On fatherhood and advice
From time to time I reflect upon life generally and the fact that human beings continue to learn new things throughout their existence. As a parent this inevitably includes a constantly-evolving relationship with one’s offspring. I’ve blogged before about feeling humbled (in a good way) upon experiencing a sense of personal ‘growing up’ as my kids progressed from childhood – when they were almost wholly dependent – to becoming adults in their own right and going off to ‘do their own thing’ in whatever avenue of life they had chosen.
Gradually the parent has to accept that he is no longer responsible for their lives and needs to forge a new relationship with them, especially when they become expert at activities or things that, in my case as a father, I have never been interested in, never mind those that I consider that I once was and/or still am.
Over the weekend my son, who lives abroad, flew back to the UK with a medical problem. At the beginning of the year he had been the innocent party in a traffic accident in which he suffered a wrist injury. He was patched up and sent home having been prescribed a course of physio treatment. Things didn’t improve. The physio itself caused him considerable pain and he has had serious discomfort in his wrist ever since. Several times he returned to the hospital asking for another x-ray or scan but was told these were not necessary and that he should continue the physio sessions.
Last week he went to a private German medical clinic where he learned that his wrist was badly broken in three places and that, since it had been in this state for over four months, this probably needed operating upon by a specialist surgeon. They recommended units in either Germany or Switzerland. His purpose in coming to London was to see a ‘second opinion’ surgeon. Yesterday he flew back home in advance of the operation, now scheduled to take place next week, and will return to the UK next Sunday.
As a result, I spent a rare forty-eight hours and two evening meals with my son, during which we had some excellent conversations upon all manner of things including his business as it stands and his plans for its future. I found it a bit of an education and quite fascinating.
Back when I was a kid – eons ago – my own father drilled into me the importance of getting a professional qualification, this on the basis that this would ensure that I would never starve, whatever career or life path (whether in said profession, or something quite different) I followed thereafter.
Looking back now, the context of this advice was, of course, the aftermath of WW2 when for totally understandable reasons one’s personal imperatives were deemed to be rebuilding a civilian life, security, order, certainty … and security again.
I can still recall the reasoning behind my father’s advice back then – “I don’t care whether you all become taxi drivers afterwards if that is what you want to do. But if you’ve got a professional qualification behind you, you’ll always be able to make a living somewhere, somehow.”
Ironically enough, I can also remember his advice – offered generally to the family when we were in our twenties – that we should all seriously consider going to make our lives in the United States of America. At the time the UK was in the throes of enduring a not-altogether-successful period of Labour government featuring economic chaos and pretty-constant union-led industrial unrest and my father openly admitted that he saw the United States as being the last bastion of capitalism. If he was our age, he told me and my siblings, he would definitely be considering going there himself.
None of us did, of course.
Like any father and his offspring, my son and I have had our ups and downs over the years. In some ways he is very like me and in others he is quite different. Being dyslexic, academic study and qualifications were never his thing. Furthermore – in terms of interests – ours were almost completely divergent.
I can take my hat off to him in one sense. He never grew to love the same things as I did because he was never ‘into’ them. You could almost guarantee that if I came across something new and became enthusiastic about it, he would become interested in something completely different.
Therefore I can say, without fear of contradiction and/or being at all proud of it from my own perspective, that whatever he has achieved in life is entirely down to him: it certainly never involved any encouragement or ‘coaching’ from me. No nepotism did I – or could I – bring to bear in potentially gaining him an internship, or a ‘leg-up’ via a pal, in something he was considering as a career.
I guess that’s another thing I have learned over the past seven decades.
As a dutiful son myself, who as a default always tended to accept and take my father’s life advice, I suppose I did okay – I’m still here after all.
However – in some ways – I have always carried with me a slight feeling in my gut that I might have done better, and been happier, if I had just followed my instincts and ‘done my own thing’.
In contrast, my own son didn’t have that choice or problem. He always did his own thing – if you like, because (courtesy of his dyslexia and other circumstances) he had to.
These days he works very hard, partly because this is necessary for his young business to survive, and worries that he has got his life balance wrong. I worry about that too, for his sake. Yet I also know that on a day-to-day basis he deals constantly with existential issues, many seriously wealthy and/or powerful businessmen and complex problems that – in this day and at my stage of life – I could now never handle.
And probably couldn’t have handled in my heyday either – but then again, I suppose, you never know these things unless and until you try.
