What Good Fathers Teach Without Saying

How I measure my life has changed over time:

“Do any girls like me like me?”

“Am I getting good grades?”

“How much can I bench press?”

“Did I get into Harvard?”

“Am I making the news?”

“How many books have I sold?”

“Do we have a vacation home?”

“Does my family love me?”

“How many people will show up to my funeral?”

Looking back, none of these were great measures. Though I’m glad to have at least become slightly less arrogant and vain over time. Measuring something as singular and precious as a life is elusive.

—

The past decade of my life was bookended by funerals of good men who were fathers. The first was for my own father. The second was for Clarence, who I met because we both became Catholics together as adults.

For Clarence, I just wanted to go. I didn’t know him for even two years, but I still felt drawn to be at his funeral. I was puzzled by this. Why do I want to be at the funeral of someone with whom I spent so little time?

I knew him long enough, I thought, to know he was a good man.

And it was the same for my father. People showed up because they knew he was a good man—or they knew me and my mom well enough to discern that he was, too.

I have come to think that it is foolish to evaluate a life. Who even has the information to fairly and comprehensively judge themselves? I’ll never know anywhere close to the full effects of my choices, or even the full honesty of my intent. If I can’t even judge my own life, how could I begin to judge anyone else?

Judgment—not of the law, but of a life—isn’t a role for a human being. It is the role of God, or nobody at all. Nothing but an omniscient being even has the richness of perspective to judge a life.

So how do we even try to “measure” our lives? It is a fool’s errand.

But if we were to try, the best measure I can come up with is not how many people show up at my funeral—but why.

Do they show up out of obligation? Or do they show up because they felt loved, listened to, respected—because their soul felt some morsel of peace and joy when I was with them?

—

There are many aspects of our lives my father would be happy to see: that Robyn and I have a strong marriage, and that we love his grandsons most of all.

But also, I think he would feel relief that a lesson he never spoke of—but was always teaching—finally sunk in:

Take care of your duties. Do right by others and by God. That is how to live.

For many years I measured my life in terms of lesser things.

It’s not all the vanities of my youth that mattered. It is this.

And further, the lesson—the real enlightenment—is to realize that we ought not even to measure. We ought to do our duties, take care of others, and do right by God not for the fruits we will reap, but for its own sake.

We do the work because we do the work.

This is the timeless wisdom Arjun learns in the Bhagavad Gita—that my father managed to teach me through deeds, not words—and that has finally sunk in, ten years after he went ahead.

How do we measure a life?

If we can pursue our duty—our dharma—without attachment to its fruits, that may be the best measure of all.

Paradoxically, the best measure may be if we can persist on a righteous path without needing to measure at all.