A Stoic Father’s Day
My father and I indulging in a stein of German lager, Berlin 2019
With the arrival of a fateful day—the one that reminds us to stop and reflect on our family patriarchs—I felt compelled to sit down and write about the deep, rich, and powerful influence my father has had on my life. Through the lens of the four Stoic virtues—wisdom, justice, temperance, and courage—I would like to take a short trip down memory lane, and inspect some of the lessons the man has taught me during my formative years—and some much later, too.
Wisdom
As a young child, I would treat every word from my father’s mouth like holy gospel. Then, like most growing boys, I lost that appreciation for his experience of the world—after all, the impetuousness of youth affects us all. Though my ears remained closed to his sage advice, he would still pound incessantly on my door with his valuable messages. I doubt that he—nor anyone close to us at the time of my adolescence—would argue that I didn’t buck against him; never with violence or aggression, but silently, selfishly. I kept the belief that I knew better tight to my chest, and instead of graciously taking on his guidance, I continued along my own path, intent on forging my own mistakes.
Time did its thing, as is its wont. My father has grown older as all humans do, and I have arguably grown fractionally more sensible. With this sensibility has come an understanding that I don’t really know the secrets of the universe; that I don’t really possess all of the answers. It’s with this realisation that I’ve since come to my father, hat in hand, in the hopes he might bequeath to me some of his timeless, hard-earned wisdom. When I’ve arrived at career crossroads, my father has been there to help me figure out what to do; when I’ve gone through seemingly insurmountable personal challenges, my father has helped me help myself back up; when I’ve approached those terrifying horizons many young people must face—moving to a foreign country, buying my first home, losing a cherished love—he has been there every step of the way to help steer me in the right direction.
Some of my father’s wisdom manifests in the form of short, pithy sayings which, on the surface, might appear to state the obvious. Upon closer inspection, however, these phrases-turned-heuristics have the potential to send you spiralling down a flume of contemplation and wonder. For example, “success comes in cans, not cannots” might translate to “have a positive mindset”; “young bull, old bull” to “take your time”; and “If you want to soar with eagles, you can’t run with turkeys” might be understood as “choose your company wisely”. One could argue the triteness of these phrases, that they don’t capture the true complexity of life and the challenges we might face. To that, I would urge presence, in the hopes that you too might realise that in many cases, all we really need to do is to grab a problem by a different handle—another pithy saying.
Wisdom from the chief brewer
Perhaps most indicative of my reverence for my father’s sagacity is the special place this framed poster holds in my home office. He gifted this to me before I moved to Amsterdam in the winter of 2013. I still regularly read its words, finding fresh insight every day with more experienced eyes.
Justice
I sometimes look at the people of my generation and younger, and can’t help but notice a stark difference between myself and the other children of the Digital Age. An acquaintance once told me that I was the strange one for being on my side of this particular divide, but having been raised to believe that the right thing to do in a difficult situation is to have the difficult conversation—with honesty, openness, and always face-to-face—I can’t help but feel like many of my contemporaries simply protest too much. Text and instant messaging have made it so easy for us to communicate sans the feedback loop of another person's eyes, their tone, their body language. With its absence comes a coldness, a feeling of detachment, and a means of letting oneself off the hook for the effects of things we say. My father has always emphasised the importance of looking someone in the eye when dealing with them—a lesson that, although hard learned, I have since come to think of as one of the most valuable things he ever taught me. What little success I have achieved in my career I credit in large part to my comfort with holding difficult conversations.
That’s not to say that I was the perfect representation of ideal behaviour as I grew up. I was far from an angel, and if you were to put the question to him, I’m sure he would say that yes, I did have my fair share of misdemeanours growing up. I was never afraid of my Father—I was never once punished in such a way that would elicit that reaction (one might argue I was never punished). What did terrify me, however, was the thought of him learning that I had fallen below the bar of his high standards. But teenagers need to test boundaries, to figure out what works and what doesn’t—to learn consequences. Because of this, I found myself well below that bar on more than one occasion. I don’t recall the exact words he would use during the moments my behaviour was out of line, but the sting of his disappointment and the weight of the shame I felt as he delineated my crimes remains crystal clear in my mind. Over time—a very, very long time—I learned that I could save us from both of these feelings by simply growing up, and working on myself until I measured up to the example he laid down for me.
I’m not saying my father was a hard-ass, nor am I telling you he was perfect; he would be the first person to admit to his own faults, his own mistakes. I imagine that’s what was going through his mind when, at the age of fifteen, I returned home from a camping trip reeking of cheap whiskey and beer and suffering from the worst hangover young Dave had ever known. The qualifying factor that allowed me to go camping in the first place was my promise that I would steer clear of any alcohol present—a promise I never had any intention of keeping. The man had every right to tear me a new one—but he never did. He never said a word. Perhaps he never knew, though that seems very unlikely. It’s more likely he thought the hangover was punishment enough. If that’s not justice, I don’t know what is.
