“Dad, Dad, tell me a story pretty please,” says a three-year-old little girl as her father tucks her in to go to sleep. “Or sing me a song,” she pleads. The response that always came from her father every time she asked that set of questions would be, “Well, what story do you want me to tell; Which song would you like to hear?”
For years, this dance would take place, nearly every night when her father was home, not on deployments or other work trips. Her father never chose a story for her, nor a song, it was always her decision, though most of the time she didn’t want to have to choose. She had a bit of a disdain for choices, and even as a young girl she didn’t want the responsibility of choosing anything, much less a story or a song at bedtime. She was afraid of making the wrong choice. She didn’t want to choose, because she was afraid of making a mistake. It took her father a while to realize that this was her way of coping with the world. She didn’t want the responsibility of making a choice because she was afraid of making the wrong one. But the importance of choice, especially for a woman with high aspirations, is vital to understand for her own success and was taught to her any chance her father got. What she learned in those simple two turns of phrase, she eventually understood and embraced as she grew older.
Gradually, the little girl got grew up, becoming seven years old, then twelve, then fifteen, and the stories and songs at bedtime gradually ground to a halt, until they stopped altogether to make way for her baby sister and baby brother, who also wanted their father to tell his stories and sing his songs. At that transition age, the little girl had other things to do besides listening to stories and songs, and her bedtime grew later every night as she was assigned more homework and had to study for more difficult tests. She doesn’t quite remember when her father stopped tucking her in at night, but the absence of a goodnight story or song felt like a part of her evening was missing, and it does still, though she may be nineteen and enrolled in a college over 1,100 miles away.
The concept of being a decisive woman that her father ingrained into her from a very young age has become a part of her wide array of tools to use in a man’s world. She, at home, in her workspace, in classes, never has to worry about not being heard, because she will speak up until she is. Developing this identity in college hasn’t always been easy, as she has had experiences that were not the most enjoyable, but she learned from them.
I will not forget the timidness of my childhood, but I have learned that taking risks is far more rewarding than simply not doing anything at all. Though still afraid of making a mistake, I take chances, and if I fail, I take it as a learning experience. So build your confidence with decisiveness, it will be an indispensable tool in your toolbelt to help you construct your future. Although making choices and writing your own story may be kind of scary and uncertain, my dad always said, “Confidence is an aftermath of the choices and successes that we’ve had.”
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