“Sometimes the people
around you
won’t understand
your journey.
They don’t need to,
it’s not for them.” 
Joubert Botha

In 1974, I opted to take a gap-year from college to accept a teaching position at a high school in the Bahamas. At the conclusion of that academic year, my Dad admitted to me that, at first, he thought I was making “the biggest mistake of my life” by dropping out of school for a year. A visit to Nassau in June 1975 convinced him otherwise. 

In 1978, I received a letter informing me that I had been accepted for a firefighting position with the San Francisco Fire Department. Instead of accepting that offer, I opted to take a job teaching junior high literature at a school in San José. My Dad went to his grave believing that was the biggest mistake of my life. I never convinced him otherwise.

Throughout my lifetime, there have been countless decisions I’ve made which have been questioned by others, some of them rightly so. In 1986, Kathy’s employer, AT&T, wanted her to accept a transfer to a new AT&T facility in Aurora, Colorado. The offer was quite attractive. When I mentioned the possibility to my parents, they freaked out. Their first grandson, Tom, had just been born. How dare we consider moving away from the San Francisco Bay Area? That resistance, which was surprisingly tenacious, caused us to investigate the opportunity more fully. In doing so, it became clear to us that a move to Colorado was not in our best interest. Still, I was a bit disconcerted at my parents’ reaction to the opportunity.

We are nearing the end of 2025. In retrospect, I am confident that the decisions I made to teach in the Bahamas and to pass up the opportunity to serve in the San Francisco Fire Department were the right decisions for me. I’m also certain that remaining in California was the right choice. AT&T shut down the Aurora facility just a few years later.

In the past few months, I’ve struggled with a decision made by my youngest son, Brendan. He left a job with a reputable organization, a job which provided a decent salary and excellent health and retirement benefits, to launch his own business as a basketball physical conditioning trainer. This time, I was the one who questioned the wisdom of his decision. How could someone pass up the job security of his previous position to enter the world of entrepreneurship where, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 20% to 24% of new businesses fail in their first year?

The wise words of South African accountant Joubert Botha apply to me as much as they do to anyone else. I may not understand what Brendan is doing, or why, but I don’t need to understand. It’s not for me to judge. It’s Brendan’s life. The consequences of his actions, whether they be positive or negative, are his to accept, not mine. Just as I didn’t want my parents telling me which path I should take in my life, I owe Brendan the same respect.

The 1950’s TV comedy Father Knows Best is anachronistic in today’s world. The roles of fathers and husbands today are strikingly different than they were sixty-five years ago. For the past 25 years or so, fathers and husbands have been portrayed in the media as clueless, foolish, and incompetent. This portrayal has had a significant effect on how fathers are perceived by their children today. The respect which was once both an expectation and a societal norm has been replace by an attitude that fathers are obsolete and of no real value to their children in the new millennium. 

This brings me back to Botha’s quote. The people around me today may not understand my journey at this point in my life, but they don’t need to. It’s not for them.