"If I want to work, I can. If I want to play golf, or ride my motorcycle, I can. But the rest of it is family. Sometimes you're not really needed by your family, but you're there. And my kids like to know I'm there"

A life well lived, he suggests, grants choices: the option to work, to indulge in leisure, to follow whims without asking permission. Golf and motorcycles stand in for adult play, rituals of control and escape, mastery and release. Yet those freedoms exist within a larger orbit. The center of gravity is family, and the highest use of freedom is not perpetual self-gratification but the ability to be available.

He draws a subtle distinction between being needed and being present. Early parenthood runs on urgent needs; later seasons hinge on trust and continuity. As children grow, they require less intervention and more assurance. Presence becomes a quiet architecture: a dependable address where questions can land, where small talk can swell into confession, where the mere fact of proximity stabilizes the household. It’s not heroic; it’s habitual. The power lies in predictability.

There’s humility in acknowledging you may not be needed at every moment. That admission respects the autonomy of others, the competence of a partner, the independence of kids, without withdrawing love. Availability becomes a form of care that doesn’t crowd. It’s not a performance of parenting but a posture, an open door. Children read that constancy the way sailors read a lighthouse: they may not dock every day, but they orient by its beam.

The imagery contrasts the visible pleasures of individual freedom with the opaque gift of presence. Golf yields a scorecard; motorcycles leave a trail of miles. Family presence leaves fewer artifacts, yet it accumulates into belonging. He’s redefining success as the capacity to be interruptible, to schedule around the relationships that endure. Work and recreation are privileges; being there is the vow. The statement is less about leisure than about attention: the ultimate freedom is to choose your center and to keep returning to it.