Being free

“Responsibility arises from the commitment we take on by being loyal to other people, to the task we’ve been entrusted with. But this presupposes a certain measure of freedom. Only someone who was free to take on the commitment is responsible.” (*)

Today my youngest daughter turns 5. Yesterday we threw her a birthday party and she was the happiest girl in the world.

And me with a headache that barely let me stay awake. Seeing her happy comforted me through the pain. I’ll probably have to go to the dentist, and work up the courage to finally have my wisdom teeth pulled, which must be to blame for this awful pain.

How the hell, at 40, are you only now thinking about getting your wisdom teeth out!

Before I begot my daughter, I became a father. It’s not the same thing, because you can be a father without having to beget a child. The ability to beget and the ability to be a father are not related. Some things become clearer to you when you beget a child of your own.

Being a father changed me; in a different way, five years ago I reached another level of understanding of what it means to be a father. Holding that tiny little creature, who had been awaited with love and anxiety.

It’s easy to beget, unless nature has prevented you, and it’s also easy to claim the role of father. But only they, your children, will tell you whether you did it well, and whether you really were a father.

There are things whose nature depends on others. It’s your children who make you a father, but it’s your actions, their responses, and above all the love they give you and you give them that completes the relationship, that makes fatherhood real.

You can’t consider yourself a complete man without being a father.

Nobody forces you to be a father, it’s an act you take on freely, but as I’ve said before, freedom comes with a backpack, and it’s called responsibility.

But it’s the bravest, and most valuable, act you can carry out in this life.

I named my daughter Francisca, because that name means to be free.

That’s why I have to go to the dentist, and have to lose weight, and many other things, because I have to be responsible to my children, to my wife. I chose my life freely; it’s an act of loyalty to those who love me.

(*) The line is my brother’s, in another context, but it has to do with this post.