Here is a targeted ad I saw today:

Talk about a non traditional way to get a job!  Not that I have any hiring power in Cisco sales, but surely someone who works in Cisco’s sales is on Facebook and will view this ad.  Maybe the guy’s money isn’t super-well spent, but hey – when nothing else has worked for long enough – why not this?

After months of neglect and half-heartedness, the blog is looking more like this:

I can’t guarantee the blog will get a whole lot better, though.  But I can at least update you on some of the happenings in the collapsed universe of WhiteEyebrows.

1. New Job

August first, I started a new job.  I still work for the same company, but I am reporting to a new boss and have had my job responsibilities expanded and changed pretty dramatically.  The decision to take the job was a little difficult, because I really had nestled into a groove with my team.  We worked in a pretty tight-knit, small group of developers in a highly iterative and collaborative way.  It took us quite a while to get that engine really humming, but we finally hit a good stride.  I was even starting to do more real programming, not just designing.  It was a great growth time for me, and I really appreciated my manager and my teammates.

Now to try and explain my job…

In my old job, I was a designer for a specific product we’ve been developing for about a year now.  So what do I mean by designer?  I was the visual designer (the guy who made it look the way it did) and also an interaction designer (the guy who makes it work the way it works).  So I worked with programmers to make the thing look and act like it should (and like customers would like).  We kind of call this “user experience” – the sum total of all the decisions and designs that create what a product looks and feels like to a user.

The new job is in the same vein.  I’m still in “user experience”, but rather than being focused on one project I will now be ‘influencing’ a lot of projects and products.  In my new role, the scope has changed as well.  Before, I was looking at my project – one component of a complex product or system.  In my new role, I’m to be looking at the experience our customers are having with the entire company – end to end.  Everything from pre-sales, sales, installation and configuration all the way through to support and end of life.  My current focus will still be on products themselves (I have some great peers who are focused on other parts of the experience), but the vision has expanded to include much more.

In a way it’s exciting, because there is so much work to do – and I kind of have carte blanche to go work on whatever I want.  I don’t see how I can go wrong – there is so much work to be done.  If I do anything, it will look like I’ve done something.  I also feel a huge buy in from upper management, and have had great support from my old boss and my new boss as I make the transition.  So… so far, so good.

2. Starting School

Yesterday, I also started the Arts and Technology program at the University of Texas at Dallas.  The current plan is to get a Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) degree.  I’ll be focusing a lot on the things I was talking about above – user experience, user research, and trends/topics in technology.  The program itself is a fusion of humanities and technology.  They have a very aggressive program in animation, motion capture, and other cutting edge technologies; which draw a lot of interest on their own.

Now if I could just find a trapper keeper…

The first class yesterday was a little goofy.  We spent 1:45 just introducing all 42 students in the class.  Since I was first (the curse of having an “A” last name), I just stood up and gave the standard 3 sentence introduction – where I did my bachelor’s work, where I work now, and what my interest was is in the program.  After a few other people, though, it became apparent that this was becoming more of a life history/bragging session.  I had to hear about every project some people did since the fourth grade.  It became disturbingly apparent that many people were there because they couldn’t find jobs or were going through job transition.  I was surprised at how many people outwardly admitted they just wanted to teach and become a professor.  Are there really that many professorships available?  Is higher education a rapidly expanding career field and I never knew it?

Some of the students are a little gross.  Thankfully, I sat in the corner of the room with the nice smelling people, but when we went to go to break and dismiss, I passed a few individuals who smelled like they hadn’t taken a shower in weeks.  There was a lot of poorly trimmed beards and moustaches as well, and a lot of kind of self-important comments from people – you know the type – the ones who want to talk on the first day of class to set themselves out there as a vocal know-it-all in the class.

The oddity of the participants notwithstanding, I hope to gain a few things from the next 2 years in this program.  Hopefully, if I can keep a 9-credits-per-semester schedule, I’ll be done in 7 semesters.  If I go through the summers, that’s only 2 and 1/3 years.  Either that, or my brain will explode.

3. Conclusion

I’m tired and busy.  I’m trying to kick my focus and energy back up another level.  I’ve decided that if I’m going to succeed in my new job, school, church calling, infinite side projects, and as a husband – I’m going to have to make excellent use of my time and energy.  I guess, for the next few years at least, I’m done with the relaxation and enjoyment of a slower lifestyle.  So the back half of 2010 is going to be taken to a WHOLE ‘NOTHER LEVEL!

