I never would have believed it possible — not in a million years. My dad was a fairly typical guy for his generation. He looked after his kids in the traditional ways: he worked hard to pay the bills and ensured that his six children all had food and clothes, a roof over their head and a good education. He was very kind and loving in his own way. And like most men of his generation (and many men of my own), he was terrified of intimacy. And by intimacy, I don’t mean having sex; I mean emotional and psychological intimacy.
To be emotionally and psychologically intimate with another human requires two things:
• You need to open up and be real; to ‘let the other person in’; to share your true thoughts and feelings instead of hiding them away.
• You need to create a space for the other person to do likewise; to be warm, open and accepting enough that they too can be real and open with you.
My dad never wanted to talk about anything deeply personal. He liked to make intellectual small talk: to exchange facts, figures and ideas; to discuss movies and books and science. This was all well and good — we had plenty of enjoyable conversations — but it meant that I never got to know him very well. I never got to know about the feelings he struggled with, his hopes and dreams, his setbacks and failures, his most important life experiences and what he learned from them. I never got to know what made him frightened or angry or insecure or sad or guilty. I knew virtually nothing of his interior world.
At the age of seventy-eight he developed lung cancer, but he didn’t tell me. So, knowing nothing of his diagnosis, I went on a six-week trip overseas. Before I left, my dad had a full head of thick white hair, but when I got back, he was totally bald. He didn’t tell me that all his hair had fallen out due to the chemotherapy he’d been having. Instead, he told me he’d shaved off his hair because it was fashionable and he thought it made him look younger. And I believed him.
Of course, as he got sicker and frailer, the true story emerged. But even then, he didn’t want to talk about his cancer, or the treatment, or his fears. And every time I tried to talk about it, he changed the subject or went quiet.
Not knowing how long he would live, I tried to tell him what he meant to me as a father: how much I loved him, the role he had played in my life, the ways he had inspired me, the most useful things he had taught me and the fondest memories I had of him. But he was so uncomfortable with such conversations, especially as my eyes would usually brim with tears, that he would end them almost as soon as they started.
Miraculously, he recovered from the cancer. I hoped this brush with death would help him to open up a little, but I was disappointed. He remained as closed off as he’d always been, if not more so.
Three years later, at the age of eighty-one, he had a heart attack. He had major blockages in several coronary arteries and he required open-heart surgery. The operation carried a significant risk of mortality. Talking to him shortly before the operation, I tried once again to share with him what he meant to me as a father. As usual, tears welled up in my eyes — tears of both love and sadness — and he instantly closed off. He turned away and said, in a stern voice, ‘Hush now. And wipe away those tears.’
Dad survived the operation, but it knocked him around. He had one complication after another and he spent most of the next year in hospital. Towards the end of that year, he became increasingly weak and more and more demoralised. And yet, he still would not allow me to talk to him on an intimate level. Eventually, he decided he had had enough of life and chose to stop all his medication. Being a doctor himself, he knew exactly what this meant: effectively he was killing himself. Once medication ceased, he knew full well he would have only a few days to live. And even knowing this, he still refused to let me tell him how much I loved him and what he meant to me.
In the last hours of his life, Dad started hallucinating. But in between the hallucinations, he had lucid periods, where for several minutes at a time he would be fully conscious, mentally alert and in touch with reality. During one of these periods, I tried one last time to tell him what he meant to me and how much I loved him. I was a blubbering mess: tears streaming down my face and snot bubbling out of my nose. And to my utter amazement, Dad turned and looked deep into my eyes. His face lit up with a radiant smile, full of kindness and compassion, and he took my hands in his and he listened intently to everything I had to say, never once turning away or interrupting. After I had finished sobbing and blowing my nose and telling him everything I’d been wanting to tell him for years, he said, in a voice full of tenderness and love, ‘Thank you.’ And then he added, ‘I love you, too.’
***
I tell this story to make two key points: both of them vital to cover before we end this section. The first is that small changes can have a profound impact. My dad did not transform his personality; all he did was make one small change: he made the effort to stay present and open. And even though the whole episode was over within a few minutes, that one small change gave rise to a beautiful and loving experience that I’ll remember fondly until the day I die.
Our society bombards us with the notion that if we wish to find lasting fulfilment, we have to dramatically overhaul our life, or radically transform our personality, or fundamentally alter the way we think (or even do all three!). But the problem is, when we buy into these notions, it doesn’t usually help us; commonly, all that happens is we end up placing enormous pressure on ourselves. We push ourselves harder and harder to be different and ‘better’ than what we are — and we beat ourselves up for not meeting our own expectations. Sadly, rather than raising us up, this just brings us down.
So why not lighten the load? Why not take the pressure off ourselves? Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was a rich and meaningful life. Why not relax a little? Take baby steps. Go slow. And remember the moral of Aesop’s much-loved tale of The Crow and the Pitcher: ‘Little by little does the trick.’
Trying to make huge changes in a short space of time is almost always a recipe for failure. Occasionally we might manage it, but far more commonly we don’t. However, small changes, over time, can make an enormous difference. To quote Archbishop Desmond Tutu: Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.
The second important point of this story is that it’s never too late to start making these little changes. Of course, your mind may not agree with that. The human mind is a bit like a ‘reason-giving machine’: it is brilliant at coming up with all sorts of reasons for why we can’t change, shouldn’t change, or shouldn’t have to change, and one of its favourites is this: ‘It’s too late! I can’t change now. That’s the way I am. That’s the way I’ve always been.’ But we don’t have to buy into such thoughts. Instead of seeing ourselves as ‘carved in stone’, we can acknowledge that we have a never-ending capacity to learn and grow and act and think differently. All we need to do is tune in to our hearts and ask ourselves: ‘What one tiny change could I make? What one tiny change in what I say or what I do or how I think, would take me closer to being the person I want to be?’
I wish my dad had made his change a bit earlier, instead of waiting until he was on his deathbed. But I am so grateful for his precious parting gift: he opened up, stayed present, and allowed me to share my true feelings with him. And he did this willingly. It is such a beautiful memory: both heart-warming and heart-rending at the same time. And it’s a powerful reminder that as long as we’re still breathing, it’s never too late to change.