The Small Things

I’ve been waiting more than 40 years to write these words.

The New York Knicks are champions.

For anyone who isn’t a sports fan, that sentence probably doesn’t carry much weight. For people like me, people who have spent decades bleeding orange and blue, it feels almost impossible to believe.

For most of my life, being a Knicks fan meant disappointment. It meant hope followed by heartbreak. It meant convincing yourself that maybe next year would be different.

And then last night, it finally happened.

When the final seconds ticked away, I did what I imagine millions of Knicks fans did. I screamed. I jumped. I ran outside my house like an excited kid.

For a few moments, it was pure adrenaline.

Then the adrenaline wore off.

I dropped to my knees and cried.

Not because the Knicks won.

Because of who I couldn’t call.

 

My father passed away earlier this year.

Sports have always been more than sports. They are one of the great threads that connect generations. Fathers pass teams down to their children. Children grow up watching games they don’t fully understand because they want to spend time with the people they love.

My love of sports came from my father and my brother. Some of my favorite memories aren’t championships or victories. They’re games on the couch. Arguments about players. Celebrating wins that nobody else cared about.

The Knicks finally won a title.

What I wanted most was five minutes with my dad.

Just five minutes.

I’d tell him they finally did it. I’d listen to him laugh. I’d hear his voice one more time.

Maybe he had something to do with it from above. I don’t know.

 

The people we love become part of our joy and our pain at the same time.

As I sat there crying, my daughter wrapped her arms around me.

She doesn’t really care about the Knicks. She cares about me. In that moment, she understood something important was happening.

My son was away at a lacrosse tournament, so I couldn’t hug him when the game ended. I missed that. But my daughter was exactly where she needed to be.

Later, I learned something that hit me even harder.

I still have my father’s cell phone. Since he passed away, my daughter has occasionally texted his number as her own way of talking to him and processing the loss.

Last night she sent him a message.

She thanked him for the win. She told him I cried. She told him she knew they were happy tears.

 

There’s a quote from The Office that has always stuck with me.

“I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them.”

The older I get, the more I realize how true that is.

When we look backward, we can see the magic. We can identify the moments that mattered. We can connect the dots and appreciate how extraordinary certain chapters were.

But when we’re living them, we’re usually too busy. Too stressed. Too distracted. Too focused on the next thing.

The truth is that many of the moments we will treasure most don’t announce themselves when they arrive.

They look ordinary.

A game on television with your father. A conversation with your brother. A car ride with your kids. A hug from your daughter. A text message sent to a grandfather she misses.

 

Don’t misunderstand me. Money matters. Financial security matters. The ability to provide experiences for the people we love matters.

Money can buy tickets to the game. It can pay for the trip. It can create opportunities.

But money cannot create the feeling.

The feeling comes from the people sitting next to you. The memories you build together. The stories you’ll tell years later.

The small things.

Those are the things that become priceless.

Last night was one of the happiest sports moments of my life.

It was also one of the saddest.

And somehow those two truths existed together.

That’s life.

Joy and grief. Celebration and loss. Looking backward while still moving forward.

The Knicks finally won a championship.

But when I think about that night years from now, I probably won’t remember the final score.

I’ll remember my daughter holding me while I cried.

I’ll remember wanting to call my father.

I’ll remember being reminded that the people we love never really leave us.

And I’ll remember that the small things are never actually the small things.

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About Amit: I am a first generation American, the son of a working-class Indian family, and I lived through my parents’ struggle to find their place in this country, to put down roots that would sustain them as well as their children in a new land. As they encouraged me to excel in school and fostered my hobbies and interests, I was keenly aware of the dynamic between them. I understood that there was a difference between where they came from individually and where we were now. They worked hard in their individual capacities, but they weren’t always on the same page about financial issues – and that can make or break a family’s future. I didn’t know it at the time, but this laid the groundwork for my passion towards financial services and helping families succeed.

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