Des DownUnder On Sundays

By Desmond Rutherford | ADELAIDE, AUSTRALIA -- Loving Father

Everyone wants to feel safe, but we also want our lives to mean something. We want to look back on our lives with a sense of achievement. Those of us who are successful fathers are inclined to look upon our children as our greatest accomplishment. We gave them life, and somehow we have had more pleasure in seeing them grow than we did in the moment of their conception; hard though that might be to believe at the time.

Sadly, not all fathers have prepared their children for life, they have demanded that their children assume and extend their own role.That is not success; enslaving your own children to your own concept of life’s purpose...it’s just wrong.

Instead of encouraging their kids to be free spirits, with their own destinies, they have sought immortality through reincarnating their own ego, their own idea of themselves, by means of their children.

Instead of nurturing, protecting and preparing them for adult life, they have locked their kids into their own expectations, their own selfish wants, and indoctrinated their children with inappropriate beliefs from the past. These kids are expected to live as clones of their parents, forgoing their own unique experiences; often resulting in a chronic inability to handle contact with reality.

Yet that is the very thing that those fathers feel is safe; safe for them, and safe for their children…but it isn’t.

It is true that there is a feeling of immortality in seeing our offspring grow and develop into young adults, with all the hope and clamour of life, but we must rejoice in their ability to bring new experiences to life, and new life to older experiences, free from the restrictions that we parents might have had to endure.

A child unprepared for personal independence becomes an adult without individuality, unappreciative of diversity, and unable to live life fully, freely and completely, in a better world.

Good fathers do not assume the authority of gods over their children, nor presume upon their children to blindly obey priests and their chosen gods. Rather, they teach them independence, to rebel against seeking father’s permission, and to discover the reality of their own time and place, in search of peace, love and wholesome fulfilment.

Regardless of the gender of the parent, the caring father figure will listen intently as their young person proclaims their sexuality, advising, “Well, you are just going to have to be the best and happiest person you can be, no matter which sexuality you find appealing.”

And of course that smiling young face replies, with much love and respect,

“Happy Father’s Day!”