July 2015
Dear Finley and Henry,
As your dad, one of my jobs (maybe my biggest job) is to teach you what it means to be a man. It’s something I think about a lot.
I think about the men who have featured prominently in my life. Your great grandfathers, neither of whom you got to meet, one of whom rode motorcyles and drank beer into his eighties, the other of whom always left the house with a belt that matched his shoes, a happy tune whistling through his lips, and charity in his heart. Both manly men. I think about my dad, your Grandpa Mike, who has succeeded in carrying a significant amount of boyishness through to his manliness, an achievement we should all strive for in some measure. I think about Gord Hasson, one of my first bosses, a retired tractor dealer who could fix anything, build anything and operate anything. I think about our neighbour Adreean, whom you know well, who would wake up every day, take care of his cattle, work an 8 hour day running a chainsaw for the county and come home to more farm work. And still he lept at every chance to help his neighbours. The only difference retirement seems to have made is that Adreean is more generous than ever with his time.
I think of the men in popular culture. The great examples of old-fashioned, morally grounded, strong and clever men. John Wayne. James Bond. Cool Hand Luke. Serious men willing and able to solve serious problems. I think too of the pop culture buffoons that are so common and, in some cases, so beloved. Phil from Modern Family. Homer Simpson. Every TV dad that can’t use the oven, change a diaper or dress himself.
I think of the great women I know. Your mother. My mother. My Grandmother. Every bit as strong, tough, smart and capable as the great men in my life - sometimes even more so. But not manly. There is something about manliness distinct from strength, smarts and ability.
I’ve boiled all my thinking down to this:
To be a man is
to know the right thing to do in any situation;
to employ the skills and abilities you have acquired over a lifetime, to try to do it; and
to do so even when it is possible that all your skills and abilities are grossly inadequate for the challenge at hand
It’s in the third element that I see the real essence of men. There lies the charm of a well-intentioned, bumbling Homer Simpson. But there too lies the heroism of the soldier going over the top of his trench to save a comrade. There lies the courage to experiment with bold, outlandish solutions that sometimes achieve spectacular success and vault our collective knowledge forward by a generation. There lies the cause of our equally spectacular failures, our many deaths by misadventure and the relative shortness of our lifespans. Our greatness and our vulnerability all in one place.
I want you to have a strong sense of right and wrong. I want you to develop skills and abilities that empower you to make the world a better place. And I want you to have a touch of that recklessness, bravery, stubbornness, or whatever it is exactly, that we have come to associate with manliness. When challenges rise before you, and when you know you are in the right, but you don’t know for sure that you will succeed, I hope you will step forward more often than you step back.
Love,
Dear Old Dad