I embarassed my youngest daughter tonight.  I won't say how (when you have a house full of women it really isn't that hard).  In doing so I was hit with a bitter reality.  I no longer have a house full of little girls.  Somehow, while I wasn't looking, they turned into young women.  My days of skinned knees and cooties are behind me.  "Yucky boys" have turned into " he's HOT".  All  I did was blink.  For just an instant my eyes closed and then they opened but in that instant life flew by.  It was disguised as work and paying bills and getting to practice and another Prom dress and...and...and...then it was gone.   My oldest daughter was home from college the other day and as I watched her bound up the stairs my mind replayed the picture I have of me holding her the day she was born.  I blinked.  You can't prevent it, there is no delaying it, life is happening and in it's happening it is passing. 
      So if reality is "you can't take it with you" why do we spend so much time and effort to get it? My brother reminded me one time that " fifty years after you die nobody will ever know you were here." I believe he is almost right.  Fifty years after I'm gone nobody will know my name, but I bet I can leave an influence in the lives I touch today that will last longer than fifty years!   The only thing that will last forever are the souls of the people we touch today.   Start with the people you have to remind to take their laundry downstairs, and brush their teeth, change their clothes because nobody with your last name is wearing that to school.
      Our job as men is to be men. The future may never know your name but it will recognize the pedigree.