HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!
And…QUESTION OF THE DAY: WHAT'S THE BEST ADVICE YOUR FATHER (OR FATHER-FIGURE) EVER GAVE YOU?
A friend of this page named Sheree asked me if I would pose this question. Her father passed away a few years ago, and she says she wished she'd paid more attention to his advice when she had the chance, rather than just rolling her eyes at him.
Now, part of the role of a father is to have eyes rolled at him, to be sure, but still — sometimes real wisdom comes out of those guys.
Would you share your own dad's best counsel?
And if it happens that you were not raised with a father, or if you were required to go out in the world and find a good, solid father figure to replace an absent or harmful dad…what is the best advice given to you by the best man you've ever known?
Yesterday I shared my own Dad's terrific advice about staying out of debt, and today I will share another tenet of his that influenced my life greatly:
"Never go to college to get a career; go to college to get an EDUCATION."
My Dad had always regretted "wasting" his college years learning the technical skills needed to become an engineer, rather than using that precious time to learn about history, literature, the arts, the classics. He didn't want his daughters to make the same mistake, and so we were encouraged to follow our intellectual passions in college, with the assumption that a career would somehow follow, but that we wouldn't have many more chances in our lives to truly learn how to think…
THANKS, DAD! (This is why I got to study things in college like, "The History of Persian Art". I don't regret a moment of it.)
SO…share your own fatherly wisdom here, and HAPPY FATHER'S DAY.
Lastly, in honor all good fathers natural and adopted, I share this photo of my dear departed cat Clifford — taken on the day he finally convinced a skittish adopted new kitten named Millie to trust him. You can barely see Millie in the photo (she is that deeply snuggled into his belly) but what you can see is importance of THE LOVE OF A GOOD MAN.
🙂
Liz
