On Dependability

My par­ents didn’t buy us cars when we were teenagers. I bought my first car after grad­u­at­ing col­lege, was work­ing, and saved up $500. The top pri­or­i­ty of a car’s con­di­tion, at that time, was not depend­abil­i­ty, but low cost. It was the same way for the next eight cars. 

After I was in a safe finan­cial state, my vehi­cle choice cat­e­gories grew up. I kept my ninth car for 16 years, and 11^th car for 12. In our dri­ve­way, now, are two of the top cars in their class for depend­abil­i­ty, and I hope to keep them for many years to come.

This past week­end at my church, we cel­e­brat­ed Scout Sunday. One of the tenets of the Scout Law is to be Trustworthy. You should keep your promis­es and be depend­able. Even though I was nev­er a Scout, I try to live up to that – doing my best to be depend­able. Sometimes, it real­ly takes work.

I always kept a pock­et cal­en­dar, just like my dad, so as to jot down meet­ings, events, or com­mit­ments. Recently, I ran across some from high school and col­lege – even my home­work assign­ments were there. I have since moved over to the cal­en­dar on my mobile device, which is acces­si­ble on all my oth­er devices. It helps. 

If some­thing tru­ly comes up, you can bet I’ll be in con­tact with whomev­er that con­flict affects. One of my old­er broth­ers, for instance, could always be depend­ed on to can­cel or not show up for lunch or cof­fee. That’s not the kind of trust­wor­thi­ness I value.

A local brew­ery, as part of its mis­sion and busi­ness, sched­ules area food trucks on a reg­u­lar basis. Sometimes things hap­pen and one can’t show up – vehi­cle trou­ble or sick­ness, per­haps. What I can’t under­stand is when a truck just doesn’t appear – no phone call or email, just silence. This tar­nish­es the val­ue of depend­abil­i­ty or trustworthiness.

I depend on and place trust in a lot of things in my dai­ly life. The sun ris­ing and set­ting. The love of my wife and chil­dren. Functional home util­i­ties. Animal hair on every­thing I own. Some of it is out of my con­trol, and some requires work on my part, as well as oth­ers. I pray that we can all live our days as mod­els of trust­wor­thi­ness and depend­abil­i­ty, as we are able, and per­haps help our loved ones do the same.