His Father's Son

People have often told me my 25 year old son, Patrick Michael, resembles me. I think, luckily for him, this isn't true. Both he and his sister, Michelle Alison, have their personalities and abilities to get along with others from their mother, my wife, Sigrid. Based on the thirty years of our marriage, I suspect whatever patience the children have is from her side as well. I have often fretted in the course of their lives as to how I have failed them as a parent, much, I like to think, in the way my father might have fretted about his children.

I mention all of this because my son and I spoke last night for about an hour on the phone. You have had this kind of conversation as well.....started out on one topic, vectored off into an incalculable number of tangents and eventually came back to its original path. If Patrick and I are anything alike in any area, it's probably in our personal politics, and only in so far as neither of us supports anyone, or any party, that doesn't allow the best idea to triumph and serve as the guiding principle.

In the course of our conversation last night, he told me he just remembered a quote someone had sent him that he felt I would appreciate. It was in my email when I signed on a moment ago. I have no idea who said it, or in what context it was uttered or at what point in history--all of which makes it, I think, ring so absolutely true.
I hope you like it as much as I do and will try to live it as hard I want to.

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.

Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.

We are all meant to shine as children do. It's not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own lights shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
-bill kenny