Father

Written by: Dallas Johnson

        The day you were born, I was so proud, a son had been given to me. I gave to you a gift. The same gift that my father gave to me. A gift that you can use as you wish, use it in any manner of your own choosing.  I give it to you in the same condition it was in when my father gave it to me, unblemished and clean.  Someday, you will give this gift to your son and so on down through the generations, for each to do with it as they see fit.  I have given to you my name, so that our ancestors, myself and you, will have immortality through its existence in generations to come.

        The generations cascade down through time, each blind to the future and each obsessed with the present.  Remembering and counting our ancestors and their traditions somehow have become lost in the ever coping with present responsibilities of life.  We have lost much of the traditions of our ancestors to new and novel ways of the present. Somehow, many came to see the old ways as outmoded and unnecessary or unpopular with the peers of present generations.  Parents more obsessed with materials, while neglecting the little ones' spiritual needs, have begun to reap the product of their crop.  Now, after a generation or so of unruly misbehavior, social discord, broken homes and lending credibility to the perverted in society, the chain is broken.  We now look to government and the school systems to instill in the hearts and minds of our youth the morality and a sense of responsibility which is our obligation to pass onto our children.  Traditions of our ancestors, which were past to them by their ancestors, which are also our ancestors.  Those traditions stem from thousands of years of experimentation with and observance of human behavior.  The generation that breaks the chain is condemned to two, maybe three generations to produce one generation with enough instilled tradition and moral knowledge to teach a succeeding generation the traditions and morality needed to instill pride and live full productive lives. Our children and their children have an inalienable right to be indoctrinated to those traditions and morals.  One who knows the history of his/her family and appreciates and loves his/her grandparents innately loves oneself and loves his/her neighbors.

        The common criminal has no knowledge of ancestors, traditions and morality. When one understands the hardships his/her ancestors endured to deliver to the succeeding generation the traditions and morality accumulated over thousands of years, then and only then does one feel a sense of gratitude for what one has and what one can pass on to his/her children so that they may be able to cope with the outside world and be free in their hearts, with confidence that they are right with themselves.

        So, my son, I give to you the gift of my father to me, my name.  I hope that you will always be as proud of this gift as I have been and that when you give it to your son, it will be as clean and unblemished as it is when I give it to you.  It is the name of my father and his father and on back through the cascading generations of our kind.  Let no one bring shame or discredit to this name, for it has been kept clean, worried over and protected for thousands of years, by very good people, your ancestors.  Now it is yours to carry on.

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