Dad Pens Letter To Son: 'Love Takes Effort, It Must Be Nurtured And Cultivated Over Time'

'To My Children' is a new series from Smart Parenting where parents can immortalize life lessons they wish to impart on their beloved children.
 
This first letter is a time capsule written by Howard Go, Summit Media's COO, to his son Ethan for his graduation day from university, seven years from now.

Dear Ethan,

Congratulations on your graduation day! I proudly celebrate with you as you enter the next stage of your life.  

For your journey ahead, I would like to impart the top lessons I have learned from three spheres of life and share my wish for you in each of them. There are other aspects of life that also matter, but these three are specifically for you as you expand your universe further. 

First, for the self: Practice forgiveness; forgiveness of self and of others. Remember that we are all works in progress and progress takes time. Be patient with yourself and others.  

'You might wonder why forgiveness of others is part of my lesson for self; it is because forgiveness heals the injured party, too.'

We would like to think people can and should immediately change for the better, but we should always remember how hard it can be for ourselves to do just that. As much as we want to think we can learn from our mistakes, we often don’t, at least, not right away.

I hope you still recall the line I would say to my students to tell them that we often don’t gain wisdom as quickly nor as easily as we think: “Experience may be the best teacher, but we are all terrible students.” For all of us, in those cases that are unique to our weaknesses, we have a harder time learning the lessons life teaches us.

Don’t expect everyone, including yourself, to progress at the rate you want. You do not know where they struggle, and you may discover new challenges for yourself in the future. It can and will be slow at times, so be patient.

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You might wonder why forgiveness of others is part of my lesson for self; it is because forgiveness heals the injured party, too.  

Know also that some people may have hurt you unintentionally. In their eyes, they don’t even need your forgiveness. Especially in these cases, when you forgive another person, the benefit is for the self. Can you still recall the movie Romy and Michell’s High School Reunion? A silly film that made us laugh. I pointed out to you the plotline from the movie where every single person had the effect of ruining another person’s (high school) life at some point. Remember how I like to say, “what is a chapter in my life may have been a footnote in yours”? You might remember a conversation with someone as life-changing and how it led you down a totally different path in life but, to that person who spoke to you, the conversation may barely be a memory or not even be part of their memory. It could have been hurtful, it could have been inspiring, it could have been a joke, but it changed your life. Know that you may also have had that same effect on other people. We all need to watch our words and actions because these footnotes for us can be chapters for other people in our lives.  

'The biggest room in the world is room for improvement'

While you may try to play a positive role in many chapters of the people around you by being prudent with your words and actions, know that you can still cause accidental harm just as you can be accidentally harmed yourself. Should you have played the wrong role, by accident or because you are a work in progress, forgive yourself, too. 

A friend of mine likes to say, “Every decision we made, at that time, was the best decision we could think to make.” There are so many instances in my life when, even if I tried to plan and think things through, I still made mistakes because there was something I didn’t and, try as I might, couldn’t have known at the time. In such instances, forgiveness helps us move on with less pain and more healing. 

Forgive yourself and be hopeful for progress. There is a saying someone I previously worked loved to quote: “The biggest room in the world is the room for improvement.” I think we just need to apply this in a way that allows us to be more patient and more hopeful while working harder for that brighter future. 
 
A side note: there will be some who will treat you poorly no matter what you do. Forgive them still and walk away; they have issues in life that are not your problem to solve or fix, and you do not need to put yourself in a position where they can continue to cause you harm. For such people who refuse to abate their hostility, I share this meme: 

We should all try to heal and be whole. So, be forgiving of yourself and others. 

I wish for you to continue to receive the healing that forgiveness brings as you go through life. Peace, gratitude, joy, and many other graces are spoilt if there is not enough forgiveness. 

Husband first, father second

Second, for the family (I hope you will one day have): Take your vocation as husband as the primary role and treat fatherhood as secondary to this. I was told before that having and caring for children becomes the glue that binds. This didn’t help me, your mother, and our relationship for many years. If anything, it soured many things. It was only when we learned to be husband and wife first when we started to be better as a couple and as a family.

If there is one lesson you want your future children to learn from you, it is to know what it means to love and be loved; if they look to you and your future spouse and find these answers clearly modelled, then they have a much better chance of finding the right partner for life and that is a worthy investment. As one friend put it: “I learned what to avoid in a partner and in a relationship based on how I saw my separated parents; but I never learned what to look for in a partner and in a relationship.” 

So, if (and when) you marry, make time for date nights. They can be at home and can be simple, but they need to happen. And, during these times, try not to talk about the children (if you have any, and this includes any pets).

If you forget what you are like when you are alone with each other, without the children (and friends and family), then you have a greater risk of falling out of love and experiencing the empty nest syndrome in the future. Love takes effort; it must be nurtured and cultivated over time as you both grow as individuals. 

