We flew home to Phoenix together after a College Football tour to the University of Tulsa last weekend.

It was a beautiful and amazing experience with great friends at their home in Tulsa, Oklahoma, just twenty minutes from campus.

We were given the “Green Country” tour with Alumni, lifelong Hurricane, and Tulsa Queen GwenWhitfill.

My son Kanon, whose dream is to play college football, is a senior in high school and will be turning eighteen years old in two weekends.

Although the date is forever ingrained in my heart, October 19th, it was one of my brothers who shook my soul, evoking a deep, heavy punch to my gut and a saddening swell in my heart when he reminded me of the marble jar I shared with him just a few years back.

The premise of the jar and the visual representation of removing one marble every weekend until he is 18 is to have perspective and appreciation for the time we have left together, never to waste a minute or moment, and to make “MOST BEST DAYS” like my brother Shane Doherty and his wife Shawnee, who tragically lost their 7-year-old son Hollis to a rare form of brain cancer.

Perspective can be GOLD when you are stuck in your own silo… and gratitude is pure PLATINUM when you’re focused on collecting extrinsic objects Vs intrinsic essence and what you want versus what you have.

As I REFLECT on this moment in time and the emotional grip it has on me, I’m not quite CLEAR; it’s coming from the parts of me that know I am supposed to feel like this…

The part of my core that feels it could have given more…
The piece of me that hurts because of my own lifelong Fatherhood wounds…

A painful, piercing perception that can only be released and restored by LOVE and GRACE.

I will beat myself up repeatedly if I don’t separate facts from feelings and give myself, as well as my son, the LOVE and GRACE needed to HEAL and GROW.

I want my legacy to be the lessons I preach, the stories I share, and the tools I give my son Kanon and his sister Camille. The hidden lesson and hard reality is that these lessons are not just for now and not just for them!

To guide our kids to where they want to go, we must meet them where they are at each stage of their lives.

The formula for our “Father and Son” success, how we connect and hold space as two Alpha males sharing the same environment, is simple…

We challenge each other to rise, pushing our limits, always doing what we say we will do, one-on-ones, food, positive language, praise, constructive appraisals, unconditional love, a relentless drive for performance, leaning in, answering the call, intentional suffering, pain tolerance and putting in the WORK.

I’m not quite sure what this boy will become or how he will spend his days, but I can tell you that he will use his grit, fortitude and mental toughness to achieve it and become it.

The TRUTH is… The WORLD NEEDS STRONG MEN; we have helped shape and build the next extraordinary one!

What  I am most proud of in my boy Kanon Dean Kayyem is his incredible ability to ENDURE, ADAPT and OVERCOME. 

I wish him a Happy eighteenth Birthday and a lifetime of success, triumph, and freedom.

So, how many marbles are left in your kid’s jar, and what will you do with them?

It is often said that it’s not the minutes but the moments that make life great…

But I disagree. I believe that in living a great life, we need both the minutes and the moments, the sets and the reps, the time and the task.

WE MUST SHOW UP to “Reverse the Curse,” breaking the generational disorder inflicted on all of man and building the next generation of
REAL MEN. 

-Luke Kayyem
FOUNDER | FATHERS of the FUTURE