I tried to be a perfect dad … but I got too attached to the outcome.

I have often taken everyone else’s fun too seriously. In fact, many times in my life I have been guilty of being too attached to the outcome of other people having a good time. If you come to a dinner party at my house, I can be fairly obsessive about making sure everyone is having fun. I like to know that everyone’s drink is charged, the food is good and the conversation is flowing. That’s me. I love to entertain and I love it when people are having a blast.

Now, that’s a good trait on the whole. But I want to say a couple of things about it. First of all, if taken too far it will set up a need for the night to be perfect. And perfection, as we have already established, gets in the way of an outstanding life. It can also get in the way of an outstanding dinner party.

So it is important for me to be aware that this dinner party doesn’t have to be perfect. I can set it up so there is the potential for everyone to have fun. Then I need to let go and experience the night. What will be, will be. It’s important for me to maximise my enjoyment of the evening and not to get too attached to the outcome.

Sometimes kids understand this better than adults. This was illustrated for me beautifully by my son Billy during a trip to Disneyland when he was five years old. You see, I had this idea that I thought was really cool. Since I’m from the United States, I thought it would be a great idea to take each of my three sons over there when they were five years old, just the two of us, to see my parents and go to Disneyland.

It worked out pretty well. I took Jake and Billy back to see my mum in Colorado and then to meet my dad at Disneyland in California. By the time it was PJ’s turn my dad had passed away, and PJ wanted all of us to go on his trip. So we did. My mom loved having us all there and we did the trip to Disneyland together. Tick. Those trips gave me great joy and many memories.

When I took Billy, my middle son, to Disneyland it was just the two of us who made the trek over the Pacific to see my parents. We stayed in a hotel together in Anaheim with my dad and my stepmom and the next day, a bright sunny California morning, we ventured out to experience the ‘happiest place on Earth’.

The day was amazing. Billy had a blast and was particularly excited by the parade. He was going through his Lightning McQueen phase, and I don’t know that I have ever seen such joy light up a child’s face as when the full-sized Lightning McQueen came around the corner.

Earlier in the day, though, I had found myself too attached to the outcome of making sure he was having fun. We were in line for the ‘Finding Nemo’ ride and I was hyping the ride instead of enjoying the moment.

‘Billy, how cool is this going to be! We’re going to see Nemo! I bet we see Crush the Turtle too. Who knows? Dory is probably there as well, what do you think?’

He looked up at me and put his hand on my elbow, as though he felt sorry for my need to make this moment great, and said, ‘Dad, let’s just do the ride. It will be fun. We’ll see what we see.’ And he looked away.

Out of the mouths of babes!

We’ll see what we see. Ten years later I still think about it all the time. It is something I say to myself in all sorts of situations. In fact, our entire family now recite it whenever we are about to embark on an adventure with an unknown outcome.

This year I was speaking in Thailand and my family joined me for school holidays after the event. The highlight was to be a 45 km family bike ride. We were at the Burma–Thailand border, all set for our adventure of biking down to the Gulf of Thailand. We looked at each other and said, ‘As the great Billy Helder said, “We’ll see what we see”!’ It has become a family mantra.

We pedalled off with the right mindset. It doesn’t need to be perfect. Let’s just open our eyes and see what we see.

We could all be better as adults if we plunged into our next holiday adventure, dinner party, football game or family picnic without being completely attached to the outcome.

Care, but don’t care too much. Don’t get too attached to the outcome. We’ll see what we see.