6/16/2013

My Father's Day letter to my Son

Dear Dave,

This is my father's day wish for you.  I won't go into what my father was like and try to pick some of that encounter as blame for who I am or what I have done.  What I will do is tell you that just as I was who I am, I want you to be the same.  There will never be another me or you so what I wish for you is to be who you are and I will do my best to support you to the maximum amount possible.

As you well know, I spent my life working hard and thanks to the savings ability of your mother we have parlayed it into a pretty good life and future.  For me, I always tried to work hard and sometimes it worked.  I think that being smart some of the time instead of working so hard might have been a better thing.  To this day, I still want to jump on a job and engross myself and find ways to make things work instead of just stopping and thinking about the ways it might work first.   The good news is that this approach has worked for ambushes and small problems.

One of the things I have and will continue to do is to encourage you live your choices.  I see ways to do things differently than you do and there is a lot of time I just need to bite my tongue and move on.  I want you have the same chance of failure and success that I had.  I know you are smart and I marvel at the things you can do and how well you can do them. 

I hope that in the end of all this life, you have mixed emotions about me.  I hope you love me as you know I love you.  I hope in some ways you hate me because I set the bar high in a lot of ways.  I would prefer there be a lot more love than hate but the balance is yours not mine to make.

Back to the beginning of this piece, I truly want you to be who you are without any doubt.  Do what you can do and be what you are.  It has been my lot in life that hard work for me was the route to success.  I might want you to aim that way, but throw in a lot of your smart and you will be happy.  Try not to judge your life by mine.  We have had a lot of things happen differently and the results can't be the same. 

The good news is that I won't live forever.  I hope that in your heart I will live a little bit longer than my body has.  I also hope that it is a fond memory and you can remember smiles as well as frowns.  
MUD, aka Dad

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