Rick’s Rants and Raves

As a young teenager, one of my greatest fears for my future self was that I wouldn’t be “important” or special, or something like that. I vaguely remember trying to explain this fear to my mother one afternoon as we cruised along I-270. I didn’t want to be average, in an average house, with an average job, living an average life. I wanted to be “important”. How a non-average house would therefore make me important, I’m not sure. I was a teen. Forgive me.

Probably 25 years have passed, and I have, by all accounts, a slightly above average life: my home’s value is just above average for our neighborhood, my income is a bit above average, I have 2.3 kids (if you round down).

I’m a husband, which makes me very important in one person’s life.

I’m a father, which makes me very important in two more people’s lives.

I’m a son, son-in-law, grandson, nephew, cousin, etc, which makes me varying degrees of important to about 4 dozen more people.

I work at a job where I’m one of a few subject matter experts for software that diretly impacts the lives of 1000 of our employees. When that software doesn’t work, I’m incredibly important.

I’m a soccer coach for my son’s YMCA team, and for 2 hours each week, I’m important to 11 kids, aged 7-9.

But what really got me thinking back on this teenage angst memory, was a comment from a boy in my Cub Scout pack. This year, I volunteered to be Cubmaster for my son’s pack, and soon after taking the reins, the pack grew from 16 scouts to 45. My son and I were recently at a Scout Night with the Crew with about 40 other parents and scouts from the pack. A mother of another scout told me that when her son, a first grader, saw me sitting in the stands two rows above them, he leaned into her and said “Theres our leader. He’s important!”.

At first I was amused by his impression of me. “Bah, me, important? Seriously? I’m just the guy who was suckered into leading a cub scout pack.” But it kept coming back to me, “He’s important”. I told the anecdote to my father-in-law, and with his typical wisdom he commented “Yes, and those who are important generally don’t realize it.” Did I not realize that I was important?

Well, I did volunteer to lead the pack. I did help to organize the first several events for the year. I did the recruiting that mostly led to the growth in the pack. I stand in front of the pack every week with announcements of plans and activities, taking responsibility for answering every question, and resolving every problem. No, I don’t do EVERYTHING, but I make sure it gets done. My efforts directly led that boy into the pack and for him to have the opportunity to be at the soccer game with his parents. At that moment, to that boy and a number of others, I was important.

I was also reminded of a painful memory from my early twenties. When I was in college or grad school, I learned that my favorite Scoutmaster from my youth had committed suicide. I felt terrible for his son, whom I had admired greatly in a “rebel without a cause” sort of way. But mostly I remember my shock upon hearing the news. How could he possibly commit suicide–didn’t he know how important he was to me? He was such an awesome Scoutmaster, why would he kill himself? Of course I realized that life was way more complicated than that, but those were my first reactions–he was important to me, and now he was gone.

Bricks, ton of them, hit my forehead. Well done, father-in-law, well done.

Through the mouth of a first grader, and the wisdom of one of my elders, I’ve now realized that I have in fact fulfilled my teenage wish–I am important. It wasn’t quite the way I had envisioned at the time. Back then, “important” was someone of celebrity status, perhaps with followers, or a possee, or …um… something. Fortunately, my understanding has deepend a bit. I’ve become important in the ways that are meaningful to me: family and youth leadership development. I think I’ve become important in ways that really are important–people count of me in ways that I can fulfill. I make a difference in many people’s lives. Don’t get me wrong–this really isn’t an ego trip. Maybe its a confidence trip–I understand now that I am capable of making a difference for the better in small ways, and I’ve pretty consistently done that over the years. The label of “importance” didn’t just happen to me. I’ve worked toward making myself important. I’m not sure my teen self would be proud, but I understand now that isn’t important.