wasted potential

indecisiveness, self-trust and a father's affirmation

Photo by Danielle-Claude Bélanger on Unsplash

“I think you never really knew what you wanted…”.

I paused to let the gravity of the statement land. It’s one thing hearing your truth spoken out loud by another person, but something entirely more pronounced when it’s your dad. I always suspected he knew me more than he let on. His aloofness, now concretised by miles of separation was suspended, and a gentle flutter in my chest expanded my breathing. The sensation of being seen in so frank a way caught me off-guard and so a slight apprehension danced with the lightness that accompanied it.

“At some point your mum and I sensed that you were struggling at uni…”

I listened intently.

It didn’t matter that he was talking about a 19 year old me, fresher faced, binge drinking. It was still me. He still resides somewhere in my psyche; occasionally staging revolts for dominance. He still longed — regardless of how nonchalantly he portrayed it — to be understood.

My closed mouth queried internally.

You knew? So why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you come and visit me?

My eyebrows curled up and I felt juvenile resentment begin to bubble but this quickly dissolved in my eagerness to stay engaged.

My dad loves a story and to his credit, he’s very good at telling them. Perhaps not so great at remembering how many times we’ve heard them already. Or maybe he just doesn’t care. Good for him. A younger, pricklier version of me would find it annoying. Today, it’s endearing.

Since getting married and having kids, his recollections of coming to the UK, raising a young family and all the challenges that came with it has holds a stronger grip on my imagination. I see it now. I feel it.

“When I meet schoolmates at these Old Boys’ events, they tell your mum how brilliant her husband was… how I excelled academically... I think about the positions that they’ve reached in Ghana, heads of banks and directors of so and so… I used to think of my time in the UK as wasted years. The work I did wasn’t 25% of my potential.”

Dad said this with no bitterness in his voice or overinflated sense of importance. It was matter of fact. Now deep into his 60s and residing back home, far from the cold concrete that used to greet him most days of the year, he has reconciled reality. Most of the time when we have a chance to talk on the phone, he genuinely seems to be at peace.

You know how they say you grow up one day and all of a sudden you’ve become your dad? A lot of people meet this realisation with horror.

At some point you see their full humanity and not the idealised image you held of them as a child. Often the self-correction from hero to something more real — good-hearted but flawed — transitions too harshly. In some cases they become villains in our minds, standing in the way of our self-actualisation. If that’s just one of those things that every parent has to go through with their children then good luck to me. Hopefully, it finds a way to mellow out to mutual respect and affection.

I don’t know if my dad sees himself as a cautionary tale when he shares these things with me. I certainly see the parallels of our paths and where they’ve intersected. I think we both harboured an indecisiveness born from an abundance of options and detachment from easily discernible passions.

One of those stories my dad loves to tell is that he originally wanted to be a catholic priest. I used to think he was joking but now I’m not so sure. In my early 20s, a simple monastic life had an appeal that hasn’t completely been lost on me. Before we had kids I told my wife that if we ever broke up I’d retreat to the mountains. By this point I’d built up a reputation for abruptly disappearing for 10 days on a whim to silent meditation courses, so it wasn’t unthinkable. I wonder if that ascetic fantasy was a path that genuinely called to me or simply cowardice cloaking itself — how much easier would it be to live a regimented life, disengaged from society, its mess, its noise, and its endless decision-making.

Recently, I made one significant decision down a path. I enrolled on a Foundation Year to train as a counsellor. I start in just over a week. Despite all the positive reinforcement I’ve received from the few people I’ve told, my excitement is still shrouded in an air of doubt.

“I think you’d make an amazing counsellor!” my former colleague enthusiastically says.

What the hell does that even mean?

Of course I do know what she means. I’m open-minded, a good listener, curious and have a deep taste for topics related to the human psyche. If I’d realised some of these things about myself earlier I likely would have been more intentional with my education and career trajectory, rather than short-sightedly pragmatic. Economics at Cambridge unambiguously was not my bag.

That of course would have required a healthy dose of trust in myself, which hasn’t always been in large supply. Still, I’m learning how to trust my self again — to strike the balance between caution and audacity.

Trust is first forged in honesty. Honesty about what you believe. What you care about. What you’re gifted at. What makes you delight. Then following those clues all the way, even through the mud. Sometimes you have to put pragmatism to the side and err on the blind side of optimism with something on the line; real pain on the downside but something disproportionately greater on the up.

“You’re brilliant”, he said. “You haven’t lost any ground… You’re a gifted writer. Envision what you want and just go for it”

I surprise myself by how much self-imposed angst is depleted by these simple words of affirmation from my dad. The hours of content I ingested from bio-hacking, productivity-maximising, self-help gurus and esoteric mystic types pale in significance.

What a super power we parents have been entrusted with.