Day 169: The Fathers I Admire

I’m always amazed by people who look to celebrities or “feel good” authors or musicians or actors or politicians or whoever other person they so eagerly can put on a pedestal to draw guidance and leadership from. Some of those people may be worthy of your devotion. Many aren’t. All you really have to do is look over your shoulder or down the street or at the desk next to you or the seat across the aisle on the bus or plane and you can plenty of sources of wisdom and knowledge and inspiration to draw upon.

Take father’s day, for example. Up and down the block you live on, in the houses that make up your neighborhood, I guarantee you there are living inside fathers who have sacrificed their own gratification and personal gain and instant joy time and time again gladly and willingly so that their children would be happier and more fulfilled.

Look at the fathers sitting around you in the pews of your church, and I guarantee you’ll see plenty of fathers who have stayed up deep into many, many nights waiting for their child to make it home safe and sound so they could only then sleep peacefully themselves.

Walk into a grocery store on any given night and you’ll cross paths with single dads doing the shopping for their kids after a long day’s work, only to go home and cook them a meal, clean up after them, read them a book or two, and put them to bed, and then get up and do it all again the next morning without blinking an eye.

Look past everything you think that you know about your own father, and I guarantee you there are countless other facts that you aren’t aware of, such as the sacrifices that he’s made so that you could have something extra or the extra hours he put in or the personal items he sold so that you could benefit. I’ll guarantee he turned down opportunities because it accepting them wouldn’t have worked out in your favor and the gains for him couldn’t justify the sacrifices for you.

Look around you at the next sporting event that your own kid is playing at and then count the collective hours you father (and mother) gave away to you so you could participate in similar activities. Count the hours your father sat behind the wheel of an automobile in tense, stressful traffic getting you from point A to B or driving you down the road to a destination that he planned out and spent for expressly for you to enjoy.

Look through your family’s photograph albums and count how many of the events captured in those photos that your father was directly responsible for, whether he funded it, organized it, built it, repaired it, researched it, or envisioned it.

Count the number of meals you’ve partaken in during your life and estimate how many of them that your father directly had a hand in making possible. Consider how many nights in your lifetime you’ve spent peacefully in a dry, warm, secure house and count how many of those nights your dad was responsible for making a reality.

Consider all the qualities that you admire in your husband and sons and think about how many of them correspond with quality that your dad possesses.

Consider the respect you have for yourself and the treatment that you demand for yourself from others and contemplate in what ways your father may have helped instill such pride in yourself, may have told you that you deserved the best of treatment, and may have made you believe you didn’t have to settle for decency.

Think about the ways you treat people and how to what extent your father is responsible for your actions.

Think about everything you’ve accomplished in your life, all the milestones you’ve reached, all the goals conquered, all the obstacles knocked down, all the barriers climbed, and all the doubts you were able to put to rest because your father poured his energy and belief and determination into you.

Think about the periods of life when you felt most protected and most carefree and then think how much of that security your dad was responsible for.

I look around me on a daily basis, and I see fathers who set examples for their kids because they love them dearly. They work hard and long because they love their children dearly. They give of themselves and ask for little in return because they love them dearly. They make sure the doors are locked at night and the family pet is fed and watered because they love them dearly. They feel their children’s accomplishments and failures and losses and setbacks with the deepest of realism because they love them dearly. I look around me and I see fathers who make their children laugh, pick up them off the ground when they fall down, clean their wounds, teach them right from wrong, set expectations, teach tough lessons, and love unconditionally. Just everyday, common, run-of-the-mill men who ask for nothing in return.