A Thought for Thanksgiving: Prioritize the Important

Years ago, I worked with a colleague who was, to say the least, career-driven. While his tendency to labor from well before sunrise to well after sunset was admirable, I wondered where his wife and kids fit in his world. I once questioned him, “How do you keep this going?” He said, “Oh, it’s no big deal. It’s what you do to get ahead. (By the way, during our conversation he checked his cell phone and two pagers several times.) He seemed to have everything in his life under control until he returned home one evening to discover a note where his wife stated that she and the kids were done competing with his job for attention. She had moved and taken their kids with her.

In talking with him later about this event, he queried, “How could I not see this coming? I don’t get it.” Rather than say, “How could you have not known the impact of your actions?” I decided to not be judgemental, and I listened. He asked, “Do you think they’ll give me a second chance?” It was difficult telling him that I was not the one to answer that question. They were. As our conversation ended, he said he didn’t know what to do next. As he put it, all those incoming call-back numbers and text messages were now meaningless. He felt he had lost the most important people in his life, and he was unsure how to proceed. Regrettably, he was unable to recoup his loss.

So why offer this account just prior to Thanksgiving? It’s simple; it is easy to get caught in the rat-race and neglect the most important things in life, our relationships. Thanksgiving reminds us to stop and focus on those we love. As I tell the students in my university-level Interpersonal Communication courses, human relationships are never static: our relationships either get better or they get worse (Baxter & Bullin, 1986). The great thing is that you determine the direction of your relationships based on the choices you make. Given this fact, take the time, periodically, to turn the iPod and pager off (for a day or two) and ask the other people you care deeply about, “How are things? What can I do to improve your life, because you are important to me?” Then stop and listen. The truth is you may not get a second chance to prioritize what is most important.