Many years ago my teenage daughter and I were swimming in our family pool out in our back yard. The day had been like most others, so I had no way of knowing that this particular day would go down in the annals of our family history to become a lesson that my teenage daughter would never forget.

The sun was setting and the heat of the day was breaking as night quickly approached. But the early evening was warm enough, and so was our pool water, so we continued to hang out, swim, and have some more fun in our pool.

My teenage daughter noticed it first. Right about eye level, building it's connections to the bottom of our fence was a spider who so skillfully and delicately spun her trap web. I was kind of surprised that my daughter wasn't grossed out by this creature that was a mere few yards away from where we were.

Instead, we delightfully watched as the spider busied herself doing what she needed to do to complete her part of nature's circle of life. As we gazed at this wonder of nature, a very simple thought hit me. My daughter and I had lost track of time. Neither one of us knew how long we had been just standing there in the shallow end of our pool, staring at that spider building her web.

We hadn't done anything special, like save the world or buy something expensive like a new video game, or even traveled on some big jet airplane to some far off exotic land, but I believe we were both just as or even more than fulfilled as if we had.

What we had done was to spend time together and marvel at the simple things in life. We laughed and talked about the circle of life, and what it means to die and what it means to really live. We talked about how precious our limited amount of time is on this planet and how we should pause to enjoy the simple things in life like the flight of a bird. In addition, we talked about how we can't get so busy with our to-do lists that we forget to actually live our lives. We need to take the time to design a life that's worth living and worth sharing with others.

We also discussed what it means to be a leader. Leaders make this world a better place, not just for themselves, but for everyone they cross paths with.

Now get out and learn, lead, and lay the way in this great big world of ours! And, remember that the simple things are the best things in life, even if they include spiders and webs.

Don't forget to check out my blog at: www.GranddaddysSecrets.com