Advice & Disclaimer

 

This is for you.  Other’s might read it, but it is for you.  We are uniquely joined and this is all relevant to you where it will not be for all.

My Sons,

People leave stuff behind. Isn’t that so? We die and what is left is the sum of our existence. Some compile hordes of possessions, homes and cars, wives and wine cellars. Some leave legacies. Some leave hearts and kidneys and other physiological knickknacks. Most of us leave behind memories. What will I leave you? Money, perhaps a business, a legacy it might be true, certainly lots of memories of which most I am proud and more than a few ashamed, but really, the one thing that seems that most of us parents should leave behind is this . . . a handbook.

Now, this handbook is a compendium of my thoughts on certain subjects as far-reaching as god and sex, to a good hike and growing melons. I have lived many lives before I have lived with you and I hope to live a few more once you have moved on. Of my lives thus lived, a few have not really been worth living, a few have lacked ambition and I have dallied with the frivolous for periods longer than a wise man would.

I am writing this now because I recognize life is indeed full of phases and I’m no longer speaking about mine. I’m thinking specifically of you. I suspect I will be tuned in and out same as a radio station as you create your own lives or life as it may be. I’m wise enough to know what you find in here will likely never provide those “eureka” moments. Yet, even without the revelation of startling brilliance, I wish my father had left this handbook for me and his father could have before that.

Maybe you will see I have written this book to simply define myself, to affirm my beliefs and to observe whether or not they look foolish written down. Certainly, I would like to think you will be stunned by the accuracy of my predictions and the wisdom of my thoughts, if not at least you should have a good laugh. And what of my deepest thoughts, the ones we never get to around the dinner table. What about God and Socrates, liquors and liqueurs, heaven and hell? While I do believe that God exists, how can that be when God would have had to have created existence? Is duality, the concept of good and evil, an invention of man and if it is, what is good? If the heart of a corporation is greed and greed is evil, how can a Christian nation be married to corporations?

So while it may not appear that I have time let alone the interest to consider such things, I do. I think about them all the time. I relish having a discussion now and then over a cup of coffee or a few bottles of beer. I read a book or two as you well know. These are things I can do now. They happen now. Less rather than more as I get older, that’s for sure.

Someday sons, I will likely be a burden. My withering mind and body will frustrate you. Your high expectations of me will certainly falter, sooner I suspect than later and your regard of me as an asset will slowly move to the other side of the ledger column. Then in those waning days of my life, when a simple day is a complexity for my mind and a struggle for my body, the opportunity for me to pour out anything, any wisdom any help will be trapped inside a helmet of exhausted brain cells and a look of befuddlement.

This is where you go boys. You are growing or dying, same as a tree, a plant or a multinational. Your grandpa told me that enough times that I have it well remembered. How crappy is it that we reach our physical optimum before 30 and our mental stratus too and then we spend the next 50 years only growing hair in places where it didn’t during the first 30 and losing it where it once did?

If this sounds bitter, I am not. If this sounds remorseful, at times I am. I do cry over spilled milk so to speak as you should too. Having regrets isn’t bad and I scoff at those who say they have none. What you do with any day of your life matters because any day is uncertain even in the most certain of times. Living and existing are two different things and I hope I have taught you that living is more essential the existing.
So what’s this handbook all about? How is it formatted? Sons, I have always lived in the indexes of books. They are a beautiful place, a database so neatly organized for us surgeons who simply wish to slice through the places where we have no interest in the heart of whatever matter we’re interested in. Thus alphabetically, I give you this index as a starter. And since it is thus, it is fittingly situated at the beginning of this book because as the writer I can put the index anywhere I want.

I’m implying that I do not intend for you boys to read it from here to there. I can’t help but want that from the egotistical side, but I understand that time is a precious thing and . . . well . . . .I’ll probably be dead anyway and you won’t have to explain.

Love, dad