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City Hall175 East 200 NorthSt. George, UT 84770(435) 627-4000
| November 20, 2009 |
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Power of Example I was listening to a song the other day about a boy and his dad by Harry Chapin. One verse was about buying the boy a ball and glove and the boy asked dad to go teach him to throw. An excuse was made and the son said “that’s OK” and promises were made for later: “we’ll be together then, son. We’ll have a good time then.” As the boy walks away, he says “I’m gonna be like you dad, You know I’m gonna be like you.” A couple of verses follow with more requests from the son and putoffs by Dad, then there is a role reversal. The son comes home from college and dad asks him to sit for awhile but son shakes his head and asks for the car keys. “When you coming home, son?” “I don’t know when, but we’ll get together then, dad. You know we’ll have a good time then.” The song ends with Dad regretfully realizing that “He’d grown up just like me. My boy was just like me”. It struck me as a sad song, one filled with regret of the time spent doing the immediate, seemingly important things, forgotten things not nearly as important later as they were at the time the choices were made. And I thought of how this applies to my life right now. My son’s wife tells me that she sees my expressions and mannerisms in her husband. It scared me. What have I done that influenced my children “to be just like me”? What message would I tell others about the lessons I have learned? I would send this message out loud and clear: your kids will grow up just like you, no matter what you say. You can tell your kids to drive decently, to never get a ticket, to obey the law, to respect their elders and those in authority. But I can guarantee that they will drive just like you do. You are the role model that they see day in and day out. It doesn’t matter what you say. If you speed, you teach them that it’s not whether they will obey, but “how much” they will disobey. If you fail to buckle up, they will learn that it’s really ok to leave the belts off. If you slowly roll through a stop, they will learn that the red light doesn’t really mean to stop “all the way”, it just means “slow down.” If you don’t return the extra change that the clerk gave you, if you find something on the 75% off rack that shouldn’t have been there and demand that the store honor it, the lessons learned is that honesty is a general guideline to be followed at our convenience rather than a rule that governs our life. This is an erosion of one of the most basic of life’s values: that of basic respect. Respect for a law simply because it is the law. The rules and the laws are there as if written in stone, and they need to be obeyed, simply because “it is the law.” If we don’t agree with “the law” then we need to get it changed. But we need to obey it, and obey it very strictly until it is changed. Otherwise the lesson that we teach with our example is that of indifference and complacency and not a lesson that teaches respect. We will regret it later if we don’t do it now. Craig Harding Public Information Officer St. George Police Department |
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