We don’t really celebrate Father’s Day in my household. Largely, this is because my family is a mobile, mini-UN – I’m Egyptian-American, my wife, also Egyptian, was raised in Sweden and currently my family is living in Cairo. As such, synchronizing holidays is usually more trouble than it’s worth and often anachronistic (can’t imagine many in Egypt get together for Thanksgiving dinner).
Still, Father’s Day in recent years has nonetheless been an opportunity for reflection. It’s both a solemn occasion, reminding me of my dad’s passing seven years back, and a chance to be grateful for my own foray into fatherhood. With each year, too, I realize how intertwined my past is with my present. A recent Freakonomics podcast highlighted this point all the more.
In the episode Things Our Fathers Gave Us, Dubner and Levitt recount the most important life lessons that their fathers taught them. By design I’m sure, I too began thinking about the gems that my dad passed down to me over the years. As it turns out, the most important bit of knowledge my father imparted on me was likely unintentional.
In his younger years, my dad was quite the risk taker. The fact that he decided to move to America when he had no opportunities lined up, little knowledge of the language and a wife and child back in Alexandria underscores this fact. This proclivity of his ebbed and flowed once we were all settled down in New York. He would continue his entrepreneurial ways, opening first a clothing store and soon after transitioning to a halal grocery store, but these were always side endeavors as he spent the bulk of his working years a civil servant for New York City. He would at times overreach and thereafter often overcompensate. When he found that sweet spot though, he was at his happiest.
And therein lies the somber economic truth of fatherhood. We all, as men, want to do something grand. When we step past bachelorhood, however, we can no longer take the risks that previously drove us to do great things. Once we cross over into married life and have kids, the opportunities to throw caution to the wind dramatically decrease – or, at least, are dramatically less viable. We get set in our ways and, especially if we dare to take a chance and fail, resolve to fly under the radar and “play it safe.”
Put differently, there is an invisible hand that guides all fathers toward a mundane life.
My father – through his resolve and determination; his successes and failures – taught me to always be on the lookout for those fleeting opportunities to do what you truly want in life. In short, to be happy, you MUST take risks – calculated, considered, but risks nonetheless.
Every moment of my life that exceeds the ordinary is owed in no small way to this priceless lesson my dad taught me.
Thank you, baba. Allah yerhamak…
Tags: Intellectual Podcasts, Parenthood
