ood night Papa, Love you Papa (Thoughts on being a Son and a Father)

This year on Father’s Day as I found my mind overwhelmed with memories of my father. I wondered where was the healing the time brings. As the youngest of four siblings, I was the object of my father’s adoration. His childhood nickname for me was King. At all formal dinners at our home, I would be introduced as the “King of the house” to all the guests, who would then proceed to dote on me because of the glorious introduction I had just received. Many around me, siblings included, felt that my father had spoiled me beyond reformation, and I would grow up to become a dysfunctional, self-centred individual. If I am being honest, there were moments my conscience agreed with them. I was a narcissistic, selfish and arrogant child constantly indulged by my father. This indulgence, however, was not limited merely to exalted praise or the gratification of whims. There was much more. It included the considerable time my father would spend with me, the interest with which he would listen to my often absurd and repetitive childish thoughts, the eagerness with which he would wait for me to join him for meals and the countless nights I would fall asleep in his lap. I was a rather difficult child. Nevertheless, every trespass, misadventure and failure of mine was met with his forgiveness. My father was as giving as I was undeserving.

My fondest and most vivid memories of him are not of any singular moment but more of what is best described as an emotional memory or a feeling. It was the absolute unconditional love I felt in his embrace. In those embraces, nothing else mattered. I was forgiven. I was protected. I felt invincible. I don’t recall the precise moment, but as I grew older, my misplaced sense of entitlement nurtured through years of adulation gradually and much to my surprise, transformed into an overwhelming sense of obligation. I felt that in loving me so unconditionally, my father had conferred a debt upon me. It was a debt I would not know how to repay until many years later.

Good night, papa. Love you, papa. These words have been uttered by my youngest child with ritualistic consistency ever since he became capable of coherent speech. Not a day has gone by, not one, when he has not uttered these words just before going to bed. On occasions I am away, the ritual remains and transpires over FaceTime or a phone call, albeit without the customary kiss on the cheek. These six simple words, however, mean much more to me than the ritual they have become. They are innocence, affection and obligation. They are kindness, devotion and consideration. Every night they are a reminder of the joy and fulfilment of fatherhood. Every night they also let me relive the love I felt in my father’s embrace.

Parenthood is the epicentre of humanity. It is essential to how humanity perpetuates biologically as well as how it perpetuates love. A loved child often, and if life does not play too many cruel jokes, creates a loving parent. Thus, a cycle of love propagates in human society. 

It was only when I was blessed with children of my own that I began to fully fathom the magnitude of the incredible and everlasting gift my father had given me years ago. The vices I had acquired in consequence of having been indulged beyond measure as a child could not sustain the purity of the love I had experienced. The narcissism and selfishness instinctively and precipitously transformed into an overwhelming desire and need to love. The greatest reward of having been loved unselfishly lies in its bestowment of the facility to love in return. In loving me unconditionally, my father had taught me to love. Having found and experienced forgiveness gave me the strength to forgive; and being treated with patience and tolerance inspired me to be patient and tolerant in kind. I also realised that in loving someone as profoundly as my father had loved me, I would finally be able to repay my father’s debt and how exhilarating and joyous this repayment would be.

Parenthood is the epicentre of humanity. It is essential to how humanity perpetuates biologically as well as how it perpetuates love. A loved child often, and if life does not play too many cruel jokes, creates a loving parent. Thus, a cycle of love propagates in human society. An unloved child or a parentless child may also overcome the burden of his or her misfortune and grow up to become a loving parent - for this is inherent in most of us - and thereby initiate a cycle of love. This cycle of love inspires the best in all of us. The absence of it often inspires the worst. Each loving parent and each child loved dearly spreads kindness and compassion in the world.

Fatherhood and motherhood are perhaps the only relationships humans experience that represent and epitomise a love that is innately true and unconditional, in which envy has no abode and giving is far more gratifying than receiving. Hence despite the immense responsibility and obligation, it is a love that inspires bliss and fulfilment unlike anything else. From the moment we become parents, we discover a transformative extension to our lives and realise that henceforth the joys and sorrows of our children have not only become integral to ours but of even greater import. Each happy moment and delight in their lives brings far more contentment than any of ours could, and every cut and every pain is felt exceedingly more than one’s own.

Yet as entwined as our lives become with those of our children and as dependent, we grow on them as they were once on us, inevitably as our children become adults, we must let them go just as our parents did before us. However hard that might be, there comes a time our children must write their own story. We hope that we have prepared them well for this journey and the lessons we passed on to them will guide them, that their aspirations will find realisation, their accomplishments far surpass our own, and they experience much more than we were ever able to.

As I reminisce about my father and write about fatherhood, it occurs to me how unbearable a burden it must be for the less prosperous among us, the inability to fulfil an obligation that supersedes all else. Fathers who are unable to provide for their children, children who look eagerly upon their fathers in hope of some remit of their needs and a refuge from endless despair and children who have no fathers. The next time you cling to your child with affection or find peace in your father’s embrace, think of them. Perhaps you can offer some reprieve to a child not bound to you by blood, if only for a moment, so that they too can experience the purest love and kindness humanity is capable of.

The writer is an entrepreneur based in the United States and the United Kingdom. He tweets @viewpointsar and can be reached at: sar@aya.yale.edu