There’s more to tell, but I’m just plain out of time, out of room, and out of will power to write about it.  I could tell you about how it is to have my brother living with us.  I could tell you how A2 is the #1 auditor at her work.  I could tell you how we are really looking forward to our upcoming vacation to Italy… and more!  Maybe if you comment and ask me some pressing questions, I’ll feel compelled to post again.

Or not.

Apparently, a coworker wore a contact with a tear in it, and it majorly irritated his eye.  It was bad enough for him to feel like he needed to go to his eyecare professional to have his eye examined.  His rant was that they charged him for a full office visit.  It ended up costing him $80 to sit in the chair for 15 minutes while the doctor looked into his eye and determined that there was nothing wrong.

He finished his rant with the question: “Is this normal [the charge associated with the office visit] and I’m overreacting?”

My short answer to him:

Yes, it’s normal and yes you’re overreacting.

But there was a long answer as well…

Here is some background, for those who don’t know the situation.

Last year, our company made some radical changes to its health insurance offerings.  Up until now, we have only had traditional In Network/Out of Network coverage offered, with the standard premiums and co-pays.  Last year, though, a “Health Savings Plus” plan was introduced.  It featured a low premium, high deductible ($3000) insurance policy coupled with a tax-free Health Savings Account (HSA).  The company seeded the HSA with $750 as well as offered health incentives for employees to earn up to $1200 more for the account.  This plan saves the company a lot of money by shifting the first $3000 of health care expense to the employee and banking on their laziness to not accomplish the health incentives.  The company really pushed this plan to the employees, though they continued to offer the traditional plans at a higher cost.  Of course, many employees jumped at the lower cost plan.

My coworker was clearly one of these guys who got onto HSP+ without understanding how it was going to work.  He balked at playing an $80 bill for an office visit to an optometrist!  That’s usually where you START for a doctor’s office visit.  That doesn’t include any labs or imaging you might have done, which can eclipse the doctor’s office visits in costs.

Really, this just goes to show that the beloved copay has been obfuscating the cost of health care to the general public.  This guy was outraged that he was “charged that much because that’s the most that UHC will allow them to charge for such a procedure, otherwise they would charge even more (that’s what they told me to try to make me feel better about this charge.)”  He was too used to going in and paying $10 or $20 out of his pocket for an office visit, a charge he felt was reasonable for the 15 minutes he sat in the chair.  What he never bothered to find out was that his insurance company was paying 3x that price to cover the rest of the office visit.  (Also, in what universe do you think you’re going to get an office visit for just $15… especially when you’re seeing an array of nurses and doctors using expensive equipment to diagnose and treat you… but this guy’s ignorance notwithstanding…)

My advice to him, if you can’t bear to see the cost of your health care, go back to the old PPO/EPO plans.

With copays, we never saw the expenses the insurance companies were shelling out.  We never saw a true cost of health care consumption.  This is (my theory) one of the major contributors to the run-up in health care costs in America.  No one is looking at their bills, and even after they do, no one is getting upset at these industries for charging so much because their insurance is covering it.  Insurance has significantly enabled the run up of health care costs in America.  There is no downward pressure being put on prices because of the wonky payer system we have now.

Even though I think this guy is being a pansy, I kind of like how upset he’s gotten.  Should you have to go see an eye specialist every time you just want them to make sure nothing’s stuck in your eye?  Perhaps not.  Perhaps the market could come up with a lower cost way for him to get the care he needs.

To do so, though, a lot more people are going to have to get angry at the current fee-for-service policy.

For the record, here was my long answer to the whole alias (who, in proper North Texas fashion, had already blamed the whole thing on Obama).

To answer your original question, yes – it is customary for an optometrist or ophthalmologist to charge you for a full office visit as you’ve described your last visit. You had a problem with your eye. They brought you back, sat you down in the chair and examined it and determined there was no immediate health issue (that the eye was recovering from a previous trauma). It is “reasonable and customary” (an important phrase in medical billing) for this Dr to charge you, even if he didn’t prescribe any medication or pull any contact fragment from your eye.

