STEWARD FOR LIFE? BE ONE

A steward for life is one who leaves things better than they found them.

Is it too much to ask?

Maybe it’s just something old people think of?

Quick reminder: you get older faster than you think you will, so . . .

Relationships: If you haven’t been on a date where the only topic is their ex, you will, eventually.

Get ready to listen because it’s going to be non-stop, and if you try and change the subject?

“YOU’RE JUST LIKE THEM.”

You need to listen to get a picture of just who this ‘THEM’ is.

What if your date was married to a man with addiction issues, like gambling and cocaine, who met a saucy woman from South America, got a divorce, and ran off with her and had a kid, only to gamble all of her money away, meet another woman, gamble all her money away, then come back looking for forgiveness.

And she gave it.

Who wouldn’t want to listen to that story, if not meet this king of the road, this man of no means.

How would the rest of that date turn out?

Would there be a second?

If you subscribe to the idea of steward for life, make a second date, then a third, but no more.

You want her to know she’s worthy of attention, just not yours.

She’ll find her guy, the right guy, and you won’t be one of her downer stories about men who done her wrong.

Let someone else take that rap.

 

What Usually Happens Instead

Two people meet up, two people occupied by their own interests and goals, and they pretend each other is interesting, so interesting that no back story comes out.

One date, two dates, three dates, ding; get married, then the story.

“I had no idea you were like this,” is a common refrain in irreconcilable differences.

“They were trying to work through it, but when the mood swings and the big highs and big lows informed a toxicity that was pervasive, no one can help you — you have to help yourself,” the source said.

“The world was rooting for them, but who he said he was and who he turned out to be were two different people.”

 

I get the ‘two different people’ part. More like three different people:

Who you are, who they think you are, and who you are together.

It’s the together part that trips people up.

Once you break-up you’ve got that history.

I knew a woman who broke up with her boyfriend, but they didn’t break up enough.

If they were broken up, he didn’t get the memo, so he came looking for the new guy, and found him.

They had a fist fight where the new guy let the boyfriend get in two shots so he didn’t drop him and see the woman get all cuddled up and help the boyfriend.

He also didn’t want to drop him and see her kick him the face while he was down.

The two men circled with one getting a back-fist to the side of the head and a spinning kung-fu kick off center to the upper thigh before things calmed down:

“You got two free shots, boy, now you can leave. If you don’t I’m going to knock you out, drag you down the stairs and leave you with a stomp in the gutter. There’s the door. I’d take it now. NOW.”

 

He took the door, I married the woman, and here we are a few years later. WooHoo.

Does that make me a steward for life? I’ve been married longer than I wasn’t married, if that’s any measure.

 

Up Your Stewardship  

Back in the 1960’s two all-time greats in football and baseball had to quit due to injuries and poor sports medicine.

Gale Sayers would have had a longer career if he’d torn up his knee today.

He had to hang it up at twenty-nine.

Sandy Koufax retired at age thirty and in his prime.

To guys who lit up the sports world with their greatness, their once in a generation greatness, got old fast.

From dominating on the grid iron and on the diamond, they faded into history, into mythology.

How good were they? Soooo gooooood.

Both were the youngest players at the time voted into the respective halls of fame at age twenty-nine and thirty.

Does twenty-nine and thirty seem young? They do if you’re seventy.

If you’re in your twenties and thirties start paying attention to stewards for life.

They are all around you, but usually under the radar.

They are the people asking you how things are going; if you need help.

Stewards for life make small improvements over time, not a big splash once to milk the rest of their lives.

Call it a lifestyle, an aspirational goal, an awareness.

Make a plan, consider how many ways there are to screw it up, and don’t do them.

Does that sound t0o easy?

You can do it, and by doing it show others how it’s done.

Do it often enough and you’ll be wearing the crown of Steward For Life.

And you’ll look good.