The Most Important Men in Our Lives

I got to thinking about the men who play an important role in how we grow as individuals, our fathers.

My father has a very commanding personality. Having been a lecturer since before I was born, he has this natural ability to tell you what to do in the most eloquent yet direct manner. The fact that he can project his voice quite well in a lecture hall had an amplified effect in the house. And like most fathers, he expected you to work, and work hard at that.

My father has always been that beacon that I call north. In that sense, our relationship has always been one where I test the limits, and he pulls me back to where I should be. Perhaps it was this - the fact that he is such a strong influence in my life, that made me so headstrong, although in hindsight, I could just as well have turned out to be overly dependent.

As we grow older, we start to see our parents in ourselves. Over the years, the growing pains may have caused us to rebel excessively and unnecessarily against our parents, perhaps due to our own resistance against those values that we need to adopt to grow.

My father is retired now, although he is still somewhat of a workaholic. He loves to travel, and do everything himself (hence that episode at the house with the ceiling fans). I realised that very few of us know what we want to be when we 'grow up'. Me? I've decided, I want to be just like him.