Courtesy DOD
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Categories - Copywriting - Shopping - Free Online Business Help - Telecommunications Services Articles: Parenting - Dad's Lessons My Dad taught me many things, but most of the things I learned were a result of watching him and then attempting to do what he did while he patiently watched. He didn’t speak much except to warn me about the things that would cause me harm in the process. I learned quickly to pay attention when he did speak.
One day, after I had struggled for hours until I was exhausted trying to break up a heavy piece of concrete that had to be replaced in our yard with a sledgehammer, I sat down and decided that I couldn’t do it. I was was a Senior in high school and bigger than my Dad by that time and I worked out, played sports, and was one of the strongest boys in school. In spite of my muscles, I had swung the hammer mightily and only managed to break off a few chips.
I didn’t know that my Dad had been watching me struggle from inside the house and, after a few minutes, of watching me sit and shake my head, he came outside, grabbed a shovel, used it like a lever to pry one end of the slab up, and kicked a rock under it. With one end of the slab off of the ground about an inch, he reached over, grabbed a small hammer, and with a couple of relatively small hits, he broke the slab in two. The slab was easy to break without the support of the ground under it.
“Why didn’t you come out and show me that hours ago”, I complained. He looked at me, smiled, and said, “Let me tell you a story”. I was all ears to hear why he had allowed me to struggle so hard.
“One day this guy was hiking in the woods and he noticed a butterfly trying to fight its way out of its cocoon through a small hole. The man decided to stop and eat his sandwich while he watched. "After he was done with his sandwich, he saw that the butterfly didn’t seem to have made any progress and had stopped trying so, he took out his pocketknife and made the opening in the cocoon big enough for the butterfly to come out. The butterfly soon crawled out, but its body was all swollen and its wings were crumpled. The guy kept watching the butterfly expecting its body to shrink and its wings to fill out so that it could fly off. What the guy didn’t realize was that had the butterfly managed to squeeze through the small hole in its cocoon, the fluids in its body would have been forced out and into the veins in its wings providing them with the structure that they needed. The wings would have been spread out and the butterfly would have been able to fly. Instead, the man had prevented the butterfly’s development by trying to help it.” “You’re a pretty
strong boy”, my Dad said, “but you aren’t going to get ahead with
your muscles. I have watched you do things like this many times and
you have always figured out how to get them done with your brain”.
“I think that you would have figured this out too, but we need to
get this out of here today. The concrete’s going to be here in the
morning and I think you were ready to listen”. “Remember this when you have kids”, he said. “I think I can handle things from here”, I said. “I know you can”, he replied as he walked back into the house.
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