To be clear, these blogs about fatherhood and looking into my past isn’t to define what is a bad father or a good father, it is to look at where does the father construct in me come from, it is to learn and see those that has gone before me so that I can see myself and what I have learned. This is not about my father, or other fathers, it’s about me and my inner process and to change that.
Continuing from my previous blog on this topic, I am now going to take a look at when I was still a kid and I had friends and how their fathers sounded like through how the kids talked about their fathers and what their fathers is in comparison to how my father was,,,, as this created a lot of new definitions that I connected to what a father must be or can be or should be.
I remember in school as a young child kids used to come from the weekends and they would share with the other kids what they did, and a lot of the stories would be what the boys did with their fathers, this would be activities like camping and fishing and hunting and riding bikes and going on boat rides and all the things that dads would do with their sons, like teaching their kids what and how to do things, and usually my weekend stories would out using barbeque or just being at home or me walking in the streets and exploring the town I lived in by myself.
Through this interactions I felt that I was missing out on a lot, i did not get any of that from my dad every weekend, we went camping, but once a year maybe, and the other activities like fishing and hunting and riding bikes and going on boats never happened, we did not have all those things to start off with in the first place, this in general made me feel less than the others, like I was less skilled and less of a Man, inferior if you will.
I remember saving up money that I got every month that wasn’t a lot, to go and buy myself fishing equipment, because I wanted to see what it is to fish and how it is done, I knew so little about fishing that I saved up very little money, I had just enough to buy a roll of fishing line and a hook and sinker, I went to the shop with my dad, because I asked him and thought this is how it is supposed to be, me and my dad getting fishing stuff, it ended up with my dad staying in the car and me going into the shop and buying what I thought I needed, I got the stuff and I once again thought it was good, my dadjust asked if I got everything, your line and hook, I said yes, and he said ok so now you must just go and see if you can catch a fish, I then took my fishing equipment one weekend to the dam that was but a hundred meters away from our house at the harbor, I put the hook on the like and the I put it in the water, I sat there for at least an hour and said to myself it isn’t really working and quite, never went back.
I learned how to ride bike from my dad and my grandfather, and I learned how to swim from my father and other family members, but I can say within those basic lines my dad helped a lot.
Overall the point I am exposing within these writings are what I have seen and defined as to what a father must be, and it isn’t a fact, it isn’t something written in a book somewhere of what a father must be, this all comes from observations and from interactions within my world.
My father was a good father in terms of what one knows about being a father the way I learned, we all learn from those that has gone before us. My Life was easy and nice and wonderful, if I compare it to what other people have/had in this world.
Is it the right way? Is it the wrong way? No it isn’t, there is no right or wrong, there is doing what’s best for all life, raising a child must be raising a human being to live what’s best for all life, and that means that the child must be all the child can be. And this is where the Mother/Father roles come in, to be the example. A living example.
Back to the topic, what I noticed here as well is, I never saw as a kid the awesome skills I learned from being on my own, from hanging out with myself a lot and keeping myself occupied and learning about things by myself, how to be creative and how to not have fear. How to stand on my own and how to be responsible for myself to a certain point though.
So my dad did teach me through not teaching me all the things other dad’s apparently taught their children, I say apparently because I don’t know for fact, it was always just hear/told from and by the other kids.
So now fatherhood becomes a comparison, a competition, can I be the best dad, a better dad, will my child be all knowing and strong and independent and knowing how to do all these things, and this is what I can see I created through all the observations, because through the observations I create fears within myself and within that I have already made decisions on how I am going to raise my child one day or not, according to my fear, which is not best for all.
To be continued.
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