Fatherhood

I’m not sure whether I’ll post this or not. It is very personal and although I am no stranger to publicly airing certain catharses, this one has put me in an odd state of mind. In all likelihood some version of this will find its way to publication, but at this point I have no idea as to what that will look like. It deals with family, with a long period of time and with relationships. It is an attempt to describe feeling and emotion using mere words and though I would be the first to tell anyone about the power of words, this is an instance where words seem so very insufficient.

I have three sons. My eldest, Anthony, is 26. He has a one year old son, a wonderful fiancé and a career in Southern California. He is a good man, a good father and a responsible member of society. I am very proud of him. My youngest, Matthew, is 20 and serving in the U.S. Army, currently stationed in Afghanistan. My middle son, Timmy, 22, is perhaps the one most like me. He has tremendous but largely unrealized potential. I am equally proud of all three of them not for what they are or are not, but for who they are. My father once told me that if his children have embraced good moral values, high ethics and care for others the likes of which he and my mother modeled for my siblings and me, he has done his job well. By that standard, I have done my job well – my boys are all very good men.

There are other standards – measures of parenthood – that indicate I could have performed better. I don’t think there was ever a parent who never second-guessed his or her execution in this sacred role. But one thing I can say for sure and without qualification is no father ever loved his children more than I love mine. When it comes to love there is no continuum, no gray area – it is forever at the maximum all the time. My boys are all individuals and my relationship with each is uniquely personal, but my love for each of them knows no bounds and is equal in its indescribable strength. I would go to the ends of the Earth for each of them - no holds barred, no limits. And this is true despite the fact that I came into Anthony’s life when he was just past his second birthday. I married his mother and although that marriage did not last long, my role of father to that boy never ended.

Except on rare occasion when it is necessary for clarification, I never refer to Anthony as my stepson. Because he does not carry my surname, occasionally I feel compelled to explain, but even then I most often use terminology like “not my biological son,” however, I avoid even that technically correct language if at all possible. I avoid it because I do not now nor have I ever felt that he was not a part of me. It just doesn't feel natural to call him anything other than my son. I fell in love with him right from the start – there was never any question. Timmy is, and since his little brother was born, always has been my middle son; and of course, Matt has always been my youngest. I have three boys – end of story.

Anthony has known since he was very young that I did not conceive him. Although he has not asked many questions regarding his biological heritage, I know those questions had to exist. And I absolutely understand. Anthony’s biological father exited the picture (for reasons only he knows) soon after I came into it. For more than 20 years, his whereabouts were unknown. Through the miracle of Facebook, Anthony and his biological father have found each other. Anthony informed me right away and I assured him of what he already knew – that I am okay with it.

And I am. And I’m not. It’s not that I feel somehow threatened, that my status as Anthony’s father would somehow be reduced – that is not possible – but at the same time it bothers me when this veritable stranger comes into my world calling my son his son; my grandson his grandson. It makes absolutely no difference in my relationship with my son or my grandson, but being a father means sacrifice - willing sacrifice - and as far as I can see, this guy has made none. It’s about day care, mini-vans, midnight drives to the doctor, stitches, Little League games, camping, girlfriends, snowboarding, birthday parties and myriad other things that come with fatherhood that cannot be redone and that cannot be quantified by any measure. There are a billion moments filled with tears and laughter and everything in between that can only be lived once.

But my son has the right to have his questions (whatever they may be, all of them) answered. I have no intention of interfering with whatever relationship he might build with his biological “father.” I am here in the same capacity as I have been for the past 24 plus years – that of a father who loves and supports his son no matter what. That’s what real fathers do for their children. And I am Anthony, Timothy and Matthew’s real father - past, present and forever more.

Just Another Sunday

The Easter Bunny has not visited my home in many years. No brightly colored eggs, no fancy baskets, no plastic grass that gets everywhere. He (or she) used to, but since there are no longer any young children residing here, my home has been crossed off the Bunny-list. For me, this is just another Sunday. Also absent is the deep religious meaning that today brings to so many around the world, and closer to home, to many of my friends. Those who are familiar with my musings here know that I do not subscribe to nor have I any personal experience with any established religious doctrine. As a scholar of communication, however, I am fascinated by the tradition and history of religion and the influence it has on humanity. But I am not, in a structured sense, a “believer.”

