Mentalechoes

When I was twenty years old, I never knew my fathers mind. It seemed all the choices he made in life were wrong, and even I could see that back then, even though I knew I had very little real experience at anything to do with adult life. Twenty years later I can look now at my dads life and understand a lot more of why he made the choices that he did, and why his life went the path it did.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot the last few days. I understand why dad got divorced, and why he went into the relationships with those women that came after. I understand this because to some extent I’ve lived to see being faced with the same choices. The difference is I did not repeat his mistakes, because I knew what they cost.

As sons, we all learn from our fathers, however all my lessons were seeing what roads not to go down; what behaviour was wrong; and what thinking would eventually lead to tragedy. I suppose in the end I feel lucky that at least I have been able to take something positive from his role model despite his actions that were anything but.

I have met a lot of people in life complain that they had a rough start because of their family. Fathers, or mothers that never showed them enough attention, or love, or gave them enough material things to satisfy them. Some of these people genuinely had tragic childhoods, while others only perceive it so when the reality was, they had quite sheltered upbringings. If it’s one thing I can say now with conviction, it’s that we as individuals must go beyond the limitations that surrounded us during our early years, and become better than the sum of the individuals who were with us at that time.

If we don’t, we will only walk the same paths.

Andy.

Tags: sons, understanding