Dead Poets Society

I firmly believe that most of the life lessons you need to learn are contained in "Dead Poets Society." Carpe Diem, Seize the Day, etc. It's all there. Great movie. Go watch it and tell me it doesn't speak to a part of your soul.

There's a section in the middle when Robin Williams huddles up his class and talks about the things we do to sustain our lives...becoming a doctor, a lawyer, a carpenter etc...noble professions all...but poetry, love, romance...this is what we sustain life FOR...

I often think of that with my wife and children. Even without a full time job right now I feel like we spend so much of our time on the things that sustain our lives; getting our daughter to school, making sure our kids eat right, keeping them from watching too much TV and making the house an utter disaster 24/7, blah blah blah...sometimes we forget what we had kids for...we rush around so much that we forget just how at any instant, one of them can give us three seconds of joy that can make us smile for months. How our three-year old can let out a loud fart and say "I beefed!" with the biggest grin you've even seen. And how our youngest is just now learning how to smile. It's tentative at first, like she doesn't quite know what she's doing, but then the corners of her mouth rise up towards her cheeks like curtains being drawn at the best Broadway play you've ever seen and she bursts into a full-on grin. So, so rewarding after months of fussiness. Sometimes we miss these silly little, wonderful nuggets because we're worried about whether one of them will get swine flu or whether the wash needs to be put in the dryer and another load started...

I'm afraid that I'll wake up tomorrow and be 80 years old and I'll realize I wasted too much time sustaining our lives and not enough time savoring every morsel of the sweetness we've worked so hard to create. I know this. I just haven't changed it yet.