First things must come first otherwise secondary and tertiary things overcome and overwhelm what should be primary, leaving no space for it. I hope you still remember the story of the teacher who used a large jar, some rocks, some pebbles, some sand, and a cup of coffee (or a bottle of beer) to teach how first things must always go first or have no room left to be part of our limited time.

If your efforts go first to things other than your marriage, then you will soon have no time to care for your marriage and eventually care more for these other things. Where you put the effort of your hands, you will eventually have as what you know best and what matters most in your head, then it will take root in your heart.

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Quantity of time trumps quality of time when it comes to relationships, especially since time is a limited resource. People that can get away with one day in a year when they get together can only do so because they first had years of time together to set that foundation (and the foundation of friendship lasts differently compared to that of marriage). So set that foundation and, more than that, try to keep it. For time can wear out all things and only by taking the time to care for the foundation can you weather time. 

I wish for you to find and be with a partner whom you can love deeply and truly, who will want to be loved by you, and who will also love you deeply and truly. 

'It takes a while to find our passions and find our teams'

Third, for work: Prioritize organizational culture over individual competence. I used to wonder how some companies that were once successful seemed to walk toward their own doom. Some people say it is a matter of pride coming before the fall and talk about how these companies thought themselves too big to fail. Some people talk about how the company was unwilling to take risks in a new space. Others say that they were simply just blind to the threat.

While others talk about a lack of checks and balances in the system. I used to think these were the reasons, too. I have since come to believe it is a problem with culture. It can very well happen that, in a team with individually competent people and strong processes in place, no one is willing to speak up to correct a bad idea or practice or person, because the culture is so bad that no dissenting opinions are ever shared (except in pocket meetings of frustrated team members).

There have been and there will continue to be cases of strong teams that fail to succeed because the organizations politics got in the way, of companies where fraudulent behavior remained unchecked until these became too large to ignore but of which so many other personnel knew for years but spoke of only in hushed tones over alcohol, a cup of coffee or a smoke, and of narcissistic leaders who kept the company from doing what it needed to do to succeed. A team of competent people does not make a competent team—you need culture for that. Two heads are better than one only if they listen to each other.  

Remember this meme? 

One Redditor made this comment that captured what I was thinking: “I’ve been all those guys.” And another Redditor replied to this comment with: “At different times in my life, yes, me, too.”

Yes, me, too. And, yes, probably, you, too. It takes a while to find our passions and find our teams. Not all of us will progress the same way. But the right culture will make this happen sooner for all the members who are made of or can be fashioned into the right stuff. 

If you recall, I often like to say proverbs only apply in certain situations and many things in life depend on the situation. People like to say, “In unity there is strength.” But equally true is this proverb: “You are only as strong as your weakest link.” Forming a team is different from being a team. Unless teammates have each other’s backs, then the weakest link can often take the whole team down with them.

'Live your own life and eventually find your own lessons to live by.'

It takes a while before you find crews where everyone carries their weight and can take on the slack of others when the need comes (and it will come often as not everyone will be at their 100% all the time). Being in an organization that values culture will mean it will hire, train, and promote individuals who care for each other and the team, and this creates a team of people who will keep trying to better themselves for the sake of the team.

Having an organization that values culture means it will fire or make it very difficult for the wrong individuals to stay; paraphrasing Patrick Lencioni (if you recall The Ideal Team Player book that we talked about before): “If you keep the wrong people long enough, you will eventually lose the right people.” 

On that note: be wary of the yes men and the brown-nosers of the workplace. They destroy the culture from within. They bring out the worst in narcissistic leaders, demotivate competent people, hide time bombs when it suits them, and expose mistakes in way where more power flows to them or people they don’t like are removed and where the real cause of the problem is left unmanaged. 

I wish for you to find work in a place where the culture fosters true teamwork, where you and your teammates will have each other’s backs. 

I’d like to end with this: Live your own life and eventually find your own lessons to live by. Remember what I said about the song “Father and Son”? We all need to walk our own path, yet every parent yearns to teach and protect, and thinks it is always right to say, “listen to me so you don’t need to learn the painful lesson I went through.”

So, forgive me for the lessons I tried to teach that you are better off learned through your own personal experiences and forgive your future children for ignoring your lessons when the time comes for them to learn things in their own way.

Likewise, forgive others for ignoring your advice even when it turns out you’re right; there can be progress for us and for them when we allow them to evolve and learn on their own. Sometimes, it is better to allow people to surprise you with how much they can progress without you, and you can be further surprised when it leads to your own growth. 

Proudly yours, 
Papa

Howard Go is a husband to Sheila  and father of two. He is Summit Media's COO.