Minute Votes

Today is a bit of a treat for me as our guest post will be from my husband Bryce. He is truly the love of my life and the man of my dreams (minus a few inches). He and I do not have a perfect life or perfect family but his hard work, his love and his willingness and desire to better himself, help to make our imperfect life a happy life. I've never known a better man. Bryce is the owner of Natural Power and Developing us. He works hard, plays hard and loves deeply. Here is what he says...

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I sit alone in my house without a sound of life around other than the tapping keys of my keyboard. I have a wife and four young kids, but I sit in silence. You see, I left on vacation with the lot of them in our van across the breadth of the United States to head to Virginia and Washington DC. It’s what is called a vacation, and the first vacation for our family since 2006. I then had to fly home to keep the business going and will fly back at a weeks end to travel back home in our van.

My father once told me that a real vacation is for two people and only two people; bring the kids and it becomes a journey with a whole lot of work. This vacation was not planned for years nor did we save up to go, we just found a moment in time where it worked and we left. Had our focus been on a vacation like this, we would have left years earlier. We chose a different course for those years (work, school, etc.), even though we hoped for what we have finally done now.

I am reminded of my economics class and the lesson on ‘Dollar Votes.’ Households or consumers decide what products will be on the shelf and which companies will live or shut down by purchasing their product. Each time we purchase something, it is a dollar vote for more of that product from that company. We can be careful in what we place our dollars toward or we can be nonchalant and throw our votes towards the first object to fit the fancy.

Have we ever thought of our time in the same way? Have we considered where we spent each minute and thought about the ‘minute votes’ we placed in our lives. If we love TV, guaranteed our minute votes would be given to it. If we loved our children, we would spend our minute votes in their realm, in their worlds.

Take a look around you for a second in whatever room you are in. Do you see worthwhile reminders of minute votes well spent? Do we fill our tables and walls with objects that have no “minute vote” value? Have we voted on the things we would consider to be most precious? Do other’s feel our votes towards them or are they towards objects without the capacity of emotional and loyal returns?

Whether political votes, dollar votes, or minute votes, the majority rules and life will mold it’s way to accommodate the majority. Let’s vote for family! Let’s vote for nighttime stories, let’s vote for holding hands everywhere we go with our spouse and children, let’s vote for dinners together at the table, let’s vote for the random vacation at the expense of ‘getting ahead’, let’s vote for those things that mean something and rid our lives of the emptiness of cold votes.

I sit alone, with my family across the nation, longing for this week to end so I can fly back and enjoy our time together again. Hoorah for minute votes well spent! They’re unforgettable.

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I miss you hon, thanks for the post!