WHEN YOUR VALUES ARE CLEAR, DECISIONS COME EASY

BY: Michael A. Aun, FIC, LUTCF, CSP, CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame

Kids do a real number on their parents these days. When I was growing up, I had ten brothers and sisters. My parents had their hands full just feeding that crowd, not to mention paying the bills and providing shelter and clothing. It was all they could do to keep their heads above water. Oh well, what do you expect from a good Catholic family?

My parents never saw me play an athletic event. They never attended a speech contest. They didn't see the Science Fair Project that won a National Science Fair Award. They never saw any of that stuff because they were busy raising 11 children. That was more than a full time job.

My dad, Michael A. Aun, Sr., had two jobs. He owned his own construction company. He was a craftsman, a cabinet builder. In actuality, he was an artist. He loved to create things.

At night, he would tend bar at the Knights of Columbus Hall in downtown Columbia to pick up extra money. Working from 6 a.m. until midnight six days a week didn't leave much time for him to attend football or baseball games. Paying the light bill was more important.

My dad was a war hero. He was wounded four times in World War II and he had a Silver Star to go with his four Purple Hearts. He and other Lexingtonians are memorialized in front of the Lexington Town Hall, which was also the site of our home when I was growing up.

When my kids were growing up there in Lexington, they would often give me a hard time about being home at 5:00 p.m. "Dad, why can't you be home at 5 o'clock in the afternoon like all the other daddies in the neighborhood?"

When they asked that question, I would take them down to an old burned out home on Hendrix Street near the Lexington County Jail. I would pull up in front of that house and announce, "I can be home at 5:00 o'clock every afternoon… but we're going to live here!"

Some days we would pass that house and my youngest son, Christopher, would take a look at it and say, "Dad, don't you have to be somewhere tonight?"

I believe children have to understand that parents have to work hard to be successful and to support them. It's not easy and no, you can't always be there for everything.

In my younger days, I would sometimes hit the road for two to three weeks at a time doing speaking engagements all over the country. It was hard to be there for all the kid's functions, but we still made the effort. Either Christine or I were always there and many times, we both made it. Was it easy? No, but I always wanted to make as many functions as possible.

As I became more established in my career, I learned to say "no" to speaking engagements that conflicted with our schedule. I rapidly concluded that if I were going to be able to control my schedule better, I would have to live where the meetings were being held.

I quickly found that I was spending about 35% of my time in Orlando, Florida speaking at national and international conventions. It was apparent that not a lot of these meetings were congregating in Lexington, SC, so I decided to move Muhammad to the mountain, as the good book suggests.

My goal in my life is to sleep with my wife at night, and it was increasingly difficult to accomplish that living in Lexington. I wanted to be my kid's scoutmaster and football coach and all the neat things that parents do for children, but I had to do a change of venue to accomplish that goal.

I guess, when your values are clear, decisions come easy, so we moved to St. Cloud, Florida where I coached the kids and even became the play-by-play announcer for the St. Cloud Bulldogs.

In the bible there's a line that goes like this: "If the eye be single, the body is full of light. If the eye be evil, the body is full of darkness." What that says to me is simply this, if you know where you're going in life, it's a whole lot easier to get there.

Is your eye single? Are your values clear?