INTERNATIONAL MEN'S DAY SERIES 2026 | Part 4 of 6
For three weeks in this series leading up to International Men’s Day, I’ve been looking backward: at what is mine to do, at what my father handed me, and at the letters I finally wrote to my children, Ryan and Katie. This week I want to turn around and look at what can still change.
I’m 65, and I think about time differently than I did at 35. It isn’t so much fear that time is slipping away too fast as gratitude that I have more clarity about how to make my remaining time matter.
My Two Reminders That Time Matters
My sister Tracy’s death was sudden, and it was a very personal reminder that tomorrow is never guaranteed. I understood after she was gone, in a way I hadn’t before, that each day is a gift.
I spent a lot of time thinking about the positive difference she made in my life. That led to a hard question: was I making that kind of positive impact in anyone’s life? It’s a question I’m still asking, and it isn’t far from the one I started this series with: What is mine to do?
Twenty-one months ago, Ryan was diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome. I’ve mentioned those 21 months a few times in this series without saying what they marked. Much of what I’ve been writing about, including my faith becoming more central and the letters to my kids, has grown in the time since his diagnosis.
Regret Can Teach Without Ruling
Like most men my age, I have many regrets. Looking back, there are moments with my children I would handle differently, conversations where I would listen more carefully, and times I would choose connection over correction. Regret can be useful when it reminds us what matters, but it becomes a trap when we replay the past so often that we start to believe it has already decided the future. It hasn’t. What happened can’t be changed, but what happens next still can.
Patterned Is Not Permanent
One of the things men tell themselves as we get older is that we’re too old to change. “That’s just how I am.” I do think we become more deeply patterned with age, but patterned isn't the same as permanent.
Here’s an example, and not a flattering one. For most of my adult life, inconsiderate drivers have been one of my most reliable triggers. Someone cuts me off or rides my bumper, and I get tense. Too often, I let my emotions decide what I did next.
Lately, something different keeps happening. I still tense up, I notice it, and I let the other driver go. Nobody sees it, and nobody gives me credit. But it’s the same gap I’ve been writing about for years, the space between what happens and how I respond, showing up on the road. It may seem small to many of you, but I promise it’s a huge victory for me. It’s also evidence that the patterns I inherited don’t get the last word.
I still miss sometimes, but when I do, the work is the same: notice it, own it, and come back. Most of the change I can point to in my life hasn’t come from getting it right every time. It has come from returning, again and again.
Words Worth Saying Now
Tracy’s death taught me something else. We tend to save our most meaningful words for funerals, when the person who most needed to hear them is gone. I don’t want to do that with the people I love.
My letters to Ryan and Katie were one way of saying those words while I can. I want to keep finding other ways, too: telling Kelly what her presence in my life has meant, or telling a friend I’m grateful for him, on an ordinary day, for no particular reason.
One Step This Week
If something has been weighing on you, such as a conversation you keep postponing, an apology, or a call you’ve meant to make, choose to take action. Decide what the first small step would be, and when you’ll take it.
There’s no deadline here, and I’m not trying to rush anyone. But I’ve learned that “someday” has a way of staying someday until we give it a date.
Two Questions
Next week, in the fifth essay of this series, Love Is the Work, we’ll look at love and whether the people we love actually experience it.
These are the two questions I’ll be sitting with this week, and the ones we’ll explore together in next week’s essay:
Do the people I love experience my love the way I intend it?
Where am I trying to fix or advise when I may simply need to listen?
None of us knows how much time we have. But there is still time, and the story isn’t finished.
