If I have to sound deeply religious, I will use
the phrase, ‘it is well with my soul’.
Well, that is where the state of my mind is at
present. I am currently on 21 days of prayer and fasting, and in doing this I
have found a lot of peace inside of me. The fact is I do find a lot of time to myself where
I do a lot of soul searching and luckily for me, this is the time I am more
creative in a literary sense. I don’t know if it is the peace I find or the
time that is created, but I just seem to find a lot of time for writing when I
am in the soul searching mode.
Unfortunately my 2016 was a busy year and I
didn’t get enough time to write as much as I should have, but I still got
moments where I just sat to reflect or indeed do soul searching. Time to look
back on life and looking at life retrospectively is as important as making
resolutions, which many people do. It’s a very personal journey for me to
honestly look into the dark crevices inside of me. At times this process is a
never ending pursuit of melancholy and at times a very blissful jaunt into the
past. 13 days into the New Year and 5 days into my 21 days fasting has brought
me to yet another point of reflection.
The only problem with 13th January
is that it is a memorial day for my late father, Godwin Aongola Nambayo thus all
my reflections get lost in the memory of my father. This being a memorial day,
I also take time to find fissures in my psyche and consciousness to celebrate
the little time we spent together and thinking about what could have been had
he not died that early in my life. I am nearly in tears as I write this, not
knowing whether to be cheery or fearful for what could have been and what life
eventually turned out to be all these years.
What would I have learned from my father as a
boy growing up? What would I have learned from him in my teen years? What would
I have learned from him as a young man approaching adulthood? What would life
have been with him around as I became a man in my own mould, becoming a husband
and becoming a father myself?
I can never clearly answer these questions, but
I still need to ask myself these questions and evidently this always happens on
or around January 13th. I am not a superstitious man hence do not
look at my forlorn blog and relate this to the date of the post, Friday 13th,
it’s a coincidence. For 2017, it is a coincidence I take heartily since it can
serve as my blog title.
I go through this a lot. It’s not even the
first time I am writing about how I miss my father. Of course I have had my
mother, brothers and sisters all these years. However, one can’t really call a
mother ‘dad’ and because of that they cannot replace the void a father leaves.
Mothers have a very special place in children’s lives but they are not fathers,
no one can replace a father. This is more difficulty for me because as a father
to a boy, myself, at times I struggle with emotion and ask myself what being a
father to my boy really entails. Of course this is not something you learn in a
class by sitting behind a desk as a professor delivers lecture after lecture. I
also know that the last thing I would have wanted is my dad to sit me down and
tell me how to raise my child(ren).
Although I would not take kindly to being told
how to raise children by my father, having to live a life from childhood to my
adulthood with a father present would have given me some lasting lessons. I am
not even talking of father figures but biological fathers as the bonds and
special connections between father and son are different from a father figure. Because
of this, I have always come to the conclusion that the role a father plays is
extremely important in the life of his family. My ruminations today may not be grounded
on any scientifically proven notion, but it is important for me to get rid of this
subjugation in order to be a good father. I have to be a father myself. I have
to wake up from this longing and rummage for my own father.
But being a father is more than just providing
the sperm that fertilizes the ova. It is about the inspiration and counsel a
father gives to his children. This means more than just biological fatherhood
but inspiring the next generation through my children. I know in the mind of my
son, am probably a superhero greater than superman or Spiderman, but I should
look further than just my son because as a parent it’s my responsibility to
inspire the next generation at least even just my close family and descendants.
Menace to Society: The
21st century version
For a few years now, I have been awoken to the
fact that no one else is going to free me from my limiting introspections and
musings on the loss of my father but I have to quickly validate myself as a
father that I am, and always thinking and acting accordingly. This to me has
had to be the beginning of the pursuit of a more meaningful life. It is well
with my soul.
The last few years I have seen many teen-age
boys and girls seriously lacking good moral behavior in the way they carry
themselves in simple things like etiquette and being respectful to other people
especially the elderly. You drive to a mall in the evening and you find little
boys and girls loitering the car parks seemingly drunk and not caring about
anything. These teen-age boys and girls are growing into men and women every
year and eventually becoming fathers and mothers themselves. Unfortunately, the
father of today is so busy they don’t have enough family time and we are
letting our children to be brought up by their peers.
I watched the black American movie menace to
society in the 1990’s, and in that movie, little boys were raised by gangsters
and they joined gangs at tender ages because they did not have their fathers
present as most black fathers were serving jail sentences. This in my view is
similar to what we face today in the 21st century, only we are
jailed by our businesses and jobs. Fathers have no time for their children and
they end up being raised by their peers and we realize very late that we
haven’t been there enough to father these children.
I have to acknowledge the role that the process of soul searching is playing in my life, it is well with my soul.
