy 500 weekend. My daughters and I went down on Friday evening and joined a group of twenty plus people who get together once a year to attend the Greatest Spectacle in Motor Racing. We make a weekend out of the adventure: golf on Saturday, nice dinner out in an accommodating restaurant that has to be able to handle our rather raucous group, and of course there’s the race. We load our bus early Sunday morning, head south to the track and after sufficient tailgating, we enter the track. We are greeted by four-hundred thousand of our race friends and settle in to watch thirty-three cars, aka rockets, average 225 mph as they circle the two and a half mile oval for two-hundred laps.

When I explain how I spent my Memorial Day weekend, I get one of two responses. The first, “that sounds incredible.” The second response, much more forcible, “I just don’t get it, that sounds really boring.” Now I am not about to tell people they are not entitled to their opinions, but a little consideration might be in order. We are all unique and our tastes in entertainment are no different.

If you told me you spent the weekend pitching a tent and then sleeping on the ground as critters scampered about, inches away, separated from you and your person by a thin piece of nylon, I might ask you why. Hotels have such nice amenities and a free buffet breakfast. Or say you spent your one free evening at the theater watching ballet or Shakespeare. Sorry, not my cup of tea. Sci Fi flick on the big screen, now that I’d spend my evening on.

I am a speed junkie with a hunger for adventure. When it comes to being with people, the bigger the crowd the better, and again I can hear the judgement as you are reading this. I have a huge case of FOMO (fear of missing out) and love being part of a party. Put that all together and how could I resist cars going so fast you can barely see them as they pass all the while watching it with a record setting crowd. Throw in the party atmosphere, reunion with friends, and just the shear size and scope of the adventure and, well, the Indy 500 is my cup of tea.

Let’s agree to disagree. You go camping and I won’t question your love of sleeping on the ground and cooking your breakfast over a smokey campfire as long as you let me love a seemingly boring weekend at the races. After all, one man’s cup of whatever just may be another man’s cup of tea.

After two years of patiently waiting, we are finally back in the air headed to a tropical island. The last time on a plane to anywhere, we were returning from another island trip on March 13th, 2020. A day before the world shut down! Several cancelled trips later, we finally feel safe enough, relative term, to get back on with our traveling.  Greece and Panama were put on hold, but there’s still time.

I will celebrate another birthday while on the island and though it makes me sad to leave another year behind me,  I am optimistic that there are enough left to get through my bucket list.

Life is a journey and I am trying to make sure I don’t treat it like a race. I have promised myself so many times that I will slow down.  Maybe, if nothing else came from the pandemic, it was that life is too short for one to race to the finish line. The two years of spacing ourselves out may have served to remind us to do the same with our lives.

I titled this the way I did because finally I get it. I am more prepared than ever to savor my life and to finally be on my way once more. 

Watching the Olympics this past week, I couldn’t help but be drawn in by the athletes’ personal stories. One in particular stuck with me. The athlete was an alpine skier and as the story went, his parents had him on his first set of skis before he could walk. They of course had been professional skiers and wanted their son to have every chance to become one as well.

It is said we live vicariously through our children. In some cases this means having them grow up just like us, same goals, same passions. In some cases, we want them to succeed where we failed. In either case, the parent is projecting their expectations unto the child. Don’t misread this, I will be the first to tell you that without expectations, their is no roadmap to success. Expectations create our goals. The question is whose expectations should they be?

When we realize we are about to have a child, we hope for three very basic things. We hope that our child will be born with ten toes and ten fingers, meaning healthy. Good health will give them that head start. The second hope is that they will grow up to be independent, free thinking individuals, able to make the important life decisions they will inevitably face. Our third hope is that they will be successful, and here the seed of expectations is planted. Every parent describes success in their terms. One parent will hope that their child will some day become President of the United States, another the next Warren Buffet, yet another a professional athlete, maybe even an Olympian. Whether it is the arts, athletics, business, or politics, we can’t help but start to set expectations. The problem here is that these expectations are ours when they need to be theirs.

I am as guilty as the next person. The minute my daughter picked up a golf club,

I expected to one day see her in the US Open. The second my youngest daughter grabbed a microphone, I just knew she would be the next Shania Twain. I couldn’t even wait to buy her that first guitar. It is next to impossible to not set these expectations for our children. After all, it is born out of our love for them. But if we truly love them, is it living up to our expectations that matters.

Let’s go back to my Olympians. I don’t believe that when that toddler was set upon his first set of skis that he expected to be one day screaming down a mountain in China seeking a gold medal. I suspect that somewhere along the way, it might have become a dream of his. Somewhere that dream developed into a dedication to improving his skills as a skier. Through hard work and determination, his dream became an expectation. But that expectation was the product of a dream and it was his expectation. He earned the right to that expectation.

As parents we need to understand the difference between expectation and a dream. Our expectations for our children, if improperly placed may just be the worst thing we can do for them. We need to let them discover their passions independently and then we need to let them dream. Let their dreams become their expectations. Only then will we get to watch them have the success we had hoped for.

We have a role in our child’s future, and that role is to be their supporter, their nurturer, their biggest fan. If we let them dream their dreams, if we let them soar, who knows, they just may become an Olympian.