But many of my friends and family are. The fact that we do not share certain beliefs has not negatively affected the closeness or the authenticity of those relationships, indeed differences in religious belief (or lack thereof) is just the beginning in a long list of different and sometimes opposing beliefs. None have ever tried to “convert” me, though many have argued for the legitimacy of what they believe. So do I, and I am not trying to win converts either. I used to have a much different view of religion; Christianity specifically, but organized religion generally appeared to be a game of politics in which the one that ends up with the most followers wins. And it seemed that they would say or do anything to win.

I know better today. Not that there are not those extremists who view their beliefs in a decidedly egocentric and myopic way, but rather that this is not the norm. A vocal, often hypocritical minority within not only fringe groups but also bad apples within mainstream religious organizations formed my impression. Those extremists are also often news, and I was constantly exposed to religion portrayed only at its ugliest. It’s still true today; even the current scandal within the Catholic Church is not a reflection of the vast majority of Catholics, although the church’s inept and bumbling organizational communication is certainly not helping matters any. The point is that through maturation, education and a little bit of common sense, I can view religion without being reductive.

Does that mean that I am doomed to eternal damnation? Perhaps, but if I truly believed that, I certainly would do something about it. I’ll not go into the multitude of contradictions and claims made by differing religions, but I will say that I am absolutely sure that I will get whatever I deserve in the end. I am not living my life for any reward in the hereafter, but rather in the right now. I believe that if I can adhere to the principles that are considered universally virtuous throughout the history of humankind (coincidentally enough, the same principles almost all religions hold as honorable), I will have fulfilled my purpose. Whatever else that purpose entails specifically, I believe we are all meant to strive for the highest moral standards that have always existed.

Of course, that last sentence opens an entirely different can of worms: If we have meaning, where did it come from? I’ll leave that question for another time.

Moving Mountains

My professors, collectively, at California State University, Sacramento are simply amazing. They are and have been professional, dedicated, informed and selfless… they are genuinely interested in the success of their students. These are attributes that cannot be faked. Although this is true for the vast majority of my instructors during the pursuit of my bachelor’s degree, it is universally so for every one in my postgraduate quest for a master’s degree. Every single one. All have helped to shape not my vision of the world per se, but my ability to critically form a vision of my own. All have had a profound and lasting influence on my life. Frequently - check that - daily, something one or more of them has said becomes real in that particular moment in time. Today is no exception.

I know how to write. I have been gifted with some innate ability to string words and punctuation together that seems to make sense not only to me, but to many others as well. It is not the artistic talent I would have chosen, but I am grateful for it nonetheless. But it is not as easy as it might sound – I still have to take what is in my head and articulate it. It’s the articulation that comes naturally; apparently, getting the thoughts out of my head is a different story. One of my professors acknowledges the simplicity of the act while identifying how complex it often is in one simple statement: “Know what you want to say and say exactly that.” Of late, that middle ground that exists between the knowing and the saying has been quite a challenge.

Another former mentor once told me that he thinks in pictures. He was not trying to say that I should or that everyone does, just that he has identified how his thought process works. It helped me to not only understand where he was coming from, but also to think about how I formed my ideas. After thinking (and writing) about it, I came to the conclusion that I do not think in pictures – not as a primary modus operandi anyway. I resolved that I think in words. And though I still put a large degree of stock into that notion, I am beginning to think it’s just not a simple as all that. If it were absolutely true, I would not have as much trouble extracting my ideas and setting them to words. In other words, my thoughts do not begin life in language – it is something more primal than that.

The first part of that statement my professor made it not exactly difficult – I almost always know what I want to say. The problem rises when that knowing doesn’t manifest itself in language, it is more an abstract feeling that must be further translated before it can be expressed symbolically. That is not to say what is happening between my ears does not get communicated in other ways; non-verbal communication occurs all the time. It may or may not be as precise as symbolic communication, but even words need to be translated and interpreted. And when I decode the words of others, I do not necessarily believe that they are taken in and processed as the symbols that conveyed the ideas – they are translated back into abstract feelings that I can relate to. It explains why a moving speech, or scene, or image is moving… symbols alone cannot do that, they only represent something else and what that is can never be absolutely, precisely represented.

