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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EricNoah" data-source="post: 2489243" data-attributes="member: 4">My father has a lot of great qualities (some of which I share), and like anyone else his share of flaws (some of which I share).  Like many, I find my parents gaining wisdom as I get older. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  Among my father's best qualities...* As a minister, he practices what he preaches. (Literally!)  He's the only "religious" person I know who lives his faith day in and day out, without hassling others about it.  He offers advice and help when asked but does a remarkable job of staying out of people's business when not invited.  He doesn't approach religion from a guilt/righteous anger point of view ("you're not OK") -- he approaches it from a love perspective ("you are OK"), and focuses as much on how it can help you here and now as much as the hereafter.  He doesn't demand that people live a certain way; and he isn't a hypocrite, saying one thing but doing another.  I am not a religious person, but I do feel that I also live my beliefs, though perhaps not as courageously and steadfastly as he does.  In this way, he is a better man than I.*He is hardworking.  When he was pastoring (when I was growing up) he not only had that as his full time job, he also took other jobs to help the family.  He followed through on things (when he remembered to -- he's always had a bit of a flaky memory), and he shouldered the responsibility of having a family "like a man" (in my eyes).  I have nowhere near the work ethic he does.  Unlike him, I have non-work-related hobbies, and I enjoy my time off much more than my time at work.  My dad admits that he was sleep deprived during my teenage years, probably to a dangerous degree.  I sometimes feel lazy compared to him, but I also think I'm more sensible and balanced in this regard.  On the other hand, he had the guts to have kids, and that's not something I want (or think I would do a particularly good job at).Among his flaws: he backs down from conflict maybe more than he should (he lets my mom henpeck him too much; he doesn't fight if someone's rolling over him); he's never had a good balance between diet and activity (he spent 20 years becoming overweight and has been paying for it over the past five or so as a diabetic); he has few friends (it's hard being a minister -- His congregation loves him but who wants to make friends with the guy who judges whether you're living a moral life, right?); and he can be very self-centered in conversation (he hasn't mastered the art of asking about the other person; he always opens with something about himself, and has a tendency to interrupt).  I don't consider these to be serious flaws, but they are things I am trying to avoid -- learning from his example, I guess.  The other "flaw" is that his father died when my dad was extremely young.  His father lived on as a "legend" in my dad's mind.  Dad never got to see his father make mistakes, show weakness, fail, grow old.  Consequently, when each of us kids entered a rebelious teenage phase, he wasn't ready for that.  And I don't know that he had a good model of male parenting (whatever that means).  It wasn't a fatal flaw by any means, but he did not enjoy our teenage years at all.  I think he was deeply hurt that my siblings and I didn't turn out as religious as he was.  I don't want to be him; in a lot of ways I don't want to be all that much like him.  He's a good guy, and he's making his way through this world admirably.  Am I a better person?  No.  Neither is he better than me.  Thinking that way is counterproductive. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  I think of it more like this ... what can I learn from him?  What mistakes of his can I avoid? One is that I'm not going to spend 20 years getting myself overweight and then spend the rest of my life trying to slim down and stay healthy.  I'm going to stay healthy from the start.  But again, that's not really character ... it's just that he never got to see his own dad get old and I don't think it occurred to him that he wasn't going to be young forever.</blockquote>

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