If you didn’t like the Doctor’s bedside manner, or the way in which he told you there wasn’t a problem, I would suggest you get a new doctor. Sure, he might have given you some ideas of drops that might have relieved the discomfort in the meantime. But you can’t fault him for charging for an office visit, though, just because there didn’t end up being anything wrong with your eye.

Really (and I hear you here) it just stings more because we’re paying 100% up to the high deductible. (If you’re on the Health Savings Plus plan, that is.)

As for the politics, this is the way it’s been since Medicare was instituted (the 1960’s), which created the fee-for-service health care system we enjoy now. This is not a direct result of the recently passed health care legislation, though you could argue (and I would) that Cisco’s recent cutbacks in subsidy to our health plans are a result of the failure of industry AND government (the recent legislation) to reign in the out-of-control rise in health care costs we’re experiencing. Everyone talks about bending the cost curve down, but no one knows how to actually do it. Insurers, medical supply companies, drug companies, and the like are riding as high on the hog as they possibly can for as long as we’ll tolerate at the expense of the taxpayer and insurance policy holder.

I actually think the HSP+ plan is pretty good. Now that some of the cost they’ve been hiding for years behind “copays” is being passed on to people like us, perhaps the market will change and offer different solutions.

Food for thought.

One such lesson that I learned from my mission president was based on the New Testament account of the Last Supper.  During the event, the Lord informs his disciples that before the morning, one of them would betray him. Most of us focus on Jesus’ miraculous clairvoyance and wait in suspense for Judas to be named, and in doing so, gloss over an interesting and important verse that comes in between.  The disciples respond to their savior’s accusation:

And they were exceeding sorrowful, and began every one of them to say unto him, Lord, is it I?
- Matthew 26:22

The disciple’s response to their master’s allegation that one of them would betray him was not as ours might typically be.  If you were sitting around that table, would you have responded with “Is it I?” or would you have said, “Oooohh… who is it?” Would you have thumbed through the file folder in your brain labeled “People I know that might betray Jesus” or the one labeled “Stuff I’ve done that has betrayed Jesus”?

It’s natural for us to find fault with each other, but not good.  Somehow we are programmed at a young age to feel that the more we can put others down, the higher we will rise.  We are so worried with how well everyone else is doing that we sometimes lose sight of how we, ourselves, are doing.  Sometimes we even seek to remember someone we know is struggling so that we can feel better about our own comparatively small issues.

Finger pointing often becomes a team sport.  Can you imagine the Disciples breaking into a full-on Pick-a-Little-Talk-a-Little number, accusing each other of being the possible betrayer?  Or the whisper campaign theorizing who the traitor would be?

But, no.  Not the Disciples.  Their humble response to this disturbing allegation was: Is it I?

The lesson: we need to check ourselves first.  People living in glass houses shouldn’t cast stones even when they have more rocks in their hands than their neighbors.  When we are being corrected or taught something, especially when we think it was intended for someone else, we should examine ourselves. When we hear about divorce, do we dwell on the couple who is struggling, or do we consider the health of our own marriage?  When we hear about giving back, do we compare ourselves to the one who gives little or do we consider whether we are being generous with what we’ve been blessed with?

As you can tell by this post, my outlandish wants have gotten a lot more tame and (shiver) domestic.

I’m going to start with my friend, the Onkyo TX-508.

This is one of Onkyo’s newest home theater audio and video receivers.

What is a receiver?  Put simply, it’s the part of the home theater that is responsible for processing the sound, but in recent years it’s also started processing the video signals as well.  Receivers have gotten very complex, especially with all of the surround sound capabilities and video technologies that are out in the marketplace.  My current Onkyo reciever is great; I got it refurbished for a really good price, it puts out nice sound, and has a lot of power.  Sadly, it doesn’t process video.  The end result and annoyance of this is that you have to use 3 different remotes to change devices on our home theater.  That’s a lot of buttons.  My wife still refuses to learn how to do it.

So… I’d like to consolidate some of the functions of those remotes, and getting this receiver will make switching between TV, Movies, PS3 (not mine, my brother’s) and other devices very easy, effectively eliminating one of the remotes to our system.

It’s not the flashiest new model.  It’s not top of the line (Tio), but it does everything I need it to do.

