He Got What He Paid For

They had only had a two-week fling. He hadn’t talked to her or seen her since. He didn’t even know why he called her that day. It was just a feeling he had.

“How are you?” he asked.

“Pretty good,” she said. “I just got home from the hospital.”

“The hospital? What’s wrong?”

“I just had a baby,” she said.

Jerry could feel goose bumps rising on his skin as he started counting backward in his head. She didn’t have to say what she did next. He already knew. That baby was his.

He hung up the phone, paced for a few minutes. Then he got in his car and drove as fast as he could. The moment he saw the baby, Jerry knew it was his son.

He gently picked him up and kissed him from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet.

“I wanted to make him mine,” he said.

It was hard learning to be a dad. At first Jerry would just visit, hang out, be around him for a while. But as soon as his son got older—about a year and a half—Jerry began spending as much time with him as he could—three or four days a week. “I’m sorry my son has a broken family,” he said. “But what I can do is give him more than my money. I can give him my time, energy, and love.”

For a twenty-one-year-old, he was wise. He knew one of the most important secrets of life: you get what you pay for every time. Whether it’s at work, a hobby, or a relationship, you’re going to get back from something only what you put into it.

I was talking to a woman one day. She was young, in her early twenties. She had just had her first baby and had gone through a difficult time—up all day and night for months on end. She kept trying to find time for her career that first year she was raising her child, wondering if there were any books out for new moms about how to make more time for themselves.

“I realized something,” she said. “All this energy, all this getting up in the middle of the night, all this struggling to learn what to do has bonded me to this child in a way I couldn’t imagine.”

Starting something new? A job? A recovery program? Or maybe you’re not getting the satisfaction you’d like out of your family or career. Yes, you may be with the wrong person. Or you may not like your job and the solution may be to work somewhere else. But if you’re there today, why not try a novel approach?

Put a little more of yourself into whatever you do.

From the book: Choices: Taking Control of Your Life and Making It Matter

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