If someone asked me what gives me direction in life, I could point to many things. My faith. My family. My career. My writing. All have shaped the man I am today. Yet, if I’m honest, the compass that guides my life was placed in my hands long before I understood how to read it.
It was given to me by my parents.
They sacrificed more than I understood at the time to provide my siblings and me with a blueprint for life. Both instilled a strong work ethic and the belief that if a job was worth doing, it was worth doing to the best of your ability. Mediocrity simply wasn’t an option in our home.
My father taught himself to read before earning a college degree. He showed me that determination could overcome circumstances. My mother created a home built on steadiness, grace, and quiet strength. She had an incredible ability to remain calm when life became chaotic, and she approached every task with care and purpose. I watched her create beautiful things, never rushing the process. Even then, she was teaching me that the journey mattered as much as the destination.
The greatest gift they gave me, other than life itself, was a steadfast faith in the Almighty. We each followed our own path, but they taught us that we were part of something far greater than the four walls of our home or the borders of our hometown. They weren’t simply pointing me toward a destination—they were teaching me how to find my way.
Like many young people, I believed I needed to discover life on my own. I pushed against some of the lessons I had been taught, convinced I knew better. Looking back, I smile because I watched my own children do much the same thing. There seems to come a point when every generation believes it has discovered something entirely new, only to realize years later that their parents may have known a thing or two after all.
For me, that realization came after my father passed away. It was then I understood I could no longer rely on the compass they carried for me. I had to learn to trust the one they had already placed in my hands. The lessons I had inherited became the principles I chose to live by.
At first, I believed serving in the military was enough. Later, I realized it was only one expression of a much larger responsibility. My direction—or perhaps my personal code—is simple: leave the world a little better than I found it.
Today, that compass influences everything I do. It guides how I treat people, how I approach my work, and how I write. I don’t expect to change the world, but I hope my words encourage someone to think a little deeper, consider another perspective, or leave with a greater understanding than when they arrived. If I can do that, then I’ve done my part.
The funny thing about a person’s code is that it changes over time. It should. Experience, failure, faith, and wisdom all have a hand in refining it. A good compass doesn’t change true north; it simply helps us recognize it more clearly. I think that’s what my parents were really giving me all those years ago.
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Memoirs of Madness 
I can so relate to this Mangus.
I had lovely parents and a happy childhood, us kids never going without the important things. It wasn’t until I was bringing up a family (not my own) that I realised just how much they had gone without to give us that. I tried to instill the values about not taking things for granted, not expecting to get everything just because you wanted it, and to appreciate what you had. I hope some of them took root.
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I think that’s one of those things we understand only after we’ve lived long enough to stand where our parents once stood. As children, we saw what they gave us. It takes adulthood to recognize what they quietly went without to make that possible.
And maybe that’s the difficult part of passing those lessons along—we don’t always get to know what took root. We teach what we believe matters, live it as best we can, and eventually have to trust that something stayed with them. Sometimes the understanding comes years later, the same way it did for us.
Perhaps that’s part of what our parents gave us too: lessons we didn’t fully understand until life finally supplied the context.
Thank you for sharing this, Di.
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My pleasure Mangus.
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What a beautiful family, full of gentle wisdom and a compass that stayed true and which you were able to return to. It’s so true, every generation believes they’ve found the ‘promised land’ of wisdom. That anyone over a certain age doesn’t know what they are talking about…only to learn later, and in my case, humbly say, you know what? You have probably forgotten more than I’ll ever know.” That was a telling statement that transcended mother daughter relationship with total delight and truly humbled me. I was of some value after all 🙂 hehe
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Isn’t that the way of it? Every generation seems convinced we’ve finally figured out what the people before us somehow missed—right up until life hands us enough miles to understand what they were trying to tell us.
And that “you’ve probably forgotten more than I’ll ever know” had to feel pretty damn good. 😂 Not because you needed the validation, but because there’s something special about watching someone arrive, in their own time, at an understanding you could never have handed them.
Maybe that’s part of the compass too. We can point the direction, but sometimes the people we love have to wander a little before they trust where the needle was pointing.
Thank you for sharing that with me.
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Thank you for hearing listening accepting understanding. 😊
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“Steadiness, grace and quiet strength” from your mother and your home really jumped out at me here. Because I just read a different post of yours. Then my analytical mind quickly searched for the pattern I see in your exquisite writing. The word that immediately appeared in my mind was “grace”. It’s the strongest current in all your writing and evidently your upbringing had a lot to do with that. I just think it’s interesting that another post made me think “grace” and then I read you saying it a beat later in a different post. Shows that it’s truth. Even if you hadn’t pointed it out, the current would still be running through it.
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This one made me stop for a minute. I don’t know that I’ve ever consciously thought of grace as a current running through my writing, but hearing you describe it that way—and knowing you saw it in another piece before finding the word here—gives me something to think about.
Perhaps we carry more of where we came from into our work than we realize. My mother never needed to announce her strength. She simply lived it, steadily and quietly, and somehow you knew it was there. If even a little of that has found its way into my writing, I’ll take that as one hell of a compliment.
Thank you for reading closely enough to see the current beneath the words.
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