Things I learned from my Dad... and some I've not practiced !

Tomorrow being fathers day I was recently inspired to write this blog by watching the movie Life of Pi. While the movie itself was a bit slow and I did not see it in a theater where I'm sure the visuals were even  more magnificent on the big screen in 3D.  However, there was a very important message where at the end of the movie Pi tell's the young writer,to whom he had just told this magnificent story of surviving stranded at sea with a Bengal Tiger, that everything he learned to survive he learned from his father. Pi's father was a strict disciplinary and drove Pi to learn knowledge and life lessons sometimes with great difficulty and struggles.

So, what did I learn from my father?   While there is little correlation to my life and the fictional Pi's, however there are things that I learned from my father that have carried  with me in life, even if I've failed at times to practice them. Some of these are trivial and others not.  While I'm not surviving stranded at sea, but the life lessons that my dad taught through his life helped me to navigate the sea of life which is filled with its similar challenges. Below is a list of things that my dad taught me in no particular order of importance;

1. Family is important - More than anything Dad loved his family, he loved being with his siblings and when grand-children came along he loved being around them more than anything. When the first grand-child was born he arranged a move to get as close enough to visit.  He greatly looked forward to the times spending with family. 
2. "If you don't know the answer its okay, just sound like you do" - My dad was a story-teller extraordinaire, he had the gift for gab. He could make you believe that whatever he was saying was truth, even when the story was quite extraordinary.   Now this might seem like a condoning telling fibs, but this is not what I'm saying, I don't think.  If you've ever seen the movie Big Fish, well this was my dad portrayed on the big screen.  The bottom line is that you have to be confident in how you tell something, believe it, know its true and convey it. 
3. Love the Mamma - Dad always loved our mom and showed it, he always respected mom, even though yeah at times when caught being wrong he did not like being challenged. When they were apart he would call every evening (okay I've not practiced this consistently). 
4. To play Golf and Fish - Kind of trivial, but I learned to play golf and fish from my dad. He was an avid and good golfer and bass fisherman. I was always a much better golfer playing with my dad, than not. We had some interesting fishing stories, there was the one where the copperhead glanced off me and then landed in the boat wiggling, lunging at us and everything. The time we got pulled by a fish 100's of yards down the dam of a lake, it boiled the water once but we never knew what it was. There was the time we had to jump into the water flip the boat to survive a hail storm with hail stones the size of grapefruit (see #2 if you have problems believing this ). We played golf with the Gatlin brothers in Nashville, we had no idea who they were. 
5. Personal connections and relationships are everything - Dad loved meeting and interacting with people, he never met a stranger and was comfortable with just about everyone. Where ever we'd go dad would strike up a conversation with anyone he encountered.  He operated that there was always something to learn or to be gained by interacting with even complete strangers. He would find if the six degrees of separation rule applied. 
6. Don't let dreams get in the way -  My dad had some big dreams in his life. I know that he considered moving to Alaska prior to my being born and he always through his life talked about moving to Australia, I never did understand this.  However, dad did not live by big dreams or on the future possibilities, he also did not let business failures get him down too much (see more in #7). He just enjoyed life as it came focusing on the simple things, many of which I've listed in this blog. 
7. Even if you fail, try again, take risk- Dad was not very successful at business, he went bankrupt twice and both times he came out of bankruptcy. The point here is that he tried, he took risk to better his life and family, even when he failed once it did not prevent him from trying again.  
8. Laugh at yourself, and everything else- Dad along with telling stories could tell a few jokes as well, he was a person who could laugh at himself, and found the humor in life. 
9. Faith is important - While Dad was not a religious man, at least in my memory, but we as a family attend church on a regular basis and were active in church life. There were times when Dad would go fishing on Sunday and he would tell mom that he could commune with God just as good out on the lake as he could sitting in Church. I think there is some truth to that !  There are many Sunday's I wish I was communing with God in some other way than sitting in a church building..  

Happy fathers day to all you Dad's... remember what your father taught you!