To Be Happy, Or To Be Great? p.2

I don’t hate you. I think it’s funny that any father would start a letter to his son with those words, as if it shouldn’t go without saying. How the world sees you, or your mother treats you, hell even how you look at yourself. That doesn’t matter to me nearly as much as seeing you be who you’re meant to be. You come from greatness son, and the only route to rising above is a road riddled with opportunity, but the threat to you seizing everything that is yours is complacency. To become too comfortable in such a fashion where you believe it is all coming to fruition without the kind of work that is coupled with that of seizing your throne. It would be like expecting to have a passive income with no money invested. No matter how many people gravitate to the kind of natural charm or Charisma that you could possess, it is nothing without the work. It’s hard, going to be harder than anything you’ve ever done, and that is the kind of man I’m building. I got the impression when you were growing up that you were scared of me, or maybe that you hated me. If I’m being honest I care more about that now than I could have then. Not that I didn’t want to, but my life was never about me no matter how it might have seemed. I treated you the way I treated you because I was building a soldier, somebody worthy of greatness. So many children grow up nurtured in the more traditional sense, being pampered and showered with compliments and praise. This happens with such frequency that it becomes the equivalent of saying a word multiple times until it ceases to have the same meaning, or until it doesn’t mean anything. I didn’t do that with you because I’d hoped there would come a time in your life when I saw the paradigm shift inside you and I did. You didn’t look for my praise, you didn’t care for my compliments because you were going to be better than me, better than anybody ever knew. It isn’t lost on me that you did everything that I had asked of you, and that I made it evident that it wasn’t going to be enough. The worst, and the best thing that happened to you in those years was meeting my expectations, because when you did the bar was just raised. Again, and again until it was no longer within my capacity to be the judge of your triumphs. Everything I ever did was for you even if it was at the expense of our relationship, I don’t want you to need me in your life, I never have, but I need you to want me there. Everything that I can do for you should be icing on the cake but nothing to do with how it will continue to be made. You won’t believe this, when you read it, maybe you won’t until after I’m gone, but that is okay. I didn’t build you in my image because that would be selfish, and it would have stifled your ascension. Not everybody is built to be the change that they want to see in the world and that’s okay too, because everybody has their place in the world. It wouldn’t work any other way. You epitomize greatness, and if I was ever afraid of anything in my life, it would probably be that you would get detoured on your road to glory, because you were born to be great, I did what I thought I had to give you the tools so that when it was your time to grab everything you could ever want, you can. I love you son, and maybe it was selfish of me to “rob” or “deprive” you of the typical childhood and for that I do apologize, but the ultimate act of selfishness would have been to ignore the fact that your greatness is once in a lifetime. I heard this quote one day years back , and it was like it was made for you, son. It talked about how “some men are meant to be happy, others are meant to be great”, and I’m so sorry that you aren’t the latter. Son I really am, but this is your lifetime, so go and get it.