Writing Task Mentor – David

“Be a better man than I was”

This was said by my father when I was young, I didn’t understand what he meant by that as I thought he was a good man in my eyes. He helped my mom, taught me life lessons such as honesty and independence, and helped me get into college. I asked him later on in life and he explained what he meant by that. He told me about his upbringing, and how he had both parents in his life, but one wasn’t always present, that being his father. He best described him as a workaholic, a person who experiences an inability to limit the amount of time they spend on work despite negative consequences such as damage to their relationships or health. He would often work from sunrise to sunset to the point where he didn’t see himself at all growing up and vaguely remembers what his face looked like.

Then it hits me, that my father does the same thing to me that happened to him. I don’t live with my father, I usually see him twice a month on weekends and barely have time to talk due to him working in construction. He repeated a generational cycle of being absent in their child’s life. I can’t blame my father for this because he lacked guidance from his father and he’s aware that can’t always be there for me. So for me, if I ever become a father I want to make sure to always be there for my kids so that they never have to experience the absence and longing my father felt growing up. I realized that being a better man than my father was not about criticizing his actions or judging his choices. It was about learning from his experiences, understanding the impact of his upbringing on his parenting style, and breaking the cycle of absenteeism in the next generation.