My octogenarian father leans in to the clerk and whispers, “Do you want to know ten, two-letter words that will change your life?” She nods. And then deliberately, he enunciates, as if giving dictation, “If..it..is..to..be..it..is..up..to..me.” He pauses dramatically and adds, “If it is to be, it is up to me! There you go. Those are the ten two-letter words that will change your life. Now repeat them back to me.” His voice fades as I distance myself once he starts. I’ve heard him share this particular pearl of wisdom many, many times before. And I am as uncomfortable now as the first time I heard it as a teen or when he’d say. “You know what Abraham Lincoln used to say, right?” he puts his hands on the counter, pauses, leans in. “’There are many excuses for failure, but never really a good reason.’”
In spite of myself and my discomfort, I have realized the truth of these ten, two-letter words. They are my drum beat to keep trying and they validate that I have a modicum of control in the world and what I do matters. A smile spreads across my face, and I chuckle about my dad. But after all, he’s nearly 85 years old still sharing the gospel of the ten, two-letter words. He must know something about the words that will change my life.