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EXPRESS YOUR APPROVAL OF PEOPLE
By Dalton Roberts
Chattanooga Times Free Press
12-28-01
If
you don't do anything else in 2002, tell people how proud you are of
them.
You may think they don't need to know. But they do. Sometimes it may
make them and not saying it may break them.
I know what I'm talking about. My dad waited until the last weeks of his
life to verbalize his pride in me and when he finally did, I realized
how much I had needed to hear it all my life.
Don't misunderstand me. I always knew my Dad loved me. He worked hard to
take care of me. He often sacrificed for me. When I let him down and got
in trouble in high school, he showed uncommon patience and helped me get
back on track. Even though he was a preacher, he didn't preach to me. He
did practical things like getting me into another school where I could
make a fresh start.
He didn't even warn me that I had better behave in that new school. Best
I remember, he said, "I think you will like the new school better.
They will treat you more like an adult." Here I'd been kicked out
of the other school for acting like anything but an adult. It was a
beautifully sneaky way to say, "I know you're now ready to act more
like an adult."
He was my hero all of his life and still is. I don't say it just because
he's pitched his tent among the angels, but he was definitely the best
man I've ever known.
The problem was that he didn't tell me he was proud of me until his
semi-final heart attack in April before the big one took him out in
June. Burt Reynolds correctly said a son is not a man until his father
tells him he is and what happened with my dad made me see that truth. .
Dad was a jack of all trades and never could understand why I couldn't
do the things he did. Once I did a brake job on an old Plymouth just to
show him I could. By the time I got through, my hands were skinned and
swollen. After I road tested the brake job, I went in the house and
washed the grease and blood off my hands. I stuck them right under his
nose and said, "I just wanted to show you I could do mechanical
work if I wanted to. Now look at these guitar picking hands of mine.
I've proven I can do it but I ain't never gonna do it again." He
just looked up from his crossword puzzle and grinned.
He was recovering from a heart attack that hit him while visiting his
brothers in Florida. He wrote me from Uncle Van's home in Lake Como.
"I'm a lifetime Republican," he said, "but Reagan and
Bush have let this country down with their political tax cuts. America
would have been better served if you had been in the White House all
those years."
It didn't spin me off on an ego trip but I kept reading his words as big
tears came to my eyes. I remember thinking, "Dad may not have
bragged on me most of my life but when he did, he did it up right. He
actually thinks I'm good enough to be president!"
Nothing anyone has ever said to me meant more than those words from my
father. I wish he had expressed his approval of me earlier but maybe
some of my achievements were unconscious efforts to gain his approval.
Looking back now, that's exactly what I think.
Still, I think you should let people know of your pride in them. But if
that's not easy for you, wait until you feel comfortable with it and
make it so strong it will explode like a roman candle right in the
middle of their brain. It might make their whole life feel worthwhile.
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