Reflecting Inward - Thoughts on Fatherhood and Self-Actualization

"Every generation was better than the one before." That's what I've been told about my father's side of the family. My great-grandfather was known as the meanest man in town. My grandfather was know for his withdrawn, private, and often angry nature. My own father struggled with his own resentments and temper, and now I am digging out the the final pieces of this legacy and attempting to free my son from whatever it is inside our genetic code that makes us this way. Or perhaps it's nurture and not nature? Either way, the responsibility is on me.

This journey is a large part of why I write these days. To reflect through writing. To preserve my thoughts. To share with friends and strangers alike in the hopes that my experiences might be of some use to another.

I've spent much of my life searching for meaning and purpose. I joined the Army partially as a solution to this problem. I quit four years later after discovering that it would not offer me the validation I sought. I knew what I was and was not doing at that job. I wasn't making a difference. I was just a cog in an enormous machine, grinding towards... towards what? Certainly nothing as noble as the fight against fascism like the Army of the 1940's. I came to the conclusion that nowadays the military is little more than a set of guardrails for the world and a jobs creation machine for the United States. Today, I volunteer as an EMT to try and fill the incredible hole I feel when it comes to answering the question: what value do I bring the world?

I guess I should back up a little and re-vector this suddenly out of control post. I wanted to finally get started on a thought that's been hanging around in my mind for quite some time now, brought out recently by a comment I left on one of @bengy's posts. Here was the comment:

Bengy said:

As I grow up in my own role as a father, I keep thinking about things that I would have wanted to have done differently when I was growing up under my parent's care. Nothing disasterous, but things I would have told my past self...

To which I replied:

Funny you mention that last bit... It's been the topic of a post I've been wanting to write for a couple months now but just don't know how to approach. Basically boils down to the fact that I want to help him discover his passion/purpose/meaning. Sometimes I feel like all I've ever really accomplished is making a small copy of myself. If I can at least get him to a point in his life where he feels like he is making a difference in the world, it'll justify my own existence as nothing more than a father.

So starting over again with the father thing... I like to think of it in terms of one of my favorite psychological theories: Maslow's hierarchy of needs. This is the idea that every human has five different needs, but each must be addressed first before the next one can be satisfied. It looks like this:

So let's break this down by family generation:

Based on very little besides my own gut feeling here, I have put some names in the levels I feel these men achieved in providing for their families. My great-grandfather put food on the table and a roof over some heads and little else. My grandfather improved on that lot by providing security to his family, primarily financially. My father improved on where he grew up by ensuring our home was full of love and care.

I have always struggled with self-esteem, but I do not think this was due to anything my father did. On the contrary, I think it was in spite of his best efforts. He wrote me a letter when I was 12 years old that described how proud he was of me. The final line said "I'm so glad that you are my son." That year he also went to the honor roll breakfast with me - a little thing my school put on for any student who would get straight A's. But then I started to slack off in school. I let my grades slip as I decided it was more important to "fit in" and "be cool" than live up to my potential. I hated myself for it, and I projected that self-loathing outward and decided that my father must not like me very much anymore either. After all, I never made the honor roll again after that.

So all that is to say that my father did the best he could to fulfill my "esteem" needs, but through my own personal failings I thwarted his attempts. If I want to improve on what he was able to achieve as a father, I need to provide my own son with not only that, but self-actualization, which is indisputably something I lack completely.

The idea of self-actualization is that you live up to your potential and achieve everything you are capable of achieving. I struggle quite often with the thought that I could have been so much more than what I am now. And in so many senses of the word, too. I could have gotten a much more difficult degree, like medicine or law. I could have a much more prestigious career. I could be so much more wealthy. I could be so much more involved with my community. I could be so much more active in my faith. I could be so much kinder and nicer and generous. The only area I feel I am actually achieving my potential is that of a father, but lately I have been struggling with the fact that I am not bonding with my daughter the way I bonded with my son when he was born a couple years ago, and so even that is being called into question.

"Every generation was better than the one before." I feel like I am already in danger of falling short of that. My grandfather, as I wrote earlier, was able to provide security for his family. In the thirteen years since he passed away, the scope of this achievement has only come into sharper focus. He left behind a wife that never graduated high school and would never have been able to support herself in retirement. Because he worked a good union job for his entire life, he was able to leave her with his pension and social security, which has allowed her to live in comfort and safety long after his death. Even before that, he brought his family up out of a trailer park and into a real home in a nice neighborhood.

My own father went a step farther. Even though he followed in his own dad's footsteps as a union tradesman, he was able to purchase an even nicer home in a very desirable neighborhood. His own career was marked with interesting projects that I am proud of. He has a keychain that is a circular brass tag with the words "DANGER: 50,000 VOLTS" on it. He got that from a job site. Which one? The freaking Washington D.C. Metro. How cool is that? He helped build the DC subway system. He's also worked on hospitals, schools, and other infrastructure projects. A tiny part of this country exists because my dad helped build it. I am jealous of his achievements.

I, on the other hand, spend my days answering e-mails. I contribute nothing tangible to the world. I have no self-actualization when it comes to my own career. I am not proud of it, and I am ashamed to have to explain to my son one day that his grandfather built a subway but his father just sits in a cubicle pushing papers all day. There is honor in working with your hands and creating something. There is no honor in what I do for a paycheck. Beyond that, there is no pension on the horizon for me like there was for my dad and grandfather. There's just a rickety retirement savings account that could easily be wiped out within a year or two of me losing my job. So much for providing financial security, too...

So I look elsewhere, like the EMT stuff, or being a great father. But for 40 hours or more a week, I feel like I just earn enough to check off the first 3 needs of the pyramid. It's draining and depressing and I feel stuck.

What will it take for me to feel like this pointless third of my life was all worth it? If I can help my kids achieve what I could not. My biggest goal as a father is to ensure that my son (and daughter!) discover their passions early and follow their dreams into adulthood. If I can help them attain self-actualization, I'll find it in myself.

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