This post was originally published a couple of years ago. I read it again and it still rings true. Happy Father’s Day to all the dads of all kinds and father figures out there!
My lawyer dad doesn’t know a thing about mindfulness, but he’s still one of the best meditation teachers I have ever had. He’s steady, hard-working, kind, and decent. He’s not closed off to new ideas, but he favors tradition. In this way, he has rarely sought out new practices and approaches to help manage his life.
Dad worked as a lawyer for or with local governments his whole career and he loves things like procedure, budgets, and finance. As an introvert, he’s rarely the life of the party, but people listen when he talks because they know he thinks first. He was picked on in school because he grew up on a farm in a small town called Rabbit Hash, Kentucky, so he usually prefers not to stand out.
My Lawyer Dad Was Not into Meditation but He Taught Me Good Lessons
For these reasons, my dad would never seek out information about mindfulness and he has never tried meditation. Dad only knows that mindfulness has helped me quite a lot in my life and it makes me happy to teach and write about it.
You know what? That’s just fine. In the Pali canon, it is said that there are 84,000 doors to enlightenment. I take that to mean that we have options and various interconnected winding paths that can lead us to growth and fulfillment as long as we stay open to learning from what comes to us along those paths.
My dad doesn’t know a thing about meditation. Still, as one of my first mentors in life, he prepared me to benefit from it. Many of the lessons he taught me are similar to those I learned in my meditation practice or from meditation teachers. In honor of Father’s Day and to celebrate my lawyer dad, I am sharing them with you here.
1. Simple is good.
My dad’s favorite ice cream is vanilla. His favorite snack is saltine crackers. His beverage of choice: ice water. Sometimes he mixes things up but he usually keeps things simple. Sometimes this simplicity can be magical.
He makes the best fried chicken I have ever had anywhere and he doesn’t bother with the Colonel’s 11 secret herbs and spices. His recipe is just salt, pepper, and flour. That’s it.
In my years of meditation, I’ve adopted the same approach. I’ve tried lots of different styles and practices. Most of the time I just like to sit and relax into the silence. I’m so glad I learned early on from my dad that simple is good.
2. It’s okay to be quiet.
If you are a meditator, it helps if you have at least a decent relationship with silence. When I teach about mindfulness, people often ask me if I am naturally calm. I tell them, emphatically, that I absolutely am not. But I have one secret advantage: I love silence. Silence isn’t lonely to me. It’s peaceful. It makes me feel at home.
I’ve never had trouble with silence because my dad always liked it too. He often drove with the radio turned off. He would read for hours on end. In a world that constantly wants to make noise, my dad taught me that it was okay just to stop and be still. That’s perhaps the first lesson that any new meditator needs to learn, so thanks dad.
3. Don’t be a martyr.
I’ve written before about struggling after the birth of my first daughter because she was tongue-tied and I couldn’t breastfeed her. During that time, I remember my dad saying this to me:
Claire, you will have her whole life to make sacrifices for her. I don’t have any doubts that you will be willing to do that most of the time. You don’t have to try to make all the sacrifices all at once right now.
Achiever types like us lawyers love to set standards and meet them. That tendency can easily turn to martyrdom if we aren’t careful. It can also show up in meditation practice. So, remember this lesson from my dad: you have a whole life to practice. You don’t have to do it all at once. Trust that you will make the right choices as you go along and give yourself some grace.
4. Fear is a part of life.
My dad was a successful and respected civil servant with decades of experience. After he retired, he went into private practice, just a few years before I graduated from law school. I remember sharing with my dad that I was scared about business development and my dad gave me the best response possible: he admitted that he was scared of this too.
To see someone who had accomplished so much admit that he was afraid helped more than any pep talk that simply told me “you can do it.” It helped me understand that fear is just a part of life and it has nothing to do with your competence or chances of success.
As you start meditating, you may think that you “get over” or “advance beyond” difficult emotions. Not so in my experience. As human beings, we never get over things like this no matter how hard we work or how awesome we are. But, as my dad helped me see, fear is a part of life, but it helps when you can share it.
5. Don’t quit just because your ego gets bruised.
I loved basketball growing up and as a very tall kid I was pretty good at it. In high school, though, the competition caught up with me and my coordination and skill didn’t grow at the same pace as my height. I had an injury my sophomore year that benched me all season. My tryouts during junior year didn’t go well and, though I missed getting cut, I ended up on the JV team.
I was so ashamed that I was in a pit of despair for a week and contemplated quitting. My dad told me that I didn’t have to play but that I shouldn’t quit just because I was mad or felt embarrassed. He reminded me that basketball was a sport and was, you know, supposed to be fun.
I ended up deciding to play and had so much fun with the younger players. As team captain, I was able to be a leader in a way I never had before. That season was one of the best sports experiences I ever had because of this opportunity to lead.
In our meditation practice, we may get upset when we struggle because it hurts our ego when we find we can’t do it perfectly or advance as quickly as we’d like. Of course, if you can keep going, you may learn an entirely different lesson than the one you started out to discover.
6. Any moment can be a teachable moment.
I was a kid who asked a lot of questions. Deep questions, usually starting with the word “why.” It didn’t matter how out of the blue it was. It didn’t matter if my dad was cooking dinner or working in the yard. He didn’t skip a beat. He’d answer the questions and a lot of time throw some back at me to force me to think through the issue myself.
Lots of meditation teachers will tell you that any moment can teach you about yourself if you keep your mind and heart open. In the same way, my dad’s constant comfort with questions and unwavering willingness to teach showed me that any moment in my life could be a learning moment.
Though for many, meditation can feel strange at first and many may worry that the practice may change them. In my own experience, I have found that meditation didn’t change me but allowed me instead to connect more deeply with who I really was. This is why it’s no surprise that my dad’s wisdom and the wisdom from so many wonderful teachers lines up. I
f there are 84,000 doors to enlightenment, I am glad that I found one running to me that started on a farm in Rabbit Hash, Kentucky. Happy Father’s Day to all the dads, step-dads, foster parents, and father surrogates out there. Thank you for teaching us kids in your own way about mindfulness, meditation, and life.
Want to learn more about mindfulness and compassion? Check out my new book, How to Be a Badass Lawyer, for a simple guide to creating a meditation practice of your own in 30 days. And to share mindfulness with your little one, check out my new children’s book, Mommy Needs a Minute.
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