Friends and Family

In the long run, nothing in your life is as important as friends and family. I'm not the first to say this, but I may be the most recent to believe it.

While in school, I thought the single most important thing was getting perfect grades. I never quite accomplished it, but it was the main thing I cared about. A high grade-point average was quantifiable greatness - thus the pinnacle of achievement. That opinion started to fade in my senior year for some reason, and friends became important. I finished my high-school days 5th out of a class of 181, but I definitely had more friends than the top four students. To me, that was a win.

College was the same thing - grades and friends were all that mattered. The friends, of course, were on *my* terms, since I didn't make a lot of time to nurture any difficult friendships - I had to study to get good grades after all. I got out OK with a 3.50 GPA and Honors in Accounting, and I still consider my college buddies close friends, even though I haven't seen or heard from many of them in years. I don't know if they feel the same way, however, and sometimes that makes me sad.

After college, when the friends went their separate ways, I was on my own, and self-sufficiency become my only driving force. Again, an admirable goal, but it shouldn't be all-encompassing.

Sperbergers have a very difficult time finding gray area, and comprimising on The Main Goal to achieve an unrelated positive simply doesn't make sense to us. The sense in doing so is a hard lesson to learn, and for what to do so isn't a picnic either. I let your Mom move across the country to live with Gandma and Grandpa without me because I was so stubbornly dedicated to self-sufficiency. I spurned the charity of family for what in my mind at the time was The Greater Good.

There will be times that family may seem like a diversion from what is more important. If the situation is going to a ball game when you need to study for a big test, you may be right empirically - but at 38 years old I can tell you I remember the ballgames I went to with my family, but can't for the life of me remember what grade I got on what test and when. Further, today I don't give a whit about the test scores, but with my sister Denise gone, I sure do treasure those ball games.