{"id":11495,"date":"2019-12-01T22:03:38","date_gmt":"2019-12-01T22:03:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fatherville.com\/?p=11495"},"modified":"2020-04-11T03:17:55","modified_gmt":"2020-04-11T03:17:55","slug":"heros-among-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fatherville.com\/index.php\/2019\/12\/01\/heros-among-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Heros Among Us"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

By Archie Wortham<\/a>
\u201cImperfect, unsuspected, forgiving.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s been some time since I\u2019ve initiated contact.  Sound like something from Close Encounters <\/em>or Star Trek. <\/em> Time has a way of not allowing us to forget who we are, why we are here and what God wants of us.  During the period I\u2019ve been on a hiatus, I have garnered immeasurable support for many people, especially the young people author Grant Skeleton calls the \u201cPassion Generation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have been remiss in my contributions on my passion for parenting and men\u2019s growth.  We are a susceptible sort who hide our vulnerabilities behind a variety of landscapes:  work, sports, sex and politics.  Few of us are transparent on our adequacies and allow society to school the world on what they provide: deficit models; adjunct adjectives that don\u2019t due us justice; behaviors that best describe us as petulant, plebian or pitiable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s not my mission.  My mission as I rise from the phoenix of depression with a defiance to deconstruct those images and hopefully provide a forum for men to realize we are the change in the world.  We have a collective responsibility to instill in those who would follow us to show up and man up. Rather than be the bullies some would want us to be, let\u2019s take on the mantle to defy the bullies who would want us to go to a corner with a dunce cap on and be silent.  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., challenged us to realize “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent<\/strong> about things that matter.\u201d And \u201cIn the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence<\/strong> of our friends.”  I have been silent too long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I began this column again and will continue to write more frequently about men and what we face. I will address how we have cultivated a culture where we are alone; have few friends, and don\u2019t want to talk about things that matter.  That\u2019s us and we matter.  It\u2019s more of a \u201cyou-too,\u201d than \u201cme too.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This renaissance evolved over the last year as I developed a class on heroes.  Last week, a student told me how he\u2019s not experienced someone who was so passionate about teaching.  I guess as a baby-boomer, I grew up with teachers who were almost monotheistic in how they looked at students as their children, and themselves as agents of change.  I now see myself as an agent.  But more specifically to realize how much I can still learn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the things I learned about being heroic is as one student expressed, heroes are imperfect, unsuspected and forgiving.  This quintessential remarks should resonate with you fathers, husbands and men who feel you don\u2019t matter.  They do every Wednesday on Facebook as I extol heroism and heroes, people like us. The young man is a member of the \u2018passion generation\u2019 understanding that you don\u2019t have to be perfect. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

More often than not, those heroes we applaud, Spock, Mr. Rogers, Truman, will admit they didn\u2019t have it figured out.  A couple of weeks ago another student shared a story that brought me to tears, his alcoholic dad, who would never have thought he was heroic, taught him how to be forgiving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the months ahead, as I use this as forum to dialogue, keep in mind as Tyler Perry\u2019s character, Madea, one of my heroes said, \u201cIt\u2019s not what people call you\u201d that\u2019s important,  \u201cit\u2019s what you answer to.\u201d  I\u2019m reminding you if you let others control your life, your life will never belong to you.  Or as I tell my student \u2018if you find yourself where you don\u2019t want to be, you deserve to be there.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So many missed opportunities I\u2019ve passed up, ignored and just thought I wasn\u2019t good enough, but after going through radiation therapy; having my students teach me more about heroes, and helping another man go through what I went through, I realized as Richard Bach, author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull said, \u201cHere\u2019s a test, to see if your mission in life is complete.  If you are alive, it isn\u2019t.\u201d   Mine isn\u2019t, or is yours and take stock as men, fathers, husbands and friends, we got this!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Truly there are heroes among us and you are one.  So \u201ckick it till you kick it!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Archie Wortham\u201cImperfect, unsuspected, forgiving.\u201d It\u2019s been some time since I\u2019ve initiated contact.  Sound like something from Close Encounters or Star Trek.  Time has a way of not allowing us to forget who we are, why we are here and what God wants of us.  During the period I\u2019ve been on a hiatus, I have garnered immeasurable support for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tips-for-dads"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fatherville.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fatherville.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fatherville.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fatherville.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fatherville.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11495"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/fatherville.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12071,"href":"https:\/\/fatherville.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11495\/revisions\/12071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fatherville.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fatherville.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fatherville.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}