Instant gratification is a fleeting experience

By Dan Barber

Well the results are in and as promised in last week’s blog, here’s the diagnosis… there is nothing technically wrong with my brain, apparently the symptoms are all in my head!

That being said, I can continue on sharing my life’s lessons or utter nonsense for a while longer.

During my career I had a short span of time where I participated in an effort in trying to figure out how to deliver quality of life to residents at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center here in Twentynine Palms. My boss was the chairman of the Quality of Life Council at the base. After a lot of effort, we came to the conclusion that we can’t deliver quality of life because we couldn’t order people to be happy and there wasn’t enough money in our budget to make everyone truly happy. Only an individual can determine what gives themselves “quality of life” or happiness.

Anyone who has children can probably relate to the expression, “I’m bored, there is nothing to do”… My favorite response to my children and grandchildren is, “what kind of “board” are you… pine, oak, cedar…?” My 19-year old Granddaughter, who recently received that retort from me for probably the millionth time, regarding her complaint of being bored, thought it was “cute” in a tweet to her friends about how her Grandpa still answers her boredom complaint.

With my children, I discovered that they were probably happiest when we lived in remote or rural locations with no distractions of video games, or multiple TV channels to choose from or high priced amusement parks that touted themselves to be the “happiest place.” My children were creative enough to come up with ways to successfully entertain themselves.

As Navy brats my children experienced a lot of moves… and each time they complained about having to leave wherever they were at the time because they “liked” it there. The favored comment from them about the new duty station was, “there will not be anything to do there.” In Puerto Rico they discovered fishing, snorkeling and sea shell collecting. They learned how to properly open coconuts and to avoid the scary looking large blue land crabs that seemed to run in packs and scare the “begeebers” out of them and their mother… I too thought they were creepy.

When we received orders from the warm climate of the Caribbean to the coldness of the Aleutian Islands at Adak, Alaska, they complained, even I thought that there wouldn't be anything for them to do there. However, this place was probably their most favored place to live and in fact was one of the most remote places on earth… almost at the end of the Aleutian Islands.  They soon discovered fishing, hiking, Tundra Berry picking and their favorite… snow sledding.

After Adak, we headed for the Mecca of the U.S. Navy… San Diego, California. Probably for the first time in their lives they discovered large parks, museums, malls and other pre-teens searching for something to do because they were bored. But after just one short year I once again received orders sending me to the middle of the Nevada desert. To hear my kids complain about having to leave civilization to move off into the wilderness you would have thought their world came to an end.

In Nevada they found other friends some of whom became life-long friendships and when I retired from the Navy and moved back to “civilization” in my old home town of Rowland Heights, Calif., that really ticked them off because they had to leave Fallon, Nevada and once again move to a strange place.

Of course they knew about Rowland Heights, but it didn’t hold the same feelings for them as it did for me. They knew they had grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins who lived there… but they never had, they just visited once in a great while. They enrolled at John A. Rowland High School and attended until my work took me away from there once again. We lived for a short time in Wrightwood, Calif., before we finally settled in to our current home since 1992, in the “Wilderness” of the Mojave Desert of Twentynine Palms, California.

My children all thought that since their home was wherever Mom and Dad lived was good enough for them…they all still live near us. Our daughter lives just across the street from us with her family, one son lives just on the other side of town and another lives about 2 hours away in Mohave Valley, Arizona on the Colorado River with his four kids. My daughter also brought along a friend she met from Rowland Heights. She also lives in the neighborhood with her husband and children… My daughter and her friend each have five children each we have big parties with lots of noisy kids.

Yes, instant gratification is fleeting, but making really good memories takes time and will last forever.