What I wish I had known
Near the end of his life, my father told me not to visit him anymore.
I was in my early 60s, consumed by running a foundation, advising clients and serving on boards. I thought spending time with my 96-year-old father shouldn’t take priority over those things.
When I sat with him while he read, I kept my laptop open and checked emails and texts. If my phone rang, I would step into another room to answer it.
Eventually, my father snapped.
“Don’t bother coming again,” he said. “You’re too busy, and it isn’t enjoyable for me.”
I tried not to show how hurt I was. It felt unfair: I was not interrupting any of our conversations. I still cooked for him and joined him for walks. But I apologized and promised to put my laptop away. He stood firm.
Three weeks later, he was gone. In the more than 14 years since then, I have often reflected on that moment.
For one thing, he was right. Spending what little time we had left together on work trivia was self-important. And being there was not the same as truly being there for him.
I did not fully connect those dots until recently, when I listened to an episode of a “Hidden Brain” podcast featuring Dave Evans, author of Designing a Meaningful Life. He explained that many people feel dissatisfied with their lives even after achieving the goals they set for themselves.
His point was that the search for meaning can become endless and discouraging, distracting us from enjoying the life we have and the difference we already make.
I recognized myself immediately.
Evans also offered a solution: make a shift in your thinking, from “got to” to “get to.”
When we view life as a list of things we have “got to” do, everything feels like an obligation –tasks to finish as quickly as possible. But what happens if we see them instead as things we “get to” do?
That idea brought back a memory from long ago, when I brought our baby home from the hospital a month early. He needed to be fed every few hours, and I was the only one who could do it.
Night after night, exhausted from sleeplessness and from the long month I had spent in the hospital before his birth, I slipped out of bed and carried him downstairs to a small sitting room, where I settled into a comfortable chair to nurse him.
Even in that exhaustion, when I looked at his tiny face, eyes shut tight as he focused on feeding, I felt a contentment unlike anything I had known. Work worries disappeared. What could have felt like something I had to do, became something I got to do – a rare privilege.
In the years since I retired at 69, I have unconsciously made that shift in thinking many times.
My volunteer work at the zoo – gritty, backbreaking cleaning or picking up dead birds on city streets and rescuing injured ones – may seem unpleasant to friends. But while I’ve got to scrape the bat night house floor or wash dishes, I also get to hand-feed a treat to a hungry fruit bat or watch a Black-Crowned Night Heron build a nest, lay eggs and send its fledglings into the world.
I tell people, “They could not pay me enough to do what I feel lucky to do for free.”
The older I get, the more I see that some of the ideas I once dismissed – like “mindfulness” and “living in the moment”– held wisdom that would have served me better than constant striving.
This is what I wish I had understood before my father told me not to visit anymore: the things we’ve “got to do” are often the very things we get to do – and the ones that make life meaningful.
