With Father’s Day this Sunday, I want to write something about being a dad and also hear what our readers had to share.
The best thing about being a Dad I think is all the extra love. The affection you receive from your kids is incredible and getting that makes my life a whole lot better.
Anyway, I’ll write more further below and share some pics of my kids, but let me first share what some of our readers contributed. This is the first time I tapped into our readership to share some content and I love what we got.
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Dave Crawford — Long Beach, California
Fatherhood for me, is full of joy and pride..but also significant responsibility. Fatherhood can’t help but make you think of life in the long term sense. How what you do and say today will impact your life as well as the life of your family. From relationships to health, life priorities to financial investments, fatherhood gives me the perspective and motivation to make sure the decisions I’m making right now have long term benefits for myself and the people I love.
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Robert Sturman, RobertSturmanStudio.com — Santa Monica, California
A good father is the sun. Rays of light, selflessly providing, nurturing, caring for his family. That’s what I think of when I think of true fatherhood.
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Wesley Hein, LifeTwo.com — Santa Monica, California
Fatherhood has been everything I ever expected and much more. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. The big surprise for me is that otherwise mundane things like watching TV, eating dinner, driving, etc. are all fun when done with my kids but no so without them.
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Matthew Scott, StrategicIncubator.com — West Linn, Oregon
Four years ago on Christmas Eve, my father & I left my San Diego home to get my mother a last-minute gift.
Within minutes, my father spoke about things that a son is not always prepared to hear. He told me what he wanted if he were to suddenly pass away.
I asked him if he had any regrets about his personal or professional life? He placed his calloused hands, from years of working on an Arkansas farm, upon
my knee and said to me, “I have none. And when you find the work that matters, Matthew, you will never work another day for the rest of your life.”
One last question, “Dad, if you had to pick a way to go, how would you want to go? My dad answered instantly, “That would be easy. I would be playing
tennis with my hooligan buddies and hit the game winning backhand and then have a painless heart attack.”
Exactly nine days later my father passed away after experiencing a massive heart attack while playing tennis with his buddies.
The next day, I resigned my position as a Vice President of a Biotechnology company in San Diego.
I have not “worked” in over four years since I found the work that matters to me.
Thanks, Dad.
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Ken Jolley — Phoenix, Arizona
Think of all the things you enjoy. If cost was of no consequence and you could take off at this moment and do anything you wanted, what would you do? What gives you the greatest joy? Is it flying off to a private island, taking a relaxing fly fishing trip to Montana, climbing Mt Everest, or one of a thousand other things? Where does watching your son hit the winning basket in the last game of the season rate? How about listening to your daughter play the piano all the while wondering where she got her artistic talents? Now here is the real question If these moments were taken from you, what price would you pay to get them back?
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Jeff Rose, The Rose Group — Santa Monica, CA
Fatherhood is a tradition… filled with moments of knowledge gleaned from my dad, my friends’ fathers and day by day….my own life as a father.
This year, two days before Father’s Day I traveled across the country to see my friend Mark’s son graduate high school; a great father’s day gift for Mark and a moment 30 years ago that he could never share with his own dad…who passed away when we were 16. At the time his dad wasn’t much older than Mark and I are today. When I return home tomorrow to spend father”˜s day with my own children, I will live that day as if it is my last father’s day, as that is how I live every day as a dad.
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Kit Cooper, Quality of Life Project — Pacific Palisades, CA
I am extremely fortunate that I get to spend about three hours a day during the workweek with my kids I’ve got the 6:30am-8:00am shift and then I’m with them from 5pm-7pm playing with them and helping with dinner, bath and bedtime.
My wife Misha and I have two kids. Levi is four and Gemma is a year-and-a-half. Misha is an incredible mom. She’s like an expert having worked as a children’s therapist right before we had kids. She makes them feel loved all the time. At the same time, she is a big fan of structure and behavior modification to hopefully help them thrive later when they are on their own. My point is that most of what I get out of being a father is due to how my wife has raised our kids.
Here are my thoughts with my fourth Father’s Day this weekend. I’m sure as my kids get older, I’ll have different insights;
– Being a Dad means giving and getting the love. One day I was giving Levi a piggy back ride when he said, “Daddy, you’re the daddy I always wanted.” I was like, “Ah man, that is so sweet!” To which Levi said, “You forgot to say I’m the son you’ve always wanted!”
– Being a Dad means seeing the beauty of fresh, uncluttered, imaginative minds. This is an almost cliché observation but it’s awesome to witness. Given their maturity, they come up with ten times more intellectual observations than adults. You realize just how much more powerful and our minds would be if we experienced less stress and allowed ourselves more still, creative time.
– Being a Dad means some hilarious, random lines. One day Levi was eating a slice of pizza naked and out of nowhere informed me, “My pe#@s is going to eat this slice of pizza!!”
– Being a Dad means torture assignments that had to have been devised during the Spanish Inquisition. Picking up 26 crushed cheerios off a floor and removing smashed banana from a rug at 6:08 in the morning is definitely a form of penance. We haven’t approached the teenage years yet; I’m sure we can expect some serious hazing then too.
– I know I’m getting ahead of myself but being a Dad means that hopefully in the last third of my life I’ll be surrounded by grandkids My business partner for many years Alberto Fernandez gave me this piece of wisdom when we talked about having kids awhile back. I can’t wait to meet my kids’ kids when that day comes. The reality is how much will that add to the quality of our lives to have little kids running around us when we’re in that phase of our lives?
And before I go, let me thank my own father Jay Cooper for the incredible Dad he has been to me. There are some traits that I got due solely by being raised by him: being humble, working hard, loving nature, valuing money but not being impressed by money, being independent, exploring the world. He’s still teaching me stuff.
Here are a few pics. Please share your take on fatherhood via comments.