Temperance
As a fully-grown human male, I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have grown up with a man who demonstrated the importance of discipline. Always striving to improve, to do better, to provide more for his family, my father was not a man to rest on his laurels. This is evident not just in the risks he took throughout his career—from moving his family to the Far East to follow a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, to his transition to sales later in his life—but in the little behaviours, the small building blocks which, when compounded, form the foundation of an effective person. Early starts, kept promises, diligence, and meticulousness—my father exhibited these disciplined virtues, and more, in spades.
I have a powerful recollection of a collection of books. These weren’t any type of books that I was used to. No, they weren’t like Goosebumps, or Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. These books were about us as human beings; they contained lessons and guidance on how to improve, how to be a better person, new skills and ideas. I flicked through these books, unsure of the words and images they presented to me, and would remain in that state of ambivalence until my father would gift me another called The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens. I would eventually give this book the chance that it deserved, and I still regularly refer back to the lessons it taught me. Sure, I might have sharpened the saw a little bit too much in my twenties, but I’m making up for that.
I think about my own book collection now, and how much of it is built up around topics of self-improvement, of living better, of being a more effective person. I think about my own drive and desire to be the best that I can possibly be, and how I have leveraged that need to excel in my professional career. I think about my comfort with early rises, I think about my belief in the importance of treating people with respect, humility, and decency. I think about my Father—a man whose disciplined approach to himself and the world around him set a true North Star for me, and an example to strive for. I still think, every day, about him sitting at his desk every morning at 7am, ready to start the day; ready to eat the frog.
Courage
In the interest of preventing this already saccharine post from turning into something unpalatable, I’ll keep my thoughts on the fourth stoic virtue—courage—short and…ahem, sweet. I’ll recall, with minimal commentary, a moment from my youth, in the hopes that the picture painted will tell all.
When I was quite young—perhaps seven, maybe eight—my family took a camping trip to a small coastal town in county Wexford called Fethard-on-Sea. Sitting there in our family tent, we prayed that the gloomy clouds overhead would hold back their downpour long enough so that we might take a trip to Fethard Quay—a small port with high walls that faced out onto the Irish sea—where we would take in some fishing in the afternoon. My mother and sisters came along in the car with us; Tubthumping by Chumbawumba was playing on the radio as we approached, and I can still remember how excited I was.
We parked up, prepared our tackle, and made our way up the wet, weatherworn stairs that led to the top of the wall overlooking the channel. We found a spot there, prepared, and cast out our line. I couldn’t tell you how much fishing we managed to get in before it happened, but when it did, I remember feeling as if I had been transported suddenly to the bottom of the stairs; this was technically the truth, I suppose. My father had taken a step back, and in doing so overshot his footing past the edge of the ledge, and he tumbled backwards. I absentmindedly grabbed onto him, somehow convinced my skinny arms could prevent my father’s descent. I was wrong, of course, and both he and I fell backwards down those same weather worn steps; all thoughts of fishing were quickly forgotten, and what remained was the endless, ceaseless desire to wail and cry. On the way down I acquired a relatively deep cut on my knee—I can still see the scar—and the clearest recollection I have of that afternoon is when my Father, who had spilled down the stairs on his back himself, got out from underneath me, and picked me up. He carried me back to the car as I wailed and wailed, serenading me with perhaps the most poetic lyrics ever written: “I get knocked down, but I get up again, you’re never gonna keep me down…”
It was later that night that I overheard my parents speaking in hushed tones through the unzipped door leading into the main chamber of the tent. From my child-sized cot, I turned over—quietly, so as not to arouse suspicion—and faced the room outside. My Father sat there, shirtless, with his back to the door, as my Mother tended to a torn up, reddened, gnarled back. He had slid down the stairs facing upwards while I body-surfed atop him all of the way down. I learned later that his head, too, struck the ground with force as we made our fateful descent.
As I lay there and realised what had really transpired that afternoon, I remember being struck with such a clear and solid certainty that my father was an exceptionally brave man. I’ve since learned much more about my father, and have come to know him as not just the man who sired me, but as a person in his own right. I’ve yet to see a scrap of evidence that would contradict my earlier assessment.
A snap affectionately titled “Father and Sunburned”. Taken circa 1990 in The Cayman Islands.
And so here we are - a couple of days late for Father’s Day, but hopefully paid in full. I’ve always considered my father a principled, honourable man, and it’s clear to see in the examples laid out above how he exemplifies the four virtues held as cardinal by the ancient Stoics. However, as a fellow Stoic practitioner, he is also a man keenly aware that we will forever be south of reason, and would be the first to admit that he is not without his flaws. But the same can—and should—be said for every single one of us, a fact that he is not only familiar with, but one he has helped to infuse into my understanding and perspective of the world.
“Success comes in cans, not cannots.”
Happy Father’s Day, Dad, and thanks for everything you’ve done for us!