As men, we look at our sons, sometimes without realizing it, and remember all that we want for our sons. We want them to enjoy the feelings of success in sports we, ourselves may never had enjoyed. We want them to enjoy the social success with their peers, we may never been able to fathom when we were their ages.
And so we drive them hard. We drive them to succeed. We push them to catch, to throw, to run, to shoot, to be better at everything at their age, than we were. Like it or not, we admonish them to be better than we were.
But here is the truth. It’s not about you.
It’s not about him being a representation of you. It’s not about your having a second chance to live vicariously through your son. It isn’t.
And that is a hard thing to admit.
Because, if you are lucky, will see yourself again and again in your son. When he goes to bat, when he is on the field somewhere, when he struggles with is homework, when he fails in a spelling bee, when he scrubs out on his brand new bicycle. When he goes to high school, when he stays out late, when he doesn’t get into the college you think he should.
When he defies you and tells you to drop dead.
He is as he should be. When he is a little boy, the man he becomes is directly proportional to the love, support and willingness to let him succeed or fail on his own merits. Teach him to play, teach him to excel, teach him to fail well.
Then step back and let him grow. Be there with him both when he succeeds and more importantly when he fails. Both have lessons he will need to learn and no one will ever teach him better than you.
Except maybe Mom, but we’ll keep that under our hat. He’s not a man yet. And every day you spend with him will make him the man he’s supposed to be. And that’s not you.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an Emperor, that’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible, Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another, human beings are like that. We all want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone.
The way of life can be free and beautiful. But we have lost the way.
Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.
We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in; machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity, more than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness.
Without these qualities life will be violent and all will be lost.
The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me I say: do not despair.
The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass and dictators will die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people and so long as men die liberty will never perish.
Soldiers: don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you as cattle, as cannon fodder!
Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men!! You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don’t hate, only the unloved hate. The unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers: don’t fight for slavery, fight for liberty!
In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written: – “The kingdom of God is within man.” Not one man, nor a group of men, but in all men: in you!
You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.
Then, in the name of democracy, let us use that power, let us all unite! Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age and security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfil their promise, they never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people.
Now let us fight to fulfill that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness.
Soldiers! In the name of democracy: let us all UNITE!”
I have, until I heard this, never knew anything or heard anything which espoused my personal belief in human potential, in human virtue, in the strength of what is good in humanity in such a clear and focused way. I keep thoughts like these to myself because I fear most people would think I am too optimistic about people, that I don’t recognize what terrible things humans are capable of. I tend to think differently in that regard. I think of what we could do if we harness our energies for good, the same way we harness them for greed or fame or dominance over our fellow man. I will live this way even if no one but me can believe it is possible to harness the good in men. I think of movies today and find them mostly banal, filled with little to stir men’s hearts, but this, this is an anthem worth remembering.
A Matter of Scale 