Life does not come with a user manual. But why?
This series of posts is addressed to my children and documents the aspects of life that I should have learned at school but didn’t.
On this day, you have embarked on your brave journey into the real world. You didn’t hesitate one bit – you decided the world is exciting, enticing, and full of adventures that you can no longer postpone.
Your sister, your mom, and I are very happy to welcome you. We had some head start to figure things out, but I am sorry to say we got nowhere. We are pretty much clueless, but nevertheless, we manage.
Right at the start, I will ask you for some patience and forgiveness towards all of us. Inevitably, you will get less attention than your sister did—such is the fate of second children. But hopefully, we will have some of this parenting figured out and won’t be as stressed as we were around your sister.
All of us, as well as the two of us, will have lots of fun, adventures, and good times together. I can’t wait for all the mischief. I have some experience being a boy, and Grandpa Robert was an awesome dad, so hopefully, I’ll know what to do.
Since I am older, I feel obliged to share some advice in no particular order and selected for no particular reason:
- It is ok to just want things. Because you think they are cool, interesting or for no reason at all. Remember the things you consider cool when growing up, because afterwards its easy to think in terms of obligations. Most of the items on my Bucketlist are something 15-year-old me would consider cool.
- It’s easy to confuse wanting things with trying to impress other people. A good rule of thumb is, “Would this still be cool if nobody knew you did it?“. But then I go around publishing all the cool stuff I did on this blog, so
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People generally will not spend time thinking about you, except for your parents of course. - You do not have to be consistent. There is no prize for acting like someone you (or other people) thought you were. You have one life, so feel free to reinvent yourself.
- But try to keep your promises. It is not always possible, but do the things you said you would do.
- Try to have high standards – you want your standards to give you energy and inspiration for a better quality of life, but you don’t want to become a permanent source of guilt.
Permanent guilt is a very good signal of an unrealistic standard or misaligned expectations—in personal life or at work. - Be kind to others and yourself. Men can easily become hostile to themselves and brush it off as “toughness”. This gets you through whatever you need to go through but creates problems in relating to others and trying to enjoy life.
- The only rules that really matter are the ones against hurting other people. Be a good man, and be compassionate, even if that is against the rules.
- Being a man is hard to figure out nowadays. There are a lot of old weird traditions and conflicting new dogma. Should a man like watching football? Should he be outgoing or leave more space for others? Should he like cars?
Above all, a man is a healthy, good, and dependable human – and whoever he chooses to be, interested in whatever he considers interesting.
.Enjoy your time here. The world is an amazing place.
Dad
PS. Here is a letter I wrote to your sister
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