MSRP: $399.  Amazon.com: $269.73.  (I only need to scrounge $200 more into the TSF (technology slush fund) before I can justify this one.)

Item #2 is pretty embarrassing, but here goes…

I want a Dyson Vacuum.  These puppies suck!

See, at the WhiteEyebrows household, my wife typically makes me choose between cleaning the shower or cleaning the toilets.  I choose toilets.  She also makes me choose between vacuuming and mopping.  I choose vacuuming.

In my vacuuming escapades, my dissatisfaction has been growing with my Bissel Whirlwind vacuum.  On an empty canister with a relatively clean filter, it loses suction after about 1 full room.  It’s very annoying.  Cleaning the filter and emptying the bin usually makes me sneeze and spill dust right back onto the floor or into the air.  I need a better solution.

I give you, the Dyson DC25.

It’s a high capacity vacuum.  It never loses suction, has no filters that require cleaning, and has a canister that is easily emptied.  Everyone I know who has a Dyson loves their Dyson, but for $500 they’d better love their Dyson!!  I could spend less for a fully functioning computer or airfare to an exotic island (two things I value a lot more than completely clean carpet).

But my dissatisfaction with Mr Bissell has brought me to the brink of purchasing this radically overpriced sucker!  The Bissell has lasted me 5 years.  I’m sure I could find a new home for my old, semi-working Bissell.  What is a man with expensive tastes to do?

MSRP: $599  BestBuy.com (Refurbished): $357.05.

Truth be told, Mrs Brows has already approved the purchase of the Dyson – I just can’t yet bring myself to pull the trigger.

Convince me, please.

Also, don’t miss the dead guy at 0:19 (by the plant)

The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

Uhh… don’t they call those iPod Touch?

And what’s going on with the “grip of death” problem and possible recall from Apple with the iPhone 4?  Has Apple lost its way?

Would Apple ever do a recall of any of its products?  No.  They are way too arrogant for that.  Heck, they should just give out the “bumper” with every phone and call it good.

One thing’s for sure, someone’s in big trouble in the industrial design department.

Why is Apple compromising product functionality in the name of design?  Oh wait.  It’s Apple.  Dr Ive and the Design Gods rule.

Come to think of it, Jony Ive resembles another evil doctor we are all familiar with…

Not a good month for Apple (except for that whole selling somewhere around 10 million units and making billions of $).

She’s always telling me absurdities about insurance billing practices and the archaic systems that surround them, and it just cracks me up sometimes.  Only a few years ago, Medicare went to electronic billing.  Before that, everything was submitted as a paper claim and a paper check.

One little known fact about our health care system is related to how Medicare pays doctors.  Each year, the Medicare payment tables are approved by Congress.  These payment tables determine the amount that Medicare will pay for each service a doctor might perform on a patient.  All of the insurers look to Medicare as a standard on how much a medical service might be worth.  Some insurers will pay more for a service than Medicare, so the Doctor’s job (the Medical biller’s job) is to charge as much as they can reasonably expect to collect from the BEST insurer for any particular service.  This is what contributes the most to the explosion of the bottom line of medical bills.

But I digress.  One little publicized fact is that Congress has delayed approving and publishing the Medicare payment tables for 2010 when they came due in March.  They called a moratorium during the health care debate, and approved doctors to continue to use the 2009 tables through June.  In June, when congress still hadn’t acted, they stopped making payments.

What was Congress waiting for?

Turns out, for the last several years, Congress had been kicking a can down the road.  Medicare was supposed to be decreasing the payout for each service by a certain percentage every year, to help drive down health care costs.  However, Congress just kept approving the Medicare payment tables each year without decreasing the payment amounts.  Now there is a HUGE discrepancy (15 – 20%) of where payment rates are vs where they should be.

Congress failed to act in time, so the department of health and human services released new tables which now pay dramatically less for each service.  Meanwhile, doctors have not lowered their fees due to the “good” insurances still paying higher amounts.

Bottom line?  Doctors will colllect much less this year from Medicare than they did last year, while still billing record amounts.

Why is this not covered in the media?  I dont’ know.

Meanwhile, I stumbled across this hilarious Podcast on NPR Planet Money which describes my mom’s job to a T.

