Thought Picnic: I am not embarrassed for myself

We talk indeed

I have the most fascinating conversations with my dad within which I find truth, wisdom, admonition and rebuke – I sometimes have to be on some type of guard.

What really amazes me is the constant demand of parents for their children to reach and I use reach quite liberally, in the broadest sense.

Many are quite aware of the issues I have encountered in the last three years and to the day, it was the first time a doctor noted the seriousness of what eventually turned out to be life threatening but thankfully manageable with outcomes that read almost like miracles of healing.

However, with the loss of health came the loss of many other things that hopefully will find replacement as things change for the better. Having reached that milestone I am being pushed on to things that are not in my purview, seemingly very important to others other than myself.

Hitching to getting hitched

That topic came up again, as apparently, I am according to him married to my computer and it is now time for me to be properly married and get responsible. In fact, this time, I just let that correlation of marriage and responsibility pass.

There is no doubt that with marriage a person assumes some responsibility but a responsibility in and of itself does not equate to being responsible.

It was quite interesting to see his view of things in the conversation we had, as he suggested I would have made a really good lawyer because I have always been quite articulate and could make conversation quite easily and by so doing there was no reason why I could not chat up ladies for the purposes of a relationship and eventually marriage.

Now, I see

I was not prepared from the timescale he suggested for my getting hitched, he gave me a year, to which I had to respond before he interjected and in doing so the real reason for his constant angst for my enduring bachelorhood – he is embarrassed to admit to people that I am not yet married – I for one do not know how those people who have not interacted with in over 25 years will know of my current marital status if he has not been contributing to his embarrassment when he should have held his counsel.

I am not embarrassed by what he identified as my two phobias – the fear of driving and the fear of marriage – to the first, I could write a treatise about how he felt the cars we had when I came of age were too big for me to learn to drive on and to the latter – where do I even start to reason from inability, incapability, incapacity through to total indifference.

Basically, to reiterate ever so strongly, I am not embarrassed by who I am and what I have made of what constitutes the life of I [allow me this construct and grammatical licence]; if there were two of me, I could have spare for regret, I don’t.

This is Akin

In the end, one has learnt to take the affirmation with the denigration and having as much sense as an old cow to eat the hay and leave the baling wire; the hay is the affirmation and the baling wire of denigration in the society my parents come from is what is used to bind the hay into bales.

As for the phobias, the greatest one to avoid is really the fear of just being yourself and I think my dad is well aware of my radically independent streak, the forcefulness of my opinion and the fact that I will only do what I want to do, at my own convenience and in my own time but more disturbingly for him, I most likely will not do what he really wants me to do.

You don’t get named Akin having started off life no bigger than an adult’s outstretched hand and think there is nothing to it – my dad and I are clued into something we would rather deny is a reality we don’t want to appreciate – for all the sincerity of purpose we share, some pretence also has a part.