Well Done

It was 6:00am on Saturday morning and I'm rushing out the door trying to beat my dad to work. I was 17 years old and probably shouldn't have been running a store by myself but I just didn't think of stuff like that then. My dad was riding in his car and I was driving the one he let me use. His was an old White Cadillac Sedan, fully loaded with leather seats and air shocks so every bump felt as though you were floating on a cloud yet you could feel every bump in the road at your finger tips. I had the old Oldsmobile with beat up seats, headliner falling down covering my face while I drove. Looking back on it now I can't help but laugh envisioning a kid driving up in that old car with the shocks blown out from driving over too many speed bumps at 50 mph. We were both headed to work and it was my responsibility to get there, turn the alarm off and get the coffee started. I wanted so badly to get there ahead of my dad in order to make him proud of me. I did it. I arrived, scrambled to get my keys out of my pocket jumbling them a few times trying to get the right one in the door. The alarm went off like clockwork screaming like an ambulance siren causing panic in me, yet I remember I know the code. Check. What am I forgetting... I see dad's car coming up... The Coffee! Dad drank a pot of coffee once or twice a day and liked it black and hot. I frantically made it over to the coffee maker and got it going just in time for him to walk through the door and see the coffee pouring and the aroma gently maneuvering its way from the pot to his nose. He looked at me and said "Well done". Those words are powerful aren't they? Not just to me or every other first born child of the house, but to every human being who seeks to do well. We want our efforts to matter. We want our parents to be proud. We crave to produce in a worthy way. On some level deep within our core we desire to live in a way that is honorable. We long to have someone say to us "well done".