“You’ll be a Man, my Son”

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise. 

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools. 

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!' 

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

– “If”, by Rudyard Kipling (1895)

I expect my retirement dinner any day now. That’s when my two sons know in their hearts that they are ready to take full responsibility for their own lives. Maybe they each take me out to dinner – buy me the parental equivalent of the gold watch. And our relationship shifts.

We are now just adults – equals.

Sure, they are still my children and we still share the bonds of family. But I now give up whatever right I once had to interfere. My counsel, if they seek it at all, I will only give them if they ask for it – as I would with a good friend.

I don’t think I ever gave my own Dad his retirement dinner or gold watch. But there was no question he retired himself when I left home for college, although it took me another decade or so before I realized it and took advantage of it. Only then was I able to start relating to him as man-to-man, and to begin to get to know him.

Although we had over twenty more years to become acquainted, when Dad passed away, there was still much about him I didn’t know. I had learned his opinions on many things, but there were many others that we never got to discuss. His private feelings and personal history I knew even less about – although I think we knew each other better than most in our fragmented North American society. Now, I wish I knew even more.

I was thinking about all this the other day. (My sons hate it when I use the expression “the other day”. The other day was very likely several weeks ago – ancient history as far as they’re concerned, certainly not just the other day.)

I was thinking about the poem “If”, by Rudyard Kipling, and how it had come to symbolize the essence of what it means to be a man – for me. For some, the message of this piece is harsh and unforgiving – an invitation to eschew emotion in favour of the “stiff upper lip.” For me, it represents more of an ideal to aspire to – one where commitment and integrity hold sway in the face of emotion strongly felt – the Aristotelian pursuit of balance and reasoned moderation in a world thrown this way and that by transitory excess.

I wondered whether this was a message I would deliver explicitly to my sons. Could I see myself telling them, “This is how you should live your lives?” I couldn’t. Memories of talks with my two boys seemed more forgiving, more about learning to accept themselves and the emotions they were feeling. I’m certain my stance was more protective.

Had my father delivered Kipling’s demanding message to me then? I didn’t recall he’d ever mentioned the poem – I’d discovered it on my own in my youth. Yet, somehow I came to see it as his message to me. Not as a dictum, but as a possibility arising out of inspiration. Because I felt that Dad had lived his live out of commitment to ideals such as these. He had done it for his own reasons, with no thought for whether I would follow his example. I regret now that we’d never had a chance to discuss the poem. He must have known of it. What was his relationship to it? What would he have thought of mine?

Dad’s parenting style was similar to the one I aspired to – perhaps my boys will someday tell me how successfully. He restricted his lessons and advice to matters of safety and decorum. As children we learned to keep safe, and to keep others safe, along with their property. We learned the basics of civilized behavior – civility – as a parent I came to know this as “grace and courtesy.” Neither of my parents told me what to think. My father didn’t push his politics or his worldview or even his personal morality. Although he was a regular church-goer all his life, I never recall being admonished to believe what he did. As a child, I accompanied my parents to church, and had their support in any church activities I took on, but I really felt from a young age that what I came to believe was up to me. Before reaching adulthood, I had that pushed that to its limits, and officially quit the religion of my upbringing.

In the last few years of his life, I came to know Dad better than I ever had. Yet there was much about him I never learned. Who was he? What did he believe? Had he hoped that I would come to share some of his beliefs? Did he see evidence that I had? Even when I’d rejected his creed and taken up a politics more radical than he could accept? During these final years, we talked about the challenges of parenting more than anything else. I came to understand that my father was especially proud of me in my role as a father myself. He told me so on more than one occasion.

I remember the last one clearly. We were chatting in the hospital room where he was recovering from an unusual ailment. Dad was sitting by the window in the warmth of the afternoon sun. He was talking about our decision to raise our boys without television in the home, and to use the freed-up energy to engage more in family meals and activities. Turns out, he’d thought the influence of daily mindless entertainment and news reduced to 20-second sound bites would be deleterious. He called it “the winding down of western civilization.” He also believed that many children were suffering the lack of parental presence in their lives. Dad said my own boys showed evidence – their civility, their integrity, their affability – that my involvement had borne fruit. Clearly he held strong beliefs on the subject, and was gratified that I had somehow come to make many of them my own. He was proud of the young men his grandsons were becoming. Now I wonder, what else did my father believe, that he hoped I would discover for myself? I can no longer ask him as he passed away unexpectedly that same week.

These ruminations came to me in the context of some reflection of my own. What do I believe, and believe is important? After half a lifetime of experience, where do I stand? And who would I want to know this? If these things are important, who would I hope would also come to believe them? While I see that my deepest beliefs might be useful and important for anyone, I would be especially gratified if my boys came to hold some of them.

Like my Dad, I tried not to tell my sons what to believe. I was a little more outspoken than my father was at the dinner table, but did not expect my boys to share my views. In writing them down now, I don’t think I’ll be in a hurry to have them study my thoughts. Perhaps on the far side of forty, they’ll grow curious about what I believed, and how much of it they might have absorbed themselves. At such an age, I would have been intrigued by reading my own father’s philosophy.

For now, my primary purpose is to share my thoughts on what’s important, to anyone who might be inspired – by the process, or by the results. These could be the introduction to my own little handbook of life, my practical "philosophy" for parent and child alike. I wish my father had seen his way to writing such a volume – he had a lot of wisdom to offer the world, wisdom I may someday channel for him. Were I to summarize my present-day beliefs, I would certainly include those ideas I hope my sons will discover. I would also explore which of those ideas I inherited from my own father, and where I set out on my own explorations. For me it’s clear where I chose a different path, and where not – although the comparison may be nuanced.

Much of this blog is comprised of snippets of my practical philosophy, an exploration of things I believe and believe are important. This chapter has taken the form of a dialog across three generations, with shadows of generations before and after those. May this conversation inspire you. May it inspire other fathers – those just starting out, those in the midst of fatherhood, and those in retirement. May it inspire other sons – those lucky enough to have good fathers, and those without. May it inspire their sons too. May it inspire anyone who believes in something – or would like to. And someday, may it inspire my own two boys, and perhaps clear up a few mysteries.


Resources:

• Thanks to developmental psychologist Gordon Neufeld for the concept of the parental retirement dinner.  Of course, much of Dr. Neufeld's emphasis is on avoiding forced early retirement from parenting.
• The Montessori system of childhood education greatly values the cultivation of "grace and courtesy".
• Background on Rudyard Kipling's "IF"