Inspiration: My Father's Influence

Ever since I can remember I have heard stories about my father's travels around the worold. I've looked up to him for my whole life, as a son is prone to do with his father. As time has passed, the desire to emulate him has never left me. The fire of my father-worship, coupled with his countless small words of encouragement, has left me today with an inferno burning in my chest to become as great as I have perceived him to be.
But though a father is always a man, the father itself is a myth. He is a Hercules fallen from heavens, a towering beast and bona fide force of nature. He cannot be stopped by any living force, but is instead moved, as though unmoved, from within. And throughout it all, he is a myth borne alone from the wonder of a child's eyes. As I grew older I had to learn that he did not really exist. I had a father, yes. But he was no god.

Despite all this, there is no undoing the motions instilled in us from the time we are children. Myths may be unsubstantiated by facts, but that makes them no less real. There is an undeniable power possessed by myths, and this power is not false even if the stories themselves are utter fabrications.

I know full well the depth and complexity of the person my father truly is. I know that while his stories of travel and adventure sound romantic, that they contain a dark underbelly. Every time he went off on another adventure, he left people behind. And every ounce of his spirit that he lent to the whimsical pursuit of pleasure was an ounce stolen from those he loved and cared for.

But he is my father, and nothing will ever topple the place he has in my heart and mind. No Titan can topple the god that is Father from Olympus, for the material of myth is not fact but hope. He may not have been the best man, but he will always be my greatest inspiration.

So here I am, out in the world, far, far from home. I console myself with the knowledge that I am not repeating his mistakes, but making my own. I have hurt no one by forging off on this new path of mine. Everything that he has done wrong, I have learned not to repeat.

Thus I am just the same as every other person on this earth. I want to have my cake and eat it too. For my father is a singular creature. Everything that has gone into him and come out again has, by way of the pressure-cooker of time, been tangled and bound up together into an inscrutable mass. To wish to take only from the good while discarding all of the bad is like trying to separate the white from the yolk of an egg once it has been scrambled.

But by the same token, it is just as impossible to separate the heart of man from his destiny. I can no sooner deny the influence of my father than I can sever off my own foot with indifference. Because I too am a singular creature, cooked into an indistinguishable molten mass through fires of time. I am the egg that has been scrambled beyond hope of separation.

And so I turn myself over to destiny, and pray that it makes me well. I can do nothing less.