Dear Boys,
Today, I arrived at my office door, my mind spinning with countless concerns -- house repairs and my therapy clients and blog comments and how to convince your mother I was right about something completely inconsequential. I found myself lost in the crowd of my various identities -- homeowner, psychologist, writer, vindicated husband.
But then I found my office keys and the keychain you made me for Father's Day and the three big, brightly-colored letters you inscribed upon it:
D-A-D.
I got ambushed by my most important identity -- Father. And I realized for an entire morning, like so many mornings before it, I had gotten distracted from my most sacred role by all of my perfectionism, my sense of duty, fear of rejection and my desire for affirmation.
And something inside of me cracked.
I think it was my ego -- the voice inside telling me if I want to be good enough I have to look perfect, take care of everyone, win everybody over, and be right all the time.
Boys, I want to apologize for my fierce but fragile ego.
Boys, I want to apologize for all of the ways I let my ego prevent me from being the kind of father of which you are completely worthy.
I'm sorry for every time you've needed an embrace and I gave you something less because affection requires time and presence and vulnerability.
I'm sorry for every time the projects in my life have been more important than the people in my world.
I'm sorry for every time I've demanded respect, instead of earning it.
I'm sorry for every time I've said, "No," simply because I can.
I'm sorry for every time I've told you to be humble and then turned around and acted like losing was the end of the world.
And I'm sorry for every time I didn't say, "I'm sorry," because they are, I'm learning, two of the most important words a father can say.
But mostly, Boys, I'm sorry for all the times I have communicated in subtle and not so subtle ways that your worth is conditional upon my approval or my mood or the consent of my fragile ego.
Boys, don't let anyone -- including me -- convince you that your worth is rooted in anything so transient as another person's opinion of you.
Your worth is conditional upon nothing.
You came into the world with infinite value and you will leave it in the same way, regardless of what you do or don't do in this life. I know this seems too good to be true -- in fact, many people will tell you it is a recipe for entitlement and narcissism -- but if you can learn to trust it, you will be free.
Free from the game of ego inflation in which so many of us are constantly embroiled.
Free to live what is written on your souls, rather than what other people have written upon you with their own brokenness and wounds.
Free to love yourself -- and therefore others, as well -- without condition and without limit in a world that places every kind of condition upon love and belonging.
Free to create beauty and abundance in a world that seems to be threatened by both.
Free to become portals of grace in a world that thrives on shame and condemnation.
Boys, instead of placing conditions of worth upon you, I want to become a reflection of your worth -- I want to mirror the awesome beauty I see in both of you, so you can begin to see it in yourselves.
In the end, Boys, I hope you can spend your lives knowing who you are, instead of constantly proving who you are.
With deep admiration for who you are, all the time, wherever you go, whatever you do,
Dad
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After I wrote a letter to my daughter, an interviewer asked me what words I would have for my boys. My first thought was, "Just two words: I'm sorry." Because those two words have the power to undermine the ego game in which boys and men are so often encouraged to compete.
So, I wrote this for my boys -- because I want them to be free of the game.
And I wrote it for the men who have had the courage to sit in my office, to feel broken, to let their egos die, and to discover who they really are.
And I wrote it as a permission slip to a world of fathers who have an opportunity to fundamentally change the way our world works, by freeing the next generation from the game we play, one father and one son at a time.