We'll Get Together Then

As I was driving to work today, the late Harry Chapin’s song “Cat’s in the Cradle” was playing on the radio. While I have heard it dozens of times, I thought about how many people are living out this sad song of missed opportunities. In an endless quest for money, power, and prestige, many people seem to be sacrificing the precious commodity of time. For some people, it is always going to be about the bigger title, the BMW, the fancy vacations, or the next deal. For other people, their employers set the price of success and that price is, more often than not, a lack of personal and family time. In these days of cell phones, computers, e-mail, Blackberries, and WiFi, it appears that certain jobs are 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I wonder about the toll such a life takes on an individual’s health and well being as well as on personal relationships. We hear a lot of rhetoric about “family values” but how can they be established when quality family time is in increasingly short supply for many people. The measure of success in life should be people and not things. Years from now I would rather be counting my memories than my money.