Do You Confuse Success with Substance?

He really made a difference. He got up at 4:30 am each morning and put in a solid days work. Nothing fancy. The milk dairy plant had to get opened and managed and the trucks had to get on their delivery route. Yes. Milk trucks. Delivering milk, eggs, cream and seasonal products…in December…eggnog. His “uniform” was a light brown color. A blue collar worker in a brown shirt. He worried about his family. Never took a vacation. Paid the bills, fixed the broken things and, at night, read Einstein, studied history and usually listened to Perry Como singing ” It’s Impossible” on the mono record player. Not a simple man at all.
A significant man. A man of substance.
Some would say he was not successful, if you measure success narrowly by counting coins and other fungible stuff. But if you measured success by who he touched, what he taught through life lessons, quiet conversations about time, space, places to see, ideas to study, he was one of the most successful men I ever met.
He drove an old car but realized it was a car and not some symbol of something. He loved his family. Read every Sherlock Holmes book there was and talked with me about deductive reasoning and using that concept in trying to solve the mysteries we face each day in our life.
Logic, common sense, street smarts. A very wise man indeed.
He died way too soon.
Don’t confuse success with substance. Don’t confuse wealth with wisdom. In the ageless experiment, find the meaningful. I miss him each day but have his books and notes on a shelf. Comments he would make in the margins of a page. When he would have a tough day he would say: “When the going gets tough, the tough get going”. Then smile and get on with the job to be done. A meaningful man indeed.
Today, live a day of meaning and purpose.