Thursday, March 4, 2021
Today’s Gift from Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation is:
My father didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it. — Clarence Budington Kelland
The most powerful teaching is done by example. We all have strong feelings about our fathers and what we learned or didn’t learn from them. Some of us have fathers who stand as great examples of how we would like to live. Some of us have fathers who are negative examples that we want to avoid. Some of us never got to know our fathers. For most of us, it is a complicated mixture of all those things.
Now, as we continue to grow and change in adulthood, we are faced with growing beyond what our parents taught us, both the good and the bad. We need to forge ahead and become our own growing version of adult men. There are many men who can serve as examples to us; some of them were in our past, and some of them are now friends and mentors. Sometimes the example is unconscious. It is always helpful to notice who we admire, who sets an example that we would like to follow. Take the best of what they have to offer and leave the rest.
Today, I am grateful for what I received from my father and from all the other men who have set examples in my life.
Hazelden Foundation
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