Beautiful post man...
I can feel the warmth and humanity as I read those words.
Children have a way of changing things.
"1"
They certainly do change things, my friend. I've read your posts about your fatherly interactions with your nephew, so you know where I'm coming from.
Being fatherly isn't for every man...I think we all get that. Those of us who like it, obviously like it a lot.
Children made me more of a human being than I would have been without them. I thought I was tolerant, but I really wasn't until I became a father. I thought I was patient, but kids taught me the meaning of patience. I thought I was kind, but I had much to learn about what it is to be kind and nurturing. I thought I had perspective and had mastered my priorities and viewed them as inviolable, but I learned that priorities can change and I can still be happy, and can still be true to myself.
Most of all, I learned what unconditional love is. That is one scary mother of an emotion, but it also quite the enabler as well. Unconditional love makes all things very clear; as that old Don Henley lyric goes, "what the head makes cloudy, the heart makes very clear". You learn to put those you love unconditionally above all other things, material and non-material and that breeds selflessness. As a man begins to let go of this distorted sense of "self" he's built up for himself along with all the material trappings that reinforce it, he becomes truly powerful in this life, I believe, and can become anything.
There's no law that says to be a man, one must have to master the afore-mentioned things. Still, I like to think having to learn these lessons, and continuing to practice them, has made me a better man. And that's why in my case, kids were a blessing.
When I look at Rami in this picture, I like to think he feels the same, and that's why I like the picture.