But when those symbols are carefully constructed, what they represent can move mountains.

The More I Know

The more I learn, the more I know how much I don’t know. The academic history just over the past 2,500 years, despite the fact that likely more is lost than has been retained, is overwhelming. Studying it is like digging a hole in the sand. So often, just as things appear to become clear in a moment, the moment is gone. I started this quest, in a formal academic sense, late in life, but in reality those haunting questions and the search for understanding has always been with me. Today, that fire is burning brighter than ever.

The frustration is part of the journey, but at some point small segments will begin to crystallize. Indeed, in many respects they already have. And there is something to be said for experiencing much of life’s brutality without any prior theoretical knowledge. Many facets of my unscripted life were experienced unfiltered by any great framework by which it could be analyzed, rationalized or contextualized. It just was. From that, however, a more global perspective has both aided and confounded my post-graduate experience… a brutality of a decidedly different variety.

Core to my inquiry are answers to the questions that cannot be answered empirically. Science is of no use here; it is all about finding meaning and more often than not that meaning is elusive. It’s not just in words or language, communication is part of our everyday lives – it is part of every part of our everyday lives. Nothing happens outside of communication. That is not to say that if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to see or hear it, that it did not happen. I am not interested in such sophomoric philosophical diversions. I am, however, interested in what those diversions mean.

It speaks to a much deeper and, for me, personal quest. Purpose. And that leads to quality, for the way to determine if a thing is good or not is by determining how well it serves its purpose. And that goes for us, too. But it begs the question; before I can judge the quality of my life, first I must determine its purpose. And that is a question I never stop asking myself. For a very long time I never consciously thought about it, though it was always lingering at a subconscious level. From purpose, we get morality, we get ethics, we get beauty - very basically, the ideas of right and wrong have been largely static for the collective history of humankind. It is not a matter of perspective despite what postmodernism would tell us. There is no individual truth: right is right and wrong is wrong – always.

But in the postmodern age, we seem to be able to justify the most egregious behavior - in the name of justice, in the name of religion, in the name of democracy, in the name of nationalism, in no name whatsoever – because we are free to interpret circumstances in a very personal way. And that way is easily manipulated. Yet even the institutions that we hold to dear, that ostensibly take the moral high road in their stated ethos, do not live up to the standards they profess even when they accept a moral obligation to embody them (some even claim to have delivered or created them) – and the global brutality of just the past century is witness to that fact. And often the amoral justification is simply whether or not we can get away with it.

Too often, I’m afraid, we do.

Thankfully, another timeless truth survives: virtue is its own reward.

Author's note: I know this piece is scattered and more than a little unclear - it very much reflected my state of mind when I wrote it.

Perception

After a string of sunny days and mild temperatures, the weather here in Sacramento has turned dark and gloomy again. Rain is immanent and another dose of snow in the Sierras will be applied over the next week or so. Ironically enough, today marks the beginning of spring break. For me, the break is only in the day-to-day duties that are routine for a grad student/teaching associate. I am not required to be on campus for the classes I teach or the ones in which I am enrolled, but that is where the “break” ends. In an effort to avoid the semester-end crunch that has been part of my graduate experience thus far, I plan to take a few days of my week "off" and disappear with my reading so that when I emerge, the heavy lifting will have been largely dealt with. It will not entirely relieve the anxiety that comes naturally with the close of the semester – they are heavily end-loaded – but it will give me the time that I historically lose to what is perhaps my greatest nemesis – procrastination.

And the truth is that I need to get away anyway. As much as I cherish my friendships and the deep relationships I have with those friends (and my family, too), I feel that in some respects, I am losing touch with myself. And I am afraid that feeling of discontent is externally manifested in some odd and impossible to explain intuitions. Although these feelings are based only in some interrelated perceptions, it is the perception of interrelatedness that has me wondering in some cursory and often fleeting way if I really know whom I present to others. That’s an overly complicated way of saying that there is a disconnection between that which I perceive myself as being and how others perceive that same person. And though much has changed in regards to my self-perception, my self-esteem and how I view my place in the world, this disconnection I am feeling now has been a recurring theme throughout my life.

