Father's Day 2025

A belated post about being a dad for five years now:

• It’s amazing how the 1% of the moments of being a dad/parent makes the other 99% worthwhile. Not gonna sugarcoat, much of the 99% can be gnarly, stressful, challenging and unpleasant. But the seconds or minutes you get of your child’s smile, a hug, or something nice they did for you seems to cover all the negative. Highest ROI ever haha.
• I think fathers got invisible load too, as mothers do. I think all parents do, they just have different loads and handle them differently. Dads are constantly worrying about providing and protecting, thinking about money, putting food on the table, fixing that broken thing in the house, security, are the kids and wife safe… Dads just don’t talk about it, or ask for help in them much.
• I still struggle to be present while fighting on the frontlines of survival. Even now, with survival being less real, it’s still a huge struggle. Maybe this struggle never goes away, because there’s only limited time and energy to take care of all the things that need our care as adults. If not money issue or work, it’s eldercare, our own health, and/or the pandemic. It’s never done.
• Burnout seems more common amongst young parents than we realize. Tell me who doesn’t these days. Most of my peers who are parents seem to be burned out, tired, stuck. Not sure why this seems to be an epidemic. We want to do parenting well, but feels so hard. Or maybe we can take heart in the saying that parenting is only hard for good parents? It’s nice to hear but limited in effect… How did my parents and grandparents ever found the time and energy to have 3, 4 or 8 children?! I could never fathom…
• Being a parent also means confronting all the ways you wished you were parented when you were a child… and not blaming your own parents for any lack on their part, because if I take after them and they did then how I would have done now, they tried their best with all they had at the level of consciousness they were. They can only take me some of the distance, just like I can only take my own kid some of the distance that their long life needs to journey through.
• It might not be a bed of roses kind of image I painted here about fatherhood/parenthood, but I would still choose it if I went back in time. Some things are beautiful because they are hard.

Happy Fathers’ Day, guys!