Recently, a great deal of attention has been paid to a pancreatic cancer patient who is living his final days on his own terms and challenging others to focus on what matters in life. I am not going to attempt that here but I want to challenge my readers to ponder this question: What three characteristics do you hope to pass onto your children?

For those of you without children of your own, think of children that are close to you. The English major in me wants to remind you that characteristics are personality traits, not things such as “be a good wife”. Here are my three wishes for our lovely and talented daughters.

Generosity

I think this trait is one of the most overlooked yet one of the most important. While being financially generous is important, it does not end there. Being generous with love and affection is a requirement for deep, personal relationships to flourish. Generously giving time and talent is needed to build strong communities. Not everyone can write a large check but I would hazard a guess that all of us can and should take a few moments to make something around us better.

Kindness

As soon as our children could write their names, they were required to send thank you notes for gifts and other kindnesses offered to them. Sometimes a thank you might be a picture or a photo with a brief note and other times, a full-fledged note is sent to the gift giver. While this can help with handwriting, grammar, etc. the point of the notes is to be kind. Party invitations are not sent to school if the entire class is not invited in an attempt to spare feelings. These sound like obvious acts but I can attest to the fact that many, many people have lost sight of being kind. Kindergarten children are well versed in the polite rules of society, more commonly known as classroom rules, but we seem to forget to reinforce them as children move into upper elementary school and beyond. Spend 20 minutes in traffic in a major metropolitan area and I hazard a guess that kindness is not going to be something you see in abundance. Kindness costs little and is withheld as if it is a precious commodity. Think of a bad boss in your past (hopefully), I bet they did not allocate many resources to telling the staff how great they were.

Confidence

If we had sons, perhaps confidence might not be on my top three list but seeing how I and other women I know face the world, I want our daughters to face the world knowing that they can do whatever they set their minds to do. Not in the Barneyesque “everyone is special” goofy way but if our youngest really wants to be a dairy farmer, then go forth and make cheese and give your parents a discount while you are at it. Women are shy about asking for pay increases, shy about stating what they need and want and shy about saying why we deserve those things. I am less shy now than have been but it took 40 years for me to say to someone how much I deserve and to feel confident enough to walk away from a job I mostly loved over money. I want our girls to say they are worth being valued and treasured whether it is at work, at home or at school.

So, now it is your turn. What is on your top three list?