The author, Ida Fink, is a Polish Jew who survived Holocaust and writes short stories in a form of fiction that are based on her memories. Highly recommend reading her books. One of the quotes from her book stayed with me for several days, “… a young father…realizes appallingly “that he had overslept his life.” It is a beautiful way to summarize an unfortunate waste of personal time on doing nothing that people engage in all the time. While we are young we feel that there is an abundance of time to do everything we want to do, and it is OK to sleep through parts of our lives from time to time.
Then I was thinking about my own “oversleeping” within the context of what I define important in my life, and want to invest my time into. Relationships and having lasting meaningful connections made it to my list of “utmost important things in my life.”
With that in mind, I recalled our fairly recent gmail conversations (I do love google!), where you made a comment that one of my conclusions about you wasn’t accurate at all because I have missed out on some important parts of your personal growth, which made you to be who you are today, and you are quite delightful (absolutely not biased here by the way) young lady.
And you are right, I have missed out on seeing your personal development. It happened, partly, because of the physical distance between us. Partly it happened because I overslept a chance to be involved in your life more; and I am quite sorry for that. And so for myself, I will work harder to make more time to watch you grow, get to know you, and remain connected with you.
Love, your aunt .
