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How Life Changes
Steve Costa
On my eighteenth birthday, my grandfather sat me down and asked me a question. “What is the most important thing in your life?” He added that my reply didn’t have to be politically correct, just the answer I thought most applied. I took a second to think about it. I laughed and said “hanging out with my friends.”
I was in college and I wasn’t doing so well and had a job I hated. I think my parents had filled him in prior to our conversation. He smiled and said I’m going to ask you this same question every year on this day. I asked “Why?” He told me it was a lesson on what’s important. At the time I didn’t realize it, but he wanted me to really sit down and re-evaluate my life and to figure out what things I needed to do to make life a little easier.
A couple years went by and my answer hadn’t changed. Then, on my twenty second birthday, he walked over and asked again. I thought about it and this time my answer was different. I had just hired into a job that paid me a decent salary and I had quit school. So my answer was “I would like to save up enough money to buy a house.” He smiled and walked away. That year I saved enough money to buy my first house and life was good. I was paying my bills, had a nice car, and thought that things couldn’t be better. This life style went on for four years. Then it happened, I met a wonderful women and decided to start a family. Nine months later was the birth of my son, Evan.
On my birthday that year, my grandpa sat me down and asked his favorite question. This time I didn’t hesitate, I said “to provide my son with the best life possible.” He then asked if I was planning on attending school. I told him with the new baby I wouldn’t have the time. With work and spending every moment possible with Evan, there was just no way. He smiled, congratulated me and said “Steve, if you really want to give your son everything, finish school.” I laughed and told him I would think about it.
Then it happened. My employer went into bankruptcy. Management told all of us that they needed to take one third of our yearly salary to keep the company from shutting the doors forever. I was devastated. Now to make up for the money that I was making, I would have to work as many hours as I could. I worked every day and was miserable. I never saw my son or my fiancé.
I thought to myself, “There has to be a way to make this better.” I looked for new jobs but everyone that offered the wages I needed, the applicant had to have a college education. I was stuck. Later that year, my grandfather passed away. I was a wreck. At his wake, my family got together and we talked about all the fun times we had with him and the ways he helped us. The moment I was about to add a funny story I stopped. And the question popped into my mind. “What is the most important thing in your life?”
I realized then that the question he was asking me was not just a conversation piece but a way of making me realize how important those early years where and how much easier my life would have been if I had just stayed in school and gotten that degree. How, if I had that education, my life could be so much different. I wouldn’t have needed to stay at that job. I would have been able to spend time with my family and not have to work as much.
“What is the most important thing in your life?” Every year on my birthday since he passed I think of that question, and I realize how life changes
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