“An apple doesn’t fall very far from the tree.”
It’s kind of a dumb saying if you think about it. The apple is hanging by a thread on a branch. The ground is directly below. When it falls, how many options does the apple have?
Does it wait in hopeful anticipation for a wind strong enough to carry it farther away? Does it vigorously flap the one green leaf it may still have attached to its stem?
How is the apple supposed to do anything different than fall close to the tree? Yet we elevate a saying like this and infuse it with all sorts of metaphorical significance for deep truths of life.
Why do we do that?
One reason is that it actually holds some truth. And part of that truth is the opposite reality – some apples defy gravity and do land in new places away from the shadow of their tree.
You didn’t learn it from me.
Nowhere is this either-or potential more true than in the power of influence, for better or worse, between fathers and sons. It is common for sons either to replicate qualities from their father or flip to the opposites.
And, there is a third option – to forge a new path that will provide another example (for better or worse) to the next generation.
To summarize, my goal today is to explore the three options of continuity (replicator), discontinuity (flipper) and creativity (innovator) embodied by one generation following another, particularly in regard to fathers and sons.
Each successive generation expresses itself in one of these three ways. Continue the same pattern. Bounce to an opposing posture. Or move in an alternate direction. This third approach takes its learning from previous generations and forges a somewhat new path (which the succeeding generation will replicate, flip or innovate).
Given these possibilities, it is quite reasonable for a father to say to his son, “You didn’t learn that from me.”
The five languages of appreciation.
I sometimes wonder how my ancestral males would fare with The Five Languages of Appreciation inventory. Words of affirmation, quality time, acts of service, giving of gifts, and physical touch. I suspect they would not represent a bell curve of distribution across all attributes. They would likely form a cohort or cluster in a smaller corner of the data.
Five huge areas begging for attention. Today’s focus is the giving of gifts. I doubt my male ancestors had much sense of what genuine love gifts are all about. And flowers? Well, they are for funerals.
Learning the non-art form of gifts from my Dad.
Any manual on sentiment would certainly not look to my Dad for examples. My birth family is 100% Ukrainian on both sides all the way back to Adam. And Dad followed closely (a replicator) in most everything he saw modelled for him by previous generations.
My great grandfather came to Canada with a promise to his wife that he would have a house ready for her when she came. At her arrival, she found herself facing an upside-down ox cart with a hole carved in the ground beneath it, in which she spent their first, harsh winter and welcomed their first child.
Closer to home, my Dad expressed great anticipation for gift-opening one Christmas when I was about 10. He could hardly wait for Mom to open her outdoor thermometer (from him) so he could rush outside and install it (for him). Dad did say he wanted her to see the temperature through the kitchen window without having to go outside.
Good intentions mixed with self-directed interests. I don’t think Mom ever looked at that thermometer.
“A little learning is a dangerous thing . . ..”
Alexander Pope, an 18th century English poet, wrote that famous line and added, “Drink deep or taste not . . ..”
For men, the art and science of gift-giving is an elusive thing. We are deficient in our ability to “drink deep.” Oh sure, during courtship we may rise briefly from our ignorance to ‘sip’ at some new manner of expression. We may say and do romantic things, even write poetry. Yet, after a brief flurry, the sipping sadly slips away once we attain the prize.
Is there anything more incongruous than a burly lumberjack guy holding a bouquet of daisies in the paw of his hand? He has learned enough to know there is something special about this kind of bizarre behaviour. Sip. Sip. But no one dare take a picture of him with his daisies.
I realize there are real men out there who, in knowledge and practice, defy and put to the lie everything I am saying here. They have, through some quirk of nature or nurture, graduated from sipping to drinking deeply. They have forsaken being replicators or flippers and launched out as innovators.
These mighty men should be heralded as the true heroes of ‘man’kind. As I have said elsewhere, I view my son and son-in-law as such men.
Does that mean ‘taste not’ for the rest of us sad sippers?
No, absolutely no! We dare not retreat into the cave of ignorance to despair of life and beat our unshaven chests in hideous self-recrimination. We must continue to sip and dare to saunter forth, even with feeble missteps, out of our caves and into the sunlight.
In this realm, I am a master ‘sad sipper.’ It is too painful to recite examples.
Will I (we) ever graduate from ‘sipping’ to ‘drinking deeply’?
Not likely, at least for some of the five languages. The chances are pretty slim. It seems I am wired more towards giving flowers than intimate conversations and towards acts of service than quality time together.
But wait, I never shared the rest of Alexander Pope’s famous poem.
“A little learning is a dang’rous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.”
In Greek mythology, the Pierian spring is a fountain that was sacred to the Muses, goddesses of inspiration for knowledge, the arts, literature and science. Drinking its water brings great reward. So I must prevail and not give up.
Men, who is with me?
Shallow sipping only leaves us befuddled with intoxicated brains. It is a dangerous thing. It is like electrical apprentices who began with flat hair. But by second year, thinking they have this electricity thing aced, they walk around with curly afro hairstyles.
We must never cease our feeble efforts to seek drinking deeply, even if only one (sad) sip at a time. Eventually, we can grow from occasional intoxication (“shallow draughts”) from an activity we don’t understand to the sobriety of new learning and practices in life.
We may even become masters in artful gift-giving or, by some miracle, in another of the five languages.
Our new favourite song might be “I can see clearly now . . ..” And those who love us will (hopefully) see our good intent and have mercy on us.