How to Survive Father's Day when Dad Isn't There

Dear Nephew,

I'm sending you this letter as I promised. It is the letter I mentioned to you over dinner the other day at that Mexican restaurant. Remember our three-hour conversation?-a marathon which I enjoyed very much. To begin, let me make one very important point. I forgot to bring this up, last we spoke at dinner. This is so that from this point onward you'll better understand why I say the things that I do and why I think the way I do.

I am a firm believer that we - meaning you and I as part of the male species, especially in America - are part of a rapidly deteriorating social class. Men in America have forgotten how to be strong, how to be leaders, how to tell the truth, and how to live respectfully.

We have given up our spirit in favor of pleasing everyone and everything else that television and magazines, and popular culture say is appropriate.

We are lost, clueless to who we really are anymore, and we get caught up in the nonsense of what other lost people are trying to tell us we should be. This is why we have so many divorces, so many over-medicated people, so many different kinds of addiction and so many bad fathers and leaders. And the sad part is we call this normal.

Not to get all spiritual on you (but you can handle it for a minute) - there is a passage in the Bible that talks about the sins of the father passing onto the son.Never has this statement been truer than it is today. Fathers have long forgotten (and this includes my own father) to teach their sons how to be men. Instead they've passed on dysfunction after dysfunction and frustration after frustration. Supplying a child with the funds to obtain a college degree does not educate him on becoming a man. Neither does providing for his basic needs, or providing a lifestyle of comfort. None of that equates to "manhood." Yet, nowadays, in this present system of living and learning, this is too often where the road stops.