Father's Day

With palms together,

Happy Father's Day to each of you fathers out there. I hope each of you is well and thoroughly enjoying your offspring!

Fathers get shorted a lot. We are so often portrayed as stumble bums or workaholics or drunks or worse. The reality is most of us do a pretty damn good job doing what we believe we need to do for our children and our families. So often, though, these beliefs get in the way of intimacy with our children.

Work is good, but so is home. Fun is good, impulse can be exciting, but we should also value and work on being the steadfast presence of a patient man.

Many of us must overcome years of abusive fathering. Doing things "right" is an echo in my mind. Failure was common. Shame was never far away. Yet, there it is. A contradistinctive model for ourselves.

The trick is to get the right balance. Correct methods are important, as are other fatherly values such as promptness, work, responsibility, and protectiveness. Err to the right, big problem; err to the left, also big problem.

Just as we have three antidotes to the three poisons, so too, we much practice antidotes to extreme responsibility, control, and problem-solving. Practicing compassion, practicing patience, and practicing generosity, may be these antidotes.

Let's practice first and foremost, though, to be present with our children.

With love,

Be well.