What does it mean to be better than my dad?

How that is probably the wrong question to ask in your journey to be a good man.

What does it mean to be better than my dad? To be a better man, father and husband. To be a better man for my family, community, and friends. I have been thinking about this question for quite a lot of my adult life and I have wondered if I have achieved that vague and undefinable goal or not. Now I’m starting to think that may be a useless question. Rather there is a better way to think about it than looking at it as a simple score, or a quantifiable measure. 

An insightful comment a friend left on one of my past articles stated that it is “The goal is not to be better than your dad. Comparative success is a useless metric.” We compare ourselves to the other people in our lives in regards to all sorts of things. How much money we earn, houses, the trips we take, the list goes on. This comparative success gets cranked to 11 on social media. 

Our life experiences are nearly impossible to compare. We all take different paths in life. Although there is a tremendous amount of lessons we can learn from each other's lives, comparison does not bring any benefits. At worst it makes us envy what others have.  

I think a better way to think of it is to instead ask, what has my experience of not having a good father motivated me to do that I otherwise wouldn’t have? To not think about what I didn’t get because of my bad father and instead think about what I have done to not repeat his mistakes. To go a step further and ponder what I have, and will do, because of that experience. 

The first experience I thought of was my work volunteering for an organization called Royal Family Kids. They organize and run a week-long summer camp for foster children. They bring together many people to either be a counselor for a child or be on staff for camp. As a counselor you spend most of the day with the kid you are paired with. Playing games, eating meals together, talking with them throughout the day and simply spending time with them throughout the week. 

I was and am primarily motivated to help with this camp to be a positive male role model for someone who likely doesn’t have that in their life. I didn’t get much of that from my dad. It took some convincing from a friend of mine who had told me about it years before and finally it hit me that this was a great opportunity to be that positive male role model for someone else who needs it. 

From my three years of experience volunteering for the summer camp I can say it is a very rewarding, but very hard experience. It is very often an emotionally and physically draining experience. However, often in the best way possible! I always go home after camp feeling very good and like I am doing some good for the world. If not the world, at least for a few foster children. 

Royal Family Kids Logo

I had the same camper assigned to me for two years in a row. The first year we connected very well. It helped that we both had similar interests and we had fun talking about all sorts of things. During that first year I taught him some math at his request. He really enjoyed learning the limited math I knew. For most of the second half of the week, whenever we had downtime he would be asking me to give him more math to solve. He was very good at it and quickly learned what I could teach him. 

When I had the same camper for the following year he showed me how he had learned to solve a rubix cube really quickly. He often could solve it no problem in around 45 seconds, if not quicker. It was a remarkable skill he had taught himself. He spent most of the week showing how quickly he could do it. As the week went on my camper let me know he started teaching himself how to solve a rubix cube only 6 months beforehand. He was inspired to take on learning it because I had taught him math during the previous year’s camp. 

I was able to help this kid learn this skill because I was willing to push my own math skills to the limit and teach him what I knew. He appreciated that so much he thought of that when he decided to take on the challenge of learning to solve a rubix cube. I realize reflecting on that moment that this is exactly what being a good man means. Teaching and inspiring those less fortunate than us and being a positive male role model for them.  

What does it mean to be better than my dad? I’m starting to think that is either the wrong question, or the wrong way to frame the question. I have spent a lot of time thinking about what not to do from his example. Every once and a while I worry about how I need to not be like him and what I am doing to prevent that outcome. However, that is a bad obsession and not a good thing to constantly worry about. 

Instead I am beginning to see that you don’t become a good man by constantly worrying about how to avoid being a bad man. It instead involves taking your experiences and using them as motivation to do some good in the world. It doesn’t have to be a grand ambition or a world changing goal. At times it simply needs to be the willingness to teach a kid some math.