Enjoy!

I’m all for expression of religion, and I really hope this person makes it to the heaven they are anticipating…

… But isn’t it a bit pretentious to so outwardly assume that they’ll be one of the ones going?

Just sayin….

It’s a NEW, incredibly redesigned Mac Mini!

They’ve created a unibody enclosure, and reconfigured the ports on the back!

They are clearly shifting the focus of this small device to the people (like me) who use it as a home theater PC (HTPC).  They’ve incorporated a HDMI port (with audio!) on the back!

I currently use an old Power Mac which is hooked to my projector and entertainment system.  This Mac runs EyeTV, which recieves the over the air, high definition TV – all the TV I need.  No cable.  No monthly bill!  Woo hoo!

I remember when I first built the system, I did the calculation that I could only justify spending the hundreds of dollars for the parts for the system if I kept it for 3 years.  Only after that time would I start to realize the gain from not spending the monthly fee.

Now that I’m in the black from that original investment, I wonder how I’m going to convince myself (and my auditor) that I can make this additional $700 investment???

One of these word vs meaning debacles happened a few months ago and it centered around the word: clean.

Audrey was in a cleaning mood one day.  I, as the non-shlump-of-a-husband that I am, was there to pitch in and help.  Sure, I would have rather laid around on that Saturday morning, but since I value a clean house and a happy wife, I’m all over it when someone wants to put it into 3rd gear.

However, as we started “cleaning” it immediately became apparent that my wife and I have two different perspectives on the word “clean.”   Turns out, I think that 90% of cleanliness is organization while Audrey feels like 90% of cleanliness is sterilization.

To me, having the dirty clothes in the hamper is clean.  To Audrey, having the clothes washed is clean.  To her it’s no problem to have piles or baskets of clean clothes waiting to be folded lying on the bed or couches, but I would consider that an unclean room.

To Audrey, washing the dishes and putting them on the counter to dry is clean.  To me, either having all the dirty dishes in the sink or all the clean dishes put away in the cupboards constitutes cleanliness.

We both recognize the value of the other person’s argument.  I know you have to actually scrub toilets and bath tubs every once in a while, and Audrey knows that an unkempt room feels cluttered and out of whack.

The good news is, it’s not a fight.  We know now what the other person means when they say “clean” and better understand what we’re signing up for.  Our divergent definitions actually complement each other.  When I clean, I organize.  When she cleans, she sterilizes.  Together we tend to maintain a pretty clean house.

Really, what made it so great was that A2 went the extra mile all day long to just make the day special for me.  She bought me donuts for breakfast, arranged for a haircut for me, and even finished the mowing and edging for me so I could go enjoy the 90 minute massage she gave me!

Then, we went to dinner at the Silver Fox Steakhouse (…soooo good…) and then… the big event of the evening… We went and saw Ira Glass!  (more on Ira later)

Sunday night, the celebration continued with friends and family who came over for cake and ice cream.  It was great to share the evening with such great friends, talking, catching up, and stress testing the child-enjoyability of our house.  (We have a LOOOOOONG way to go, but somehow the 10 kiddos made it through.)

(Sadie made it through my teething on the chair’s foot rest…)

We bought one of those seven pound chocolate cakes from Costco, and made homemade ice cream!  Yum!  Thanks A2 and Trav!

Anyways… back to my birthday highlight: Ira Glass!

Yes, Ira Glass!

No, for reals… Ira Glass!

Oh, you don’t know who Ira Glass is?

I could show you a picture:

But you still don’t know him, do you?

Ira Glass hosts the weekly radio program, This American Life, one of the greatest shows on air right now.  At this live event he played interviews, told stories, and joked with us about some of the circumstances he’d found himself in and some of the strange people he’d met.  He walked us through how they find the stories, create the shows, and how they make them so appealing to such a wide range of people.

And a wide range of people it was!  Everyone from beatnik hippies to Dallas socialites to country farmers showed up for the one-night-only event.  A2 and I both noticed (out loud) the eclectic-ness of the gathering as we walked back to our car.

One of the more memorable stories he told was of a guy who came to them with a story about his father who, upon his wife’s death, went to deliver her ashes to the Veteran’s cemetery for a free veteran’s burial.  Upon finding out there was a $16 “handling fee” for the burial application, the father became so enraged that he exited the front door and defiantly began to scatter his wife’s ashes all over the parking lot of the cemetery.  He came home and told his children of the debacle, which then became something of a family legend.

