After a short visit from an out of town friend and his kids, I spent the rest of the day opening up part of the attic on the other side of the house. This will be my daughter's room and while the final plans are not yet inked, she will have a nice-sized space to play and room to grow into. I took her up there to see what has been going on and once she saw the space and I was explaining to her what is happening, her face lit up with a glow I haven't seen before - I think that she is very happy to be getting her own space in life.
My body is aching all over from the last week as I have cleaned up the pile of wood pulled out of the house so far to half-fill a container skip, as well as spent the entire weekend pulling more out more to fill the other half. It will be taken away today, weighed and then we will find out how much it has cost us. There is only construction wood in there to keep the costs down, and all the other materials will be sorted and taken to the recycling and rubbish plant with a small trailer in several trips.
I haven't slept too well and have been up since 5 am after going to be late. At this very moment, my father is being laid to rest after living what can only be described as a busy life. He did and accomplished more than most and was well respected within every community he ever played a part, but I think that once he settled and had children, his focus was split between being an artist trying to make a name, to being a father trying to make ends meet. He never stopped being an artist, but his first priority was to his family.
Some people have a stereotype of an artist as someone who is carefree or troubled, emotional and messy, eccentric and disorganized - that was not my dad - he was disciplined and intentional with his life and while impractical in many ways, dependable in the way that you could always be assured, even when he failed, he always did his best.
He was by no means a perfect man, but he was better than most I have ever met or am likely to meet in this life. Everyone has their faults, he made up for his by attending to his strengths and using whatever he had to support the development of others. When younger, I wished he was more selfish, I wish he spent more time doing what he loved, painting and building his artistic career - I felt he was wasting a gift.
Half of me still feels that, but the other half understands the choice he made, the compromise of his life in order to be part of the lives of others. His wife, his five children and anyone who ever asked for help. I think his life was guided by a sense of service to the world, the responsibility to do what he could in the relationships he held, even if it meant that he himself would have to go without. He went without a lot of things and lived a frugal life while many of those he supported had much more.
I don't know if in the silence when he was alone he wished he had done differently, I don't know if he was regretful for giving his all to others without getting anything in return, but he never mentioned it openly. Was it suffer in silence or accept the turns of life's path?
His passing makes me reflect on my own journey and question which paths I am taking - Am I too selfish, not selfish enough, compromising to take responsibility, or becoming bitter. Am I losing myself to others, or gaining myself in service to others? Will my daughter understand the choices I have made - will accept them?
With an infinite array of possibilities ahead of us, our focus is always split, our attention always being drawn with some options seemingly intuitive and easy to make, while others are obscured from view and filled with uncertainty. We often think we take the road less travelled, but if we are acting on intuition, it is likely not the hard path, it is the one of comfort, the pre-selected conditioning telling us which direction to move.
It doesn't matter what we do, where we go, what is accomplished - at the end of the day, we all have to accept the point we arrive, as that is where our decisions have taken us. Each day our attention gets pulled and we make decisions that will lead us to that end point and while we can justify and lay blame, it is us who have decided on how we approach the world and how we have treated those who have crossed our path.
Potential used or lost, value added or damage done, an honest man accepts his part.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
