Today is my father’s birthday, so it feels appropriate to acknowledge him and how grateful I am for him. I am grateful that he has been in my life as much as he has, and how genuine and deep his love has felt, as his wish for my success and health.
from my father I learned: mindfulness, the eightfold path, idealism, strength, his commitment to health, his wife, his children, romanticism. I have followed him in near creepily accurate imitation. hugh laurie once remarked “we are all poor imitation of our fathers,” and i winced in recognition when i heard it.
what can I say about my old man? he cuts a large figure, a man who is not uncomfortable with the spotlight, or lively conversation, a man possessed of immense will and ability to achieve. i had little love for him in my adolescence, and for me adolescence lasted a good long time. What is the distinction between adolescence and adulthood? I think it has something to do with long term thinking and decision-making. When one forgoes immediate pleasure for long-term gain, and when that gain is a kind that promotes or enlivens life rather than upsets it; i think that is when one marks the transition. We can stay in a kind of adolescence even when physiologically mature and working, when there is no real commitment to the work, or when the work serves to achieve some lower goal that prioritizes some immediate gratification of the body or mind. so it went for me well into my twenties, as i chased one ecstasy after another.
big heart on him. i wanna be big hearted too, and fight for things i believe in. the part of me that dreams about an ideal world, that makes the teams more even at pickup basketball games, the headstrong courage to try new shit, the me that believes in my own greatness, that’s all at heart an imitation of my old man. i’m lucky for it.
