True to Her Own Self

 You can invest your time. 

You can invest your finances. 

Or you can invest your time.  

Doesn't matter which.

We just have to keep investing in each other.

Let your heart lead you all the way.

-Andrew Whitworth, 

Los Angeles Rams

True confession:  I am a fan of Andrew Whitworth.  This time last week, he tacked on the coda of "Super Bowl Champion" to his title of "All-Pro left tackle and oldest player in the NFL."   At forty, he is an old man, at least in the relative terms of his chosen profession, and his beard game (significantly more salt than pepper) is spectacularly strong.  Given our size disparity (he is 6' 7" and 330 pounds), however, I am far more likely to be mistaken for something he has defecated than for his twin. 

On the field before kickoff, he was formally announced as the winner of the NFL's Walter Payton Man of the Year Award, given annually to one player for his "outstanding community service off the field, as well as his excellence on it".   Before you complete that eye roll into which you just launched upon reading that sentence, I recommend that you acquaint yourself with Whitworth's "The Big Whit Foundation".  I also recommend that you watch his Man of the Year speech, which you can access by clicking the link at the top of the piece.  

Fairly early in last Sunday's Super Bowl, NBC's cameras focused on Melissa Whitworth and the couple's kids in stands watching Dad do his thing.  The youngest of the four Whitworth kids, seven-year-old Katherine, attained internet immortality when NBC showed her on TV appearing to be reading a book rather than watching the game.  Spoiler alert:  the "book" she was reading was, in fact, the Super Bowl Program.  

When he appeared on NBC's Today Show this week, Andrew Whitworth was of course asked about Katherine and her now-famous love of reading.  What he said, for my money, was nothing short of extraordinary: 

She's so cool.

She's just her in every moment,

and that's what makes her special.

It's that fourth one that's just the strongest,

the toughest and who-she-is the most, 

out of all of them.

That's why we love her so much. 

The oldest of my five grandchildren, Maggie, is five years old this year.  Every now and again, when I call her by something other her name, such as "Light Fingers Louie", she responds by saying, "Pop Pop, I'm not Light Fingers Louie, I'm Maggie.  I'm always Maggie."  I, of course, agree with her, usually while thinking to myself that I hope she forever maintains and retains that sense of self.  

Children teach us the most amazing things every day, whether seven-year-old Katherine Whitworth or not-quite-five-year-old Maggie Aldrich.  "To thine own self be true " is a tale perhaps not as old as time but at least as old as Hamlet.  Yet is a maxim violated consciously and unconsciously by far too many (myself included) far too often.   

We are lucky to have children in our lives to remind us to do better by it and by ourselves.  

-AK