Is it Father's Day Already?

My father is no longer in my life to wish a Happy Father's day.  He died at the age of 90 after living a very fulfilling life. I thought I knew him well, but learned his friends knew another side of him and when they shared with me their experiences, I learned some completely new facets of his life. I'm still learning from my Dad, today, especially this week when I have been writing about him.

I have some other wonderful fathers whom I would like to honor:

Dear Son-in-Law:

I am so happy you are in my daughter's life and are the father of those wonderful kids. You work so hard to provide a good secure life, give them guidance and love and most of all, you do things together that are fun! I know you give your kids enough of yourself that they have a good self esteem. That's so important that they all know how much their Dad loves them and shows it!

Dear #1 Grandson
You have had your share of challenges and still managed to get through them and continue to achieve, but always you have been a good father to the boys. You have taught them good values, given them a strong foundation and openly shared your faith and love. I can hardly wait for them to grow up and see the wonderful young men they will be. I am so proud to see the Dad you have become!

Dear #2 Grandson
You are quite an extraordinary father balancing your very tough work life with your family life and managing to be 100 percent there for both as well as taking care of your other grandmother. It has been amazing to see how you have grown with your delightful little ones and all the effort you make to keep them all happy and well cared for. I just love that they have you in their lives to call "Daddy"!

Dear #1 Brother,

James D Deane

It's surprising how quickly the years have passed by, and here we are, both of us, great grandparents. You, the Great Grand Dad and patriarch of your side of the family. It's hard for me to keep track of all your progeny! I know you have been so instrumental in their upbringing, and well being. I admire how you spread the love throughout 3 generations and still manage to live a good life, especially with all the medical details you have to attend to.


Dear #2 Brother,
It seems so incredible to me that not only are you a father, but also a Grandfather. It seems like it was just yesterday you were my "baby" brother. Does your grandson call you Grandpa? I can't fathom it! Not only do I know how you put your heart into being a Dad, I know your love and talent passes down to your grandson, too.

Dear #2 Nephew,
You grew up so fast and so far away, I hardly know you. Suddenly you were back home and a young man with a son of your own. I was flabbergasted how quickly you grew into fatherhood. And here you are with an almost grown son, who I see is the image of his Dad. I know you work hard, but I suspect you have also taught him how to enjoy playing hard too!

Dear Brother-in-Law, "Ampa",
I can't imagine how hard it might have been for you to step into the role of Grandfather to such a large brood of grandchildren. You have admirably taken on the role like a duck to water. It is obvious all the kids love you dearly. You are such a good influence and stabilizing force in their life, and a man they all can look up to.  I'm so glad you are there for my nieces and nephews.

To the memory of my dear Nephew,
I still love you, will still miss you forever. Your beautiful daughter looks so much like you, it is almost like you are here with her. I delight in seeing the lovely young lady she is growing into. She hasn't forgotten you and everyone in the family watches over her and keeps your memory alive for her. We didn't see what kind of Daddy you would be, but I know for sure, you would have been the best, as you were such a true, open feelings, young man.

Dear Chi Man
I am delighted that you came into T's life and give her the love and support she deserves. I am so grateful that you are a good Dad to the two who needed you so much. What a incredibly strong influence you have had on their lives. And I'm so happy that you've got the youngest to raise up as the special little one she is.

Dear One,
I admire the kind of father I have seen in you and the ongoing relationship you now have with your grown up son. I'm so glad to see you have given him the freedom to spread his wings, supported all his creativity and been both mother and father all those years. You remind me a lot of my own father.

To the missing father,
Oh, how I wish you could see the incredible shining soul your son has become. I would like to think you would be so proud of him and the multi-faceted young man he is. I am glad that he had his Papa in his life for his early years. You were such a loving, doting father. I wish you healing and peace.


To Moses, William, Rick, Mike, Dacia, Jason (RIP),
I never got to know you as fathers. For the one's whose children are my grand nieces and nephews, I hope you all know what an influence you have had on your children. They are all such beautiful souls. You can be so proud of them. They all love you and that speaks a lot.


To all,
I have often thought that wishing someone "Happy father's day" was so inadequate to the message meant to be said behind it. The unspoken is so hard to express in a culture where acknowledging and accepting deep feelings and respect is somewhat taboo. We don't know how to say, "I honor you, my father, this day." I wonder if it will ever catch on.

9 Epiphanies You May Never Have Thought About.

#1. You are not your mind.

The first time I heard somebody say that, I didn’t like the sound of it one bit. What else could I be? I had taken for granted that the mental chatter in my head was the central “me” that all the experiences in my life were happening to.

I see quite clearly now that life is nothing but passing experiences, and my thoughts are just one more category of things I experience. Thoughts are no more fundamental than smells, sights and sounds. Like any experience, they arise in my awareness, they have a certain texture, and then they give way to something else.

If you can observe your thoughts just like you can observe other objects, who’s doing the observing? Don’t answer too quickly. This question, and its unspeakable answer, are at the center of all the great religions and spiritual traditions.

#2. Life unfolds only in moments.

Of course! I once called this the most important thing I ever learned. Nobody has ever experienced anything that wasn’t part of a single moment unfolding. That means life’s only challenge is dealing with the single moment you are having right now. Before I recognized this, I was constantly trying to solve my entire life — battling problems that weren’t actually happening. Anyone can summon the resolve to deal with a single, present moment, as long as they are truly aware that it’s their only point of contact with life, and therefore there is nothing else one can do that can possibly be useful. Nobody can deal with the past or future, because, both only exist as thoughts, in the present. But we can kill ourselves trying.

