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The following is an email I sent out to all my friends last year on Father’s Day. I didn’t have this blog then and I still feel compelled to share my message again for those of you who still bless me with your company and to those new souls who have joined me on my life’s journey.

“Hey all,

I know everyone is used to me sending out crude jokes, funny videos and party invites, but from time to time, I like to send out something more sincere. Human memory is short, but I hope some of the lessons I impart will stay with you for the rest of your lives. Today I’d like to impart the value of family, more specifically the father/son relationship that I share with my dad.

My father and I were never really what you would consider close. In fact he has definitely dished out more beatings than hugs, more stern yellings than fatherly sermons. He’s the kind of dad that taught me about heat by putting my hand on a red-hot burning element and taught me to swim by throwing me (and my money) into the deep end of the pool. My father never sugar-coated things. If I did poorly, he’d tell me I sucked. If I did well, he said nothing. Given his and my family’s military background (I am the first generation of men in my family with no military service, my father being the first to pursue a non-military career), that was understandable.

On the surface, I credit my father for teaching me to appreciate how to shoot rifles, the sound of a good domestic V8, a great barbecue and the fact that personal hair products are for wusses. Knowing that my father would be the first one to laugh at me for sporting an earring or wearing a man-purse is probably the definitive reason I have never done so (tattoos are okay, phew!). I can truly credit my father for teaching me to be a real mans man, a real macho, baritone, testosterone-laden specimen. Again, this is only on the surface.

I am now 30, an age of reflection and self-contemplation. I finally understand why my father is a real man. He’s not brave or macho because he owns guns or that he drives a car with 300+ horsepower, not because he’s big or that he makes a mean grilled panini. He’s brave and strong because he has assumed and accepted the great responsibility of raising me.

All the harsh lessons he taught me were meant to encourage me for life’s future lessons. The burdens of moving to a foreign land, with no job, no money and no grasp of the English language and still having to support a loving wife and two growing children were far from easy. He never asked for handouts, never applied for government assistance and never once uttered a word of complaint. Never once has he blamed anyone else for his mistakes or his station in life. He’s always worked hard and never cut corners nor took the easy way out. My father has always approached life with Integrity, Professionalism, Accountability and Respect. The fundamental Values we all hold dear. Most of my life I believed that I always had to prove myself to him, to meet or exceed his expectations. I now know that my father never really had any expectations from me, he only wanted me to expect more from myself. With this realization, I have never felt so proud to be his son!

Its with these thoughts that I salute and thank my dad and all brave dads like him, on Fathers Day.”

Posted on June 17th, 2007 by Leo
Filed under: Blog Updates, Lucid Thoughts