How do significant life events or the passage of time influence your perspective on life?

How do significant life events or the passage of time influence your perspective on life?

Good lord—how does anyone answer that without pouring a stiff drink and staring at the wall for a while?

If I’m being honest—and that’s the only way worth doing this—it comes down to three gravitational forces that bent my entire trajectory whether I was ready or not: my father, my wife, and my kids. Everything else is just debris caught in their orbit.

My father was the original instigator. A firm believer in motion over hesitation. His philosophy was brutally simple: just do it. Say yes. Try the thing. Ask the question. Take the shot. What’s the worst that can happen—someone says no? Big deal. Don’t let rejection set up camp in your head. Don’t let fear start charging rent. You keep moving forward, because standing still is the real danger.

That way of thinking dropped me into some deeply questionable situations over the years—strange roads, odd conversations, moments where I probably should’ve thought twice. But here’s the thing: every one of them turned into a story. And stories are proof you lived instead of hiding.

That same mindset is the reason I asked my wife out. One question. One chance. One yes that rewired my entire existence.

Without that leap, I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t have my artistic side back. I wouldn’t have found my footing when everything was spinning. I wouldn’t have fought for—and won—custody of my kids. And Rowan? He wouldn’t exist at all. One decision unlocked an entire future I couldn’t have planned if I tried.

After my father died, the ground shifted. Permanently. The man who taught me how to move through the world was suddenly gone, and the silence he left behind was deafening. Somewhere in that chaos, my wife became my north star. She didn’t replace him—no one could—but she anchored me. Helped me process the grief. Pulled me out of places I might not have survived alone. She became the constant when everything else felt negotiable.

Then there are my kids—the ultimate recalibration of perspective. Everything I do now runs through them first. My work is for them. My endurance is for them. My stubborn refusal to quit is for them. The teenagers drive me absolutely insane, but that’s part of the contract. I want them to have doors that open without a fight. I want them to move through the world without having to break themselves just to get inside.

I work so they don’t have to claw for what I had to scrape together. I push so they can choose.

And in the end—after all the years, the losses, the love, the wreckage—it circles back to my father’s voice echoing somewhere in the background: Try. Risk it. Say yes. Enjoy the ride. You don’t know how long you’ve got.

Time doesn’t soften that lesson.

It sharpens it.

And that’s my perspective now—live boldly, love fiercely, take the chance.

Because hesitation has never built a life worth remembering.