Opinion | Advice on Living From a Dying Man

Is there advice that you would give to someone who is the Ben Sasse, father of three, at age 40 or age 35, when the kids are young and everything’s stressful and chaotic, in light of where you are now? Yeah, happy to go fire hose on this one. No. 1: Honor the Sabbath and keep it holy. Man, I wish I’d treated the Lord’s Day differently over the course of my life. We’ve been at Sunday worship every morning forever. But man, am I tempted by 12:45 or 1:30 in the afternoon to get back to work or to an addictive-level work about the N.F.L. Dinnertime is precious, man. Lock up your devices and keep them away from the table and prioritize that time. There is a limit to how many trips a month are really worth it. I lived a road warrior life for a long time, and I kind of had a rule of thumb that seven nights a month in a hotel was the ceiling. But boy, there’s a difference between seven and nine, and there’s a difference between seven and five. And I took way, way, way, way too many trips. And it might be convicting for the man interviewing you, but go on. Family compounds — like, man, have more cousins and figure out how to live thick with them. There are so many times when we optimize around things that are not nearly as important as more family thickness. Boy, I wish we lived down the block from my folks.