Experience tells me that it cannot be explained, it will pass and that it can be endured. It is nothing to worry about and, furthermore, it is likely nothing anyone else can necessarily perceive. It is just a feeling. I used to want answers – answers that existed outside myself and, in the extreme, existed within others. But no one would or could answer questions that are not really questions in the first place. No, this is part of a process that I am inclined to believe will continue until the day I die – who am I? Who could possibly answer that question better than I?

I have found that key areas of my life – areas that are not particularly connected in any other way – strangely dovetail with each other. And maybe that’s not so strange – the common denominator, after all, is me. My advanced studies in communication have touched every area of my life – past, present and future – and in large part my current quest for knowledge doesn’t just inform me, it forms me. It helps me to understand the why questions and, of course, with every answer comes ten new questions. So it is fitting to take a little excursion to be alone with my studies and myself; this is no time to let a lack of confidence derail the arduous work I have put in over the past few years. The person that emerges will be essentially the same, but I will have a better understanding of who that is. Will that change anything outside myself? Probably not, but it should change my perception of what that is.

Politics as Usual

There was a time not so very long ago where the possibility of working closely with a governmental legislative body was a very real possibility for me. I was actually looking forward to being able to help my state and my country by plying my skills toward the noble and necessary role of the public servant. Not as an elected official, but in service to those who are. It could have been from the inside as a staffer or the outside as an analyst or lobbyist, but in some capacity I thought I could make a difference. Through the series of events and opportunities that have directed me instead to academia, I have serendipitously avoided what would have proven to be a very frustrating existence. The body politic is, by its very nature, adversarial, but it seems more and more that it is much more than that – it is down right hostile.

It might have always been that way, or, it’s possible that continuum is always in flux and we are currently just experiencing the flow towards the hostile side while the ebb of peace and harmony is only a matter of time. And then there’s this bridge in San Francisco I’d like to sell you… All cynicism aside, I have come to the conclusion that it takes a special variety of patience and perseverance to last very long in that role and although the strength of these qualities has grown as I age (as evidenced by my soon to be completed Master’s degree), these are not inherently my strengths. I admire more those who are working in the background than those for whom they are working – our elected officials. Those officials, presumably, are working for us. I would argue that they (as a body, all of them) have not done a very good job.

So instead of contributing in this more direct manner, my path has taken me down the road of education. I don’t teach my students what to believe, but how to form their beliefs. I don’t want them to think what I think, but I want them to think critically. Too many are buying the quick and easy, blindly parroting what on even cursory examination does not pass the smell test. They are jumping on board a bandwagon that is becoming more and more intolerant of dissent. We have a two party system in this country – it wasn’t designed that way, but that is how it evolved. Regardless of how it came to be, it serves a purpose; it is another form of checks and balances. The problem is that the evolution is moving away from compromise and toward an all or nothing paradigm. You’re either with us or against us – there is precious little middle ground. Politics has turned into a game of winners and losers and in the end we all lose.

There is plenty of blame to go around. Republicans blame the Democrats; Democrats blame the Republicans. Here’s the dirty little secret – it’s all of them, and, it’s all of us. Ultimately we have the power to send the whole lot of them home, but we need to be able to think critically. We need to be able to filter fact from fiction and make decisions not based on an “us vs. them” mentality. We have become so polarized that decisions that are literally life and death are being made based on party affiliation – an affiliation that often does not even reflect the ideology that a given party supposedly identifies with. I have said it before and although it is admittedly a gross generalization, there is some truth in it: The only difference between the Republican and Democratic parties is how they spell their name. So when is it going to end? When are our elected officials going to get back to work for us?

Obviously, this is a very simplistic assessment of a very complex problem. As the size and power of government grows, the structural intricacies that perpetuate and exacerbate the divide grow right along with it. The money involved is unimaginable and our debt, equally so. As optimistic as I usually am, this is not a pretty picture. There are signs that some things might be improving, but I don’t believe that a healthcare reform bill – one that I am not particularly happy with – is any kind of indication that the root of the problem has changed. The chasm is still there as the party line voting on pretty much everything shows. They don’t seem to be able to agree on much of anything and increasingly, we, the people, are following blindly along. We’ve got it backwards - we should be showing them how to behave, not the other way around.