I read a great article by Matt Christensen the other day in Fatherly called “12 Questions to Ask Your Dad Before He’s Gone.”
The article was presumably intended for an audience of men my age to talk with their own fathers about life lessons. Maybe even to prompt a funny story or two. Since the main point of this blog is to “pass along know-how to my son,” I figured this was a great opportunity for me to explore these questions for him.
What follows are answers to a curated group of questions Matt so graciously posed. Some I omitted, just because I don’t have very insightful answers that would be of interest.
1. What are you most proud of in your life?
There are a few different arenas to which I can apply this question.
On a selfish note, I’m very proud of the work I’ve put in to overcome my own perceived shortcomings. I’m self aware enough to recognize that I still have personal shortcomings. But, without getting too specific, I’ve worked hard to tackle these issues head on to try to become a better person who operates at a higher level. We’re all a work in progress, and I’m no exception.
I’m supremely proud of the family that I’ve contributed to building. Marriage is sometimes hard. Fatherhood is sometimes hard. Dealing with cultivating relationships with your own parents and siblings, if you’re fortunate to still have them in your life, can sometimes be hard as well. All-in-all, it’s all worked out in a way that I’m super proud of.
2. Why did you choose your career?
I honestly just lucked out. Even though I generalized pretty hard in my undergraduate career, I ended up taking a few classes for a concentration within my generalist major that helped me specialize enough for a weird job… A weird job that pretty much only existed in the Washington, DC-area, where I was from and wanted to end up after college.
Importantly for me, my job enabled me to travel quite a bit. It also pays me a pretty good amount of money and affords me plenty of time off to pursue other things in my life that are more important to me. “Work to live, don’t live to work” is an old mantra, but it doesn’t make it any less true.
3. What do you admire most about your own father?
I was lucky for a number of reasons to have the father I have, but the thing I will admire most about him is that he made it clear that his family was the priority to him. He had a pretty fancy-pants, high-paying job (compared to me), yet he prioritized getting home each night to have dinner with my mom, my brother, and me. I would really have to struggle to think of a time that he might have missed a soccer game or any other meaningful event when I was a kid, or even as an adult.
What a great job he did in showing our family that we were his priority, and setting the example for my brother and I to grow into better men.
4. What’s your biggest life lesson?
Yikes. Maybe I can synopsize all of the posts on this blog someday and come up with a hard-hitting response to this one. I hope it’s one that will be useful. This just happens to be a bit too much pressure right now. 🙂
5. Is there anything you regret not doing in your life?
Not really. There are small things here and there, like “I should have learned how to study in high school, not junior year of college.” Ultimately, though, I feel pretty good about my choices. They’ve led me to where I am and to become the person I am today. At the moment, I can’t think of a single life-changing thing that I regret not doing. That’s a good place to be, I think.
6. How would your father describe you?
I’m lucky enough to know, since I’m constantly talking to my dad, that he would tell me that I’m a loving, and good father. I’m really happy to know this and it means a lot to me. Mostly because I think being a dad is the most important role in the world to me. That I have my own father’s encouragement, love, and approval in this role is such a strong example for me to provide to my own son as he grows up.
7. What mistake taught you most about life?
I’m going to gracefully cop out of this one by saying that choosing one mistake would do a disservice to all the other mistakes I’ve made. I’ve been lucky that many of my mistakes went unrecognized by others (particularly law enforcement), and that none of them have had overwhelming, lasting, negative effects.
That said, I have usually done a pretty good job of admitting to mistakes and learning from them. Everyone makes mistakes—smart and successful people learn from them.
8. What world event had the most impact on you?
Each generation seems to have their own world event that impacted them most. Up until now, mine is fairly generic: the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. I was in high school biology class when the principal announced over the loudspeaker that a plane had flown into one of the World Trade Center towers.
My biology teacher decided it was a great opportunity to get ahead in the lesson plans since we were kept in class for extra time until the administrators determined what to do. It wasn’t until I got out of biology and into my US History class that we were able to turn on the television to see what was unfolding before us.
From that time onward, life was filled with discussions of who was to blame for the attacks, what to do policy-wise, etc. News-watching in high school. Spirited debates in college. Even some professional experience that centered on the effects of the attacks in later years.
Only recently did we withdraw troops from that conflict in Afghanistan that kicked off as a result of 9/11. I feel pretty confident saying that a lot of people out there would share my answer to this one.
9. What do you enjoy most about being a father?
I’m fairly new to this whole fatherhood thing, but so far I really enjoy the moment I recognize that my son has learned a new thing. It could literally be anything—a new way to say something, a new little dance, or a whole new concept. Almost three years in and I can’t believe I’m somehow entrusted with helping to shape this little human being. It’s an awesome, fun, scary, and rewarding job so far, and I can’t wait for what comes next.
10. What was the hardest moment for you as a father?
In the weeks after my little guy was born, I had a constant feeling of being overwhelmed. It was as if my life was stripped away from me. I couldn’t see myself in this new role, and I didn’t feel any connection to him at all. Wasn’t I supposed to feel this “love at first sight” connection to my child like I had read and heard about from other parents? Was this something wrong with me? Had I made a mistake that I was now stuck with for the rest of my life?
What was this little character-less blob of a human being doing here? Why won’t he stop crying, waking me up in the middle of the night, and shitting?
About a month in, he started to make eye contact and stick his tongue out. Around three months he smiled.
Oh! Bonding! There you are…
Almost three years later and I can’t imagine my life without him. But that first month or two was easily the hardest time for me as a dad.*
Well, there you have it. Hopefully some of you out there reading can use this as inspiration to talk with your own loved ones. Enjoy!
*All I can say is that if you’re in this situation and you feel overwhelmed—try to hang in there as best you can and know that it will get immeasurably better. But also, hindsight being 20/20, don’t be afraid to seek out help of some kind—professional or otherwise.
Great perspective. It wasn’t until after my father was gone that I realized how many questions I had that could never be answered now. A big regret in my life.