Wife and I were talking and it hit me that the concept of reliability has been a central issue in my life the past some weeks.

There’s our problems with our home phone service. AT&T’s phone service wasn’t reliable, and while certain people I spoke with were kind, helpful, and understanding, their general repair process was proving to also be unreliable.

So everyone suggests to me to switch to VoIP, but the main reason I’ve stayed away from that is because Time-Warner Cable’s RoadRunner Internet service tends to be unreliable. In fact, as I was going through the AT&T debacle and even blogging about TWC’s unreliability, my net connection went down numerous times.

My car is old and starting to have big problems not worth fixing. It’s reliability is failing and I don’t always trust it to get me around. When I took the kids on that deer hunting trip? I rented a truck, not just because of the hauling utility, but because I figure a new truck will be more reliable than my old car and minimize risk of being stuck on the side of the road and the hunting trip ruined due to such problems.

Furthermore, as I shop for a replacement vehicle, I’m looking for something reliable. Heck, the reason I bought the car I have now was because I wanted a reliable car.

Buying that M&P to have as a new carry gun? I won’t carry it until it proves itself a reliable gun. I’m betting my life on it, so it better be something I can count on.

Then there are friends. There have been some issues with people flaking out, and while that’s alright every so often, a pattern of unreliability becomes a problem. Wife even mentioned to me that’s one thing she really appreciates about me: how reliable I am.

I just find it interesting how the concept of reliability has been at the forefront of so many things in my life right now.

People talk about important traits one should have: to be honest, to be hard working, punctual, honorable, humble. As I think about it, people don’t often talk about how important it is to be reliable, yet it’s something we all do want be it from our family, friends, co-workers, cars, businesses, politicians or really just about anything in our lives. It’s understandable because, due to its nature, you come to take it for granted when it always is there, it’s always working, it’s always doing what you need and expect. It only becomes noticeable when it breaks or isn’t there and is no longer reliable. Perhaps we need to consider reliability more explicitly and foster it as a trait, and not take it so much for granted.