Hey guys! I’m writing this parenting entry today as a letter to you because I need to come clean about something deep inside my heart that’s not gonna be easy.
To be honest, I’ve no idea if there’s a right or wrong time for me to talk about this. So I figured what the heck! It’s now or never.
You see, I’m seriously thinking of ramping up my level of advocacy through my writing or any interview or speaking engagements that might come my way in the days, weeks, months and years ahead. Which may place me, and potentially you (as my unfortunate collateral damage!), right smack in the eye of the storm!
All for one purpose and one only — to call out the state of affairs in today’s world for what it truly is, in order to forge a path forward for you to wrestle with them in your own journey of maturation from teen to adulthood. In short, to help sharpen your discernment to distinguish right from wrong in a world of increasing relativism and polarity.
For let’s face it. This is not a great world you’re inheriting from me and my generation, or the generation before mine.
And for that I’m sorry.
And no, I’m not being cocky or humble-bragging here. As though I and I alone was responsible for presenting you with such a crazy mixed-up mad magazine world, in the course of my oh-so-flawless parenting. And so here I am, guilty and contrite; representing adults everywhere to apologise in this open letter to you.
No. I’m definitely not that naive and lacking in self-awareness. For who am I except a nobody to the world outside our abode.
But here at least in our home, I like to believe my words, my very presence and stance on contemporary issues of today, has some bearing or influence in shaping the way you think and perceive what goes on around you.
And that maybe, just maybe you need to make sense of this world with my help, for what it’s worth.
Plus, I love you boys deeply. I would do everything in my parenting power to ensure you don’t get swept up by the whims and fancies of this fickle planet. Instead, I hope to anchor you in values that will hold you rock-steady when the winds of this world blow helter-skelter.
And they will!
The signs of the times — a major parenting woe!
What am I talking about? Well, pretty much everything in the realm of hot button social issues.
The big-ticket contemporary ones like LGBTQIA+. Abortion. Euthanasia. Climate change. Inequality. Poverty. Inclusivity. Gender roles and identity. Including the controversial topic of toxic masculinity, which I recently blogged on and was featured in during a mini social campaign on Instagram).
And of course the only-slightly smaller ones, like bullying, studies and who you should date.
And when I do start talking more concertedly about any of these, it’s gonna come out here on my blog; on social media; or somewhere public.
Because it’s time to stop being silent.
By staying on the sidelines all these decades, my peers and I have helped raise a generation like yours, confused and struggling on your own to make sense of an increasingly senseless world. Even allowing the vocal minority with destructive agendas to ransack, distract and disrupt the world for way too long.
So it’s time to do my wee bit in this corner of cyberspace to halt or delay their relentless onslaught! At the very least, to restore and “be” the signposts that you need to navigate along the straight and narrow path of life.
Yes, it’s a good analogy to call us signposts. For the supposed “adults and parents in the room” were supposed to have guided you and your friends safely from one destination to another. Instead we’ve allowed so many different pathways; so many different options to enter the foray; to the point that it’s become mind-boggling.
And not in a good way!
It can be nearly impossible to know which way to go without making a wrong turn. And we all know how devastating and even permanently destructive a wrong turn can be!
This world isn’t our friend
J, like you always love to say to me “Dad, I’m NGL (not gonna lie)!”, it’s now my turn to say it back to you. “Son, I’m NGL!”
Yes I may sound completely fatalistic, even loony-bin. But I need you to know that this world you live in, well, newsflash — it just isn’t our friend!
A loaded statement I’ll grant you that. To say the world isn’t our friend. Instead of bouquets, I’m more likely to attract raised eyebrows, eye rolls, curses, rotten eggs or worse hurled at me.
No matter. My days of sugarcoating are long gone. Besides, hard truths are just that. Hard.
This world is in a constant war, with you and I its target casualties and POWs! So no sense in mincing my words. Not that I’ve been doing that in my blog anyway. Its tagline is “raw and unfinished”, remember?
Listen my sons. Let’s get real for a moment, shall we?
Since days immemorial, the world has been telling us it’s not going to wait around if we’re not stronger, bigger, taller, broader, faster, richer, louder, tougher, prettier, buffer, slicker, sexier, smarter, nimbler, better, happier, dressier, more famous/powerful/influential/networked/connected…and the list goes on.
In short, this world is going to leave us in the dumpster if we don’t keep up.
Parenting against the world
But henceforth I’m gonna lean more into this unpleasant truth in my parenting of you.
Because it’s time to speak up.
By divine coincidence (always a handy oxymoron), Facebook itself reminded me of it today. For ten years ago this day, I posted the following on Facebook:
Committed (man-centred) or Surrendered (God-centred)? Do I want the God that I want, or the God who Is? Am I to be a “Cultural (‘give me give me’) Christian” or a “Biblical (‘I give I give’) Christian”? Is my choice that which validates the Truth, or is it the Truth which validates my choice?
The time has long arrived to speak the Truth and to call out anything that opposes, obscures or obfuscates it.
Your daddy’s gonna speak the Truth. The raw, painful and unpleasant truth that this world doesn’t want to hear. That doesn’t even want to allow into the public space, even if it’s presented as reasonable discourse in open conversations.
So buckle up sons! Arm yourselves and get ready! It’s not that your daddy’s going on the offensive or the warpath, and I’m dragging you along with me kicking and screaming. For the war has already been waging upon us for a long time, and I your dad have been cowering in the trenches in fear for too long.
For your sake, and what still lies ahead, I’ll cower no more!
I’m going to do what little I can to make this world a safer and more values-centred place for you as you grow up.
Even if it means being ridiculed and attacked by those determined to run me down.
I hope you will rally around your dad, even as I ring-fence you with the light of God’s Truth in a world shrouded in darkness.
Yours always,
Daddy Doofus
I was very inspired to see another kind of parenting that may tell children that the world is not piled up with fairy tales, but full of discordant factors such as cruel and bloody violence. Once children know these things earlier, they will not be addicted to daydreaming and know what they will face in the future and be fully prepared. I’m glad that your child has a father like you. In my family education, I lived in a world full of fairy tales until one day I suddenly found that this was not the case. People are always chasing happiness and are unwilling to see those pain and torture, but this does not mean that there is only happiness in the world. Thank you very much for giving me a belated education class.
When I finished reading this letter, it’s was both moving and cause me to thinking deeply about so many things. There are a lot of things that are discussed and published in this letter, some of part I’ve been thinking and there were things in there that I hadn’t thought about. And I’m sure that the progress of the self must draw ideas and thinking from different angles. I learned a lot from this letter.