I remember being frustrated, many years ago. The conversations I had with my father seemed to repeat themselves. We would take drives, and end up discussing the same topics.

For some reason, at a point, I decided to voice my thoughts about our discussions, and angrily asked, “why do we only talk about the same three topics?”

My father seemed hurt by my frustration, though some discourse about the comforts of the familiar and relatability of certain topics were touched upon. For most of the remaining part of the trip, we didn’t have much more dialogue about any topic at all.

I picked up my son, recently, to come visit for the weekend. He’s now very much an adult, almost at the same age I was when I was having those conversations with my dad. I found that during our drive, we had  discussions about the same few topics that we always discussed between the two of us.  But instead of frustration, he leaned into the conversation, and was excited by it, and talked in a way that made us feel more connected.

What did I learn from that?

That I would never do anything great with my life.