#3. Quality of life is determined by how you deal with your moments, not which moments happen and which don’t.

I now consider this truth to be Happiness 101, but it’s amazing how tempting it still is to grasp at control of every circumstance to try to make sure I get exactly what I want. To encounter an undesirable situation and work with it willingly is the mark of a wise and happy person. Imagine getting a flat tire, falling ill at a bad time, or knocking something over and breaking it – and suffering nothing from it. There is nothing to fear if you agree with yourself to deal willingly with adversity whenever it does show up. That is how to make life better. The typical, low-leverage method is to hope that you eventually accumulate power over your circumstances so that you can get what you want more often. There’s an excellent line in a Modest Mouse song, celebrating this side-effect of wisdom: As life gets longer, awful feels softer.

#4. Most of life is imaginary.

Human beings have a habit of compulsive thinking that is so pervasive that we lose sight of the fact that we are nearly always thinking. Most of what we interact with is not the world itself, but our beliefs about it, our expectations of it, and our personal interests in it. We have a very difficult time observing something without confusing it with the thoughts we have about it, and so the bulk of what we experience in life is imaginary things. As Mark Twain said: “I’ve been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.” The best treatment I’ve found? Cultivating mindfulness.

#5. Human beings have evolved to suffer, and we are better at suffering than anything else.

Yikes. It doesn’t sound like a very liberating discovery. I used to believe that if I was suffering it meant that there was something wrong with me — that I was doing life “wrong.” Suffering is completely human and completely normal, and there is a very good reason for its existence. Life’s persistent background hum of “this isn’t quite okay, I need to improve this,” coupled with occasional intense flashes of horror and adrenaline are what kept human beings alive for millions of years. This urge to change or escape the present moment drives nearly all of our behavior. It’s a simple and ruthless survival mechanism which works exceedingly well for keeping us alive, but it has a horrific side effect: human beings suffer greatly by their very nature. This, for me, redefined every one of life’s problems as some tendril of the human condition. As grim as it sounds, this insight is liberating because it means: 1) that suffering does not necessarily mean my life is going wrong, 2) that the ball is always in my court, so the degree to which I suffer is ultimately up to me, and 3) that all problems have the same cause and the same solution.

#6. Emotions exist to make us biased.

This discovery was a complete 180 from my old understanding of emotions. I used to think my emotions were reliable indicators of the state of my life — of whether I’m on the right track or not. Your passing emotional states can’t be trusted for measuring your self-worth or your position in life, but they are great at teaching you what it is you can’t let go of. The trouble is that emotions make us both more biased and more forceful at the same time. Another survival mechanism with nasty side-effects.

#7.  All people operate from the same two motivations: to fulfill their desires and to escape their suffering.

Learning this allowed me to finally make sense of how people can hurt each other so badly. The best explanation I had before this was that some people are just bad. What a cop-out. No matter what kind of behavior other people exhibit, they are acting in the most effective way they are capable of (at that moment) to fulfill a desire or to relieve their suffering. These are motives we can all understand; we only vary in method, and the methods each of us has at our disposal depend on our upbringing and our experiences in life, as well as our state of consciousness. Some methods are skillful and helpful to others, others are unskillful and destructive, and almost all destructive behavior is unconscious. So there is no good and evil, only smart and dumb (or wise and foolish). Understanding this completely shook my long-held notions of morality and justice.

#8. Beliefs are nothing to be proud of.

Believing something is not an accomplishment. I grew up thinking that beliefs are something to be proud of, but they’re really nothing but opinions one refuses to reconsider. Beliefs are easy. The stronger your beliefs are, the less open you are to growth and wisdom, because “strength of belief” is only the intensity with which you resist questioning yourself. As soon as you are proud of a belief, as soon as you think it adds something to who you are, then you’ve made it a part of your ego. Listen to any “die-hard” conservative or liberal talk about their deepest beliefs and you are listening to somebody who will never hear what you say on any matter that matters to them — unless you believe the same. It is gratifying to speak forcefully, it is gratifying to be agreed with, and this high is what the die-hards are chasing. Wherever there is a belief, there is a closed door. Take on the beliefs that stand up to your most honest, humble scrutiny, and never be afraid to lose them.

#9. Objectivity is subjective.

Life is a subjective experience and that cannot be escaped. Every experience I have comes through my own, personal, unsharable viewpoint. There can be no peer reviews of my direct experience, no real corroboration. This has some major implications for how I live my life. The most immediate one is that I realize I must trust my own personal experience, because nobody else has this angle, and I only have this angle. Another is that I feel more wonder for the world around me, knowing that any “objective” understanding I claim to have of the world is built entirely from scratch, by me. What I do build depends on the books I’ve read, the people I’ve met, and the experiences I’ve had. It means I will never see the world quite like anyone else, which means I will never live in quite the same world as anyone else — and therefore I mustn’t let outside observers be the authority on who I am or what life is really like for me. Subjectivity is primary experience — it is real life, and objectivity is something each of us builds on top of it in our minds, privately, in order to explain it all. This truth has world-shattering implications for the roles of religion and science in the lives of those who grasp it.