As the story’s producers were preparing this story to go air in a program they had titled “Fine Print,” they began to do their final fact checking.  When they called the Veteran’s cemetery to check about the $16 fee, they were surprised to find out there was no fee.  There never had been a fee.  They went on to ask about the story of a man scattering his wife’s ashes in the parking lot, and the office staff laughed saying that if something that crazy had ever happened it would be a legend around the office.  (Apparently, nothing much happens around cemeteries.)

The producer then had the gall to ask, “well, can you go to the crypt” (where now the husband had been dead and buried for 2 years) “and check to see if she’s in there.”  They obliged.  She took another step: “Well, can you check to see if her ashes are in there?”

They replied, “No.  We can’t do that.  But we can pick up both urns and tell you whether or not they feel more or less the same weight.”

They did. — And they did.

After the producers broke the news to the son who had originally reported the story he resolved that, as best the family could tell, one day their dad just went on a drive and came back with this hilarious story about a $16 fee, a mad man, and an impromptu parking lot burial service.

The program had to quickly substitute the story for another they had been working on, but ended up with this great anecdote about storytelling itself which worked wonderfully for a live event like this.

I think we underestimate how pervasive storytelling is in our lives, and how regularly we do it ourselves.  Getting together with good friends or family always results in some good, suspenseful stories with an every-day quality to them.  Blogging has taken off as a result of the desire we have to tell each other stories.  The funny thing is, they are all stories we’ve heard before: children’s blunders, parent’s worries, difficulty at work or between friends, worries and doubts, cute bows, shopping trips, and travel – the stories only become more interesting because we know and care about the people involved in them.

And that’s just it – the story Ira shared about the ashes and a parking lot wasn’t about the ashes or a parking lot – nor was it about the originally anticipated them of “fine print”.  It was about story telling itself.

As it turns out, our life’s story really happens only the first time when we live it it, but can happen again and again, an infinite number of times, in the telling of it.

Ira’s show has a strange ability to get us to care about stories and strangers which we don’t know at all.  They are mostly just run-of-the-mill, every-day-life stories, but told in a way that engages the audience and keeps us on the edge of our seats wondering what we will most enjoy from listening to them talk.

All-in-all, it was definitely worth hanging around a bunch of hippies to see this guy.  Thanks, Ira and crew, for a great show.

I’m not talking about Nero, Constatine, or Caesar (though he created a great salad).  Empire building on a worldwide scale kind of went out of favor in the 19th century… I’m talking about local empire building.  I’m taking about men who build an empire in the immediate vicinity of their own being.

A man’s empire consists of the things he loves and values most.  Most of his satisfaction and joy is derived from watching that empire grow.

Let me give you a few examples:

A home is a great start to a man’s empire.  Most men spend countless hours and sweat great buckets of sweat expanding, renovating, improving and fixing their little empire up.  They spend a lot of money and time doing projects they are probably ill equipped to perform in the name of improving the real estate in their empire.

I have a brother who is an awesome mechanic.  He can fix anything and has a real gift for understanding the mechanics and inner workings of things.  He has a great inquisitive mind and won’t rest until he understands how everything works.  An important part of his empire is expressed by the number of tools, spare parts, side projects, and general stuff he keeps around the garage.

It’s all part of his empire.

This blog is a part of my empire.  I really enjoy watching it grow, reviewing the things I’ve written in the past, reading people’s comments, and even tinkering with the look and feel of it.  As it has grown over the last five years and has been a source of pleasure and happiness for me.

Money is a huge part of most men’s empire.  Nothing gives some more satisfaction than to earn money, see their savings multiply, and to watch their net worth grow over time.  I can say I personally enjoy logging into our financial accounts periodically, not so much to monitor transactions as to watch the trend line of our net worth go up (and sometimes down).

But there is still a larger, more important part of a man’s empire.  The things I’ve talked about up until now are passing, fleeting parts of a man’s empire. Money and things can easily be here today and gone tomorrow.  Certainly, nothing is more fleeting that money and things.  People (relationships) are the part of a man’s empire that are the most permanent, most powerful, and which provide the most long-term happiness.

