Jeff King’s Blog

This month marked a milestone for our family. We said goodbye to our oldest daughter as she moved to Oregon to attend college. It was a tearful farewell at the airport. I don’t cry easily, but I couldn’t stop the tears. I didn’t want to.

My wife and I have gone through the college send-off with our two older sons. But this was different for me. For one, my boys stayed pretty close to home for college. It didn’t seem like they were that far away. Plus, they are boys. Daughters are different, at least for this dad.

Memories of my daughter as an infant, toddler, and grade-schooler kept dancing through my head. Wasn’t it just the other day she was learning to walk and talk? Now she’s moving out on her own, far away from home. Ahh, the transitions of family life.

As we were walking through the airport, I spent a few moments alone with her for some father-daughter time. I asked her how she was feeling. “Kind of sad,” she said. “I hate airport goodbyes.”

“I’m feeling sad, too,” I replied. “But I’m also happy. I’m happy you have this opportunity. This is a great time in your life, and I’m excited for you. I’m taking the sad with the happy.”

That mixture of happy and sad seems be the nature of life. Life often has both sides of an experience happening simultaneously. We’re happy and sad. Circumstances seem good and bad. We’re appreciative and disappointed, hopeful and afraid.

Somehow it all gets wrapped up together.

It’s my experience that the more we can live with the ambiguity of such mixture, the more effective, resilient and resourceful we are. When we get locked into an either-or approach to life, we become rigid and life loses its options. Relationships grow more difficult. We feel very constrained and don’t have much room to breathe.

It’s a bittersweet time for me right now. I miss my girl, but I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Timing is an interesting thing. The other day I came across an compelling concept in a book I’m reading. The author suggested that we often believe the myth that there is such a thing as wasted time.

            As I read her statement, I paused momentarily with the thought, “Hmm. What if there isn’t such a thing as wasted time? Could that be possible?”

            I quickly moved on and didn’t give it much more consideration. Until a few days later.

            Over the weekend my wife and I took our daughters to Kansas City to celebrate our 14-year-old’s birthday. We were humming right along, making great time until we hit the south side of the metro area on I-35.

            Road construction reduced our trip to a stand still. We inched along as the road crew narrowed four lanes of traffic down to one. It took us 45 minutes to go five miles.

            While waiting in the long line of traffic, I began to grow impatient. Time we could be spending on the Plaza in the gorgeous weather was evaporating while stuck behind an obnoxious semi that belched out its diesel exhaust.

            As the anxiety mounted and irritation built, I was tempted to grumble and complain. Surely if I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel and gave loud sighs of exasperation, the traffic would open up.

            Then I remembered what I’d read, “There’s no such thing as wasted time.” I had a choice. This could be wasted time. Or it could be valuable time.

I often lament that we don’t have enough time together as a family. But here we were—all together with no distractions. My wife started a word game where we each took turns creating a metaphor that expressed our appreciation for our birthday girl.

After a while, the lanes cleared and we made it to the Plaza. More importantly, I was able to be present with my family and seize the opportunity the traffic delay created.

It turned out to be a wonderful waste of time.