"For Hope & Sara…In My Own Words"

By Steve Badger, their dad

December 2000

A recent e-mail from a stranger provoked me to write this. He e-mailed me because he had read something I'd written and posted on my web site. He told me that he was writing down things that he hopes his grandchildren can learn from him. Since he wants me to read and comment on his reflections, I thought it best to first put together my own list.

I've just reached middle age. (I'm 55 and plan to live to be 110.) And though I'm not a grandfather, it's not my fault-I'm old enough to have a dozen grandkids.

I doubt anything I've written below is original with me, but I can recall where I learned only a very few of these. A few may be profound, others may be profane, but they are profuse. I compiled over a hundred of these in a single 14-hour period-and I slept for seven of those fourteen hours! Almost all of the others were written the next day.

Dale improved some of these and would not let me include a couple of others. I refused to change one or two that she wanted me to edit and left them as they were. Would you like to see the ones she censored by deletion?

Some of these reflections are interrelated, while others may seem contradictory. If you don't understand one of them, tell me, maybe I can explain my thinking. On the other hand, you could just forget it. I don't claim to always live by every one of these, but they do accurately reflect my personal set of values.

These are not in the order in which I originally compiled them. I have rearranged some of these so that all reflections on a single topic are together. Also, some of them are based on the statement that precedes it.

So here are things I hope my daughters (and future grandchildren) will learn from me…and they're all composed in my own words.