Yes, the ultimate expression of most people’s empire is their marriage and children.  For most of us, the biggest accomplishment we ever made was to club-a-woman-over-the-head-and-drag-her-back-to-our-cave.  That accomplishment feels pretty good for a while until children come along.  Then, the pride of having reproduced your man-cub might even supersede the sense of accomplishment you had when you duped your wife into marrying you.

But seriously, the only people who will really remember us when we’re gone are our children and grandchildren.  Religion and tradition makes the ‘human resources’ of a man’s empire kind of a big deal.  It is a huge part of Mormon theology, which is centered around the eternal nature of the family relationships.

We recently had a family reunion for my mom’s family.  As my last living grandparent stood to talk to the group of 60 family members who had come, you could sense a tangible feeling of awe and pride (the good kind) that he had in seeing almost all of his family members in one room together.

Family does seem to be the ultimate part of a man’s empire.

The topic of family and children has been on my mind recently.  We’re over a year into our marriage and the topic has come up more than a few times among friends and family.  While I’m quite impressed at the respect and deference that most people give to the subject of family planning (I think everyone knows someone for whom it is a very sensitive subject), there are still a few whose attitude toward kids has caused me to question their world view.  (So here goes my big leap to assumptions…)  Some people have led me to think that they genuinely believe that human reproduction is the single most important thing they are going to for the rest of their lifetime; that the end-all-be-all of their existence is simply to perpetuate the human race and then die.

Chances are, you are sitting there nodding your head.  You are thinking about your children and grandchildren and thinking, “That’s exactly how I view my children.  WhiteEyebrows just doesn’t know yet because he doesn’t have any kids.”  And you’re right, I don’t know how it feels to be a parent.  But stick around, I think I have a valuable point left to make…

I recognize that most people derive a lot of joy from bearing and raising children.  It is the most challenging thing a person can do, and it can be the most rewarding as well.  I also acknowledge the reality that most of life’s disappointments and challenges come because of those children as well; that while every child is loved by their parents, not every child is always liked by their parents.

As a parent, you get a couple of years to teach and train your child.  In today’s world of emancipated prepubescents, that window constantly grows smaller and smaller, and parents are pressured to teach children more in less time before society and adolescence convinces them start ignoring their parents.  The ‘parenting’ window of your life is actually quite small in comparison to the rest of your adult life.  Those who become parents are invested in parenting for only a fraction of their life – maybe 20-30 years tops.  Sure, you will always be a child’s parent, but as the child ages and starts making their own decisions, you will have less control over their overall direction, success, and potential happiness in life.

Which leads me to my point/question: what are you going to do with the rest of your life?  If reproduction is the pinnacle of what you can accomplish, don’t you think you peaked a little early?

Of course not.  There is more to do!

That’s part of figuring out what we’re going to do as we (as a human race) live longer, healthier lives.  Certainly you will continue to be a parent for your entire life, though the nature of your role as a parent will change as your children grow, but there is so much else to be done that can have a real lasting impact and legacy on a local, regional, national or international scale.

We need great public servants in this country.  We need help teaching and training in schools.  We need innovation and invention that will keep our society at the forefront of the world.  We need beautiful art and expression around us.  We need substantive books to read and stories to be told.  Now more than ever, we need the great, successful parents to not only work within the walls of their homes, but everywhere from the halls of our Congress to the halls of our schools.  We need people who will leave a material legacy for our society to ride the next hundred years on, just as the great 19th and 20th century innovators of government and science have done for us.

We also need people who can leave a legacy in the life of someone else, who may not necessarily be part of their family.  As a man extends his empire into the lives of others, establishing relationships with people he may not have otherwise, his sphere of influence is expanded and his life becomes that much more meaningful (both personally and from a societal perspective).  While these passing relationships may not have the same permanence as a family relationship, they have the potential of  having an ever greater impact.

As a man stands back to examine his manly empire, certainly his family can (and should be) the largest part of his general feeling of success, but there will also be a sense of what he accomplished in his community, in his congregation, in his country, in the world, and in the lives of others.  No matter the geographical reach, a man (or woman) can be equally and genuinely proud of the total empire of relationships he created and nurtured over his life.