Keeping the Focus

I just read a post over at Problogger where Darren says that it is his son's first birthday. Well, today is my son's first birthday too! I have a wonderful wife and two kids and I just want to take the time to say that there is almost nothing more important in life than family. Someone once told me something that really struck a chord with me. It went something like this:

"A man who worked a major university took a walk through campus everyday on his way to get something for lunch. He noticed that every building had a person's name inscribed in huge letters above the doorway. He thought to himself that these must be great people and wondered what they were like. In fact, he became so curious that he started to ask people who these people were. Nobody knew. Not a single person that he asked knew who these people were. They must have been really great and important people to have their names on university buildings, but their legacy had apparently died with them or soon afterwards."

We all die. It's a fact, and our work, no matter how great, will be soon forgotten once we are gone. But those who love us and live on after we have passed on, will remember us not by the work we did, but by how we loved them. If you left your job today, how soon would you be replaced? Probably pretty soon, huh? If you left your family, do you think do you think your spouse and kids could replace you? Of course they couldn't. You are irreplaceable to your family, so remember to take the time out and be with them as much as possible. It seems like a simple thing, but in the world we live in today, it can be very hard.

I know these are some serious thoughts for a normally tech oriented blog, but we're all human, and we all have a life outside work. It's nice to see that most of the bloggers I read share some of their personal life with their readers. That is a good thing; it shows they know where the focus of their life is. Where is your focus?