Leon's Random Ramblings

All my life my mom told me that it is impossible to lick my own elbow, and I believed her because, well, she was my mom.

Of course, then the internet came along and there right in front of my very own eyes were pictures of people actually doing it.

Naturally my curiosity was piqued, and I started searching for all sorts of other things that people say is impossible, but eventually turns out to be possible. First up, over at Esquire, woven into the skydiving story of Felix Baumgartner, is the story of Jonathan Clark, husband of late astronaut Laurel Clark [click here] who perished in a space shuttle accident. In the beginning I was very drawn into the technology and the activity of the story which is fascinating in itself.

But later on, a phrase caught my eye “You move on, as they say. Except you never really do, not all the way“. Not all the way? It resonates well with me.

Moving on is possible, but it is not an instantaneous end to the pain. It is a long and slow process, with lots of discoveries along the way. Small wobbly baby steps, one at a time. We must never imagine that we are going to reach our nirvana with the click of a mouse. Rather, it will be a complicated journey. Jonathan has been travelling for 7 years and he is still on the discovery journey.

Browsing further on Esquire I then stumbled across the 73-impossible-things-to-do [click here] list. Humerous and funny, but scroll on to number 43 … “There will come a time in every man’s life when it will be impossible to feel good about yourself after winning an argument with your father“. This is a deep one. I had a fight with my dad once, and maybe I was right. But was it the right thing to fight about? Was it right to fight?

Like I said before I am blessed, and I had the chance to apologise before my dad passed. It would have been a tragedy if I didn’t have a chance to reconcile. Moving on would have been so much harder then.

So guys (this is squarely aimed at the boys), here is the message: When you are in the middle of your divorces, pick your fights. Or better still, don’t fight at all. Winning a fight is not always worth it. And it is impossible to forget the bad parts of the fights, every one of them.

You want to look back at your divorce and remember the good feeling of acting like a good Dad. Now THAT is possible, even though it seems impossible at first.

Good luck with your journeys.

 

Posted on July 15th, 2010 under Family, Life Lessons. Tags: Big Questions. RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.