Either you are going to make it, or you are going to make it, or you are going to make it. I may not live long enough to see which road you take, but I know the ending. You get there. The world can put you through a meat grinder and still it will not change that simple fact.
My dear son,
Iam writing at the kitchen table again. The light above me is an old bulb that has seen better years. It hums a little, as if it is tired but too stubborn to lie down. The dishes are drying by the sink. The house is quiet in that particular way it gets when a day has spent itself. My hands smell of coffee, paper, and a little of my own age.
I am thinking of you. Not the polished version of you that you show to strangers, but the real one. The one who sits on the edge of his bed late at night and stares at the dark ceiling and wonders if he is already behind. The one who looks at other people’s lives and feels, secretly, that there was some class he missed where they explained how to be a person.
This is who I am writing to.
You are going to hear a hundred different verdicts about your future. People will measure you with their own bent rulers. They will say you are promising or average or doomed or gifted. They will say it in careless words over coffee, or in official words typed in black ink. You will be tempted to believe them, because doubt likes company and those voices will sound so sure.
That is why I want you to keep one phrase like a small stone in your pocket.
Either you are going to make it, or you are going to make it, or you are going to make it.
Say it slowly, like a man turning over a coin in his hand. There is no second side to it. No clause in fine print. No hidden “unless.” It is not a bet. It is not encouragement. It is a quiet description of the way things are when a person decides to keep walking.
You will not feel this way every day. There will be mornings where the world feels like wet wool and you cannot find a dry place inside yourself. There will be afternoons where a single email or remark will make you feel smaller than a coin on a railroad track. There will be nights where you sit in a parking lot and feel like you have failed at the simple business of being alive.
I know this because I have had those days, and I have watched other men have them, and they all thought they were the only ones.
When I was younger, I believed that life would announce my turning points with brass instruments. I thought there would be clear moments when I would become a man, or a failure, or a success. I expected signs. Banners. A letter arriving in the mail that told me my assignment in this world.
Instead, life showed up as little scenes that did not look important at all.
There was a winter morning in Malvern, PA when I had just lost something I thought I could not live without. A job, a dream, a version of myself. I walked to a cheap diner because I did not know what else to do. The coffee was thin and the eggs were overcooked. The waitress had tired eyes and a pencil behind her ear.
She asked, “You want the special?”
I said, “Sure,” because it was the cheapest thing on the board and I had to count coins even for that.
She brought me a plate that steamed in the cold air and stood there longer than she needed to.
“Looks like you had a lousy night,” she said.
“It is spilling into the morning,” I answered.
She shrugged one shoulder. “Eat. Then go do the next thing. That is all any of us got.”
It was not poetry. It was not profound. It was a stranger stating the most ordinary truth. But I sat there with that fork in my hand and realized that there was no grand decision to make. Either I would get up and do the next thing, or I would sit there until the world moved on without me.
I paid. I left. Somehow, I am here, writing to you.
There was another time when my plans collapsed like a cardboard box in the rain. I had pegged my worth to an outcome and the outcome did not come. For a while I walked around with that quiet shame people carry when life does not match their own advertisement.
On a hot afternoon I watched a construction crew pour concrete for a sidewalk. There was nothing special about it. Men in faded shirts and dusty boots, pushing the heavy gray mud into place and smoothing it. They did it with a kind of unhurried attention that comes from doing the same task many times.
One of them straightened his back, wiped his forehead, and laughed at something another man said. It was a full laugh. It did not sound like a man who thought he had failed at life. It sounded like a man who had worked hard that day and would work hard the next.
I remember thinking that the earth does not care what title you carry. It cares whether you show up and do the thing in front of you. Those men would go home tired and they would sleep. The sidewalk would dry overnight. People would walk on it for years and never wonder who made it.
The crew would move to the next job.
This is how most lives are built. Not by big moments that everyone claps for, but by days when nobody is watching and you do the next thing anyway.
Either you are going to make it, or you are going to make it, or you are going to make it.
You will make it if you stumble, curse, and start again. You will make it if you cry in your car and then walk into the building anyway. You will make it if you are laughed at, overlooked, passed over, and you keep learning like a thief who refuses to leave the house empty handed.
You will also make it if you move slow. This is important. The world is loud with urgency. It will tell you that you are late, that you have missed your chance, that everything worth doing belongs to someone younger or faster. Do not believe that.
A seed in the ground does not consider the pace of other seeds. It has one job. Take in what is given. Push upward when the time comes. Break the soil when it is strong enough. That is all. Some seeds sprout in a week. Some take longer. The sun does not mock either one.
There will be seasons when nothing seems to move. You will look at your life and see only the same four walls, the same paycheck, the same disappointments. You will ask if this is all. You will wonder if you have already failed the test without ever seeing the questions.
In those seasons, I want you to remember that the roots do their work in the dark. Growth is not always the green shoot where everyone can see. Sometimes it is the silent thickening of what holds you up.
Your failures will try to tell you a story about yourself. They will say that you are not enough, that you are the one person for whom effort does not pay off. They will show you the highlight reels of other people’s lives and whisper that you are an extra in your own movie.
Do not argue with them. They have had centuries of practice and they are good at their job.
Instead, go back to the little phrase.
Either you are going to make it, or you are going to make it, or you are going to make it.
Say it when you get the job and when you lose it. Say it when someone loves you and when they leave. Say it when you are proud of yourself and when you are ashamed. Say it with your teeth clenched if you must. Say it through tears if you have to.
There will be days when it feels like a lie. You will not always feel the truth of a thing at the same time you say it. Sometimes the words have to walk ahead of your feelings and clear a path.
“Making it” is not what the world has trained you to think. It is not a number in a bank account, though money has its use. It is not a title on a card, though work has its place and honor. It is not the applause of many people who do not know you well.
To make it is this: to arrive at your own life with your eyes open and your heart still able to feel. To become a man who has not turned to stone in order to survive. To keep the small, stubborn flame of kindness alive in a world that blows hard.
I would rather you be an honest janitor than a hollow king. I would rather you fail at a dozen ventures and learn compassion than succeed at one big thing and grow colder. I would rather you know how to sit with a friend in their grief than know how to win every argument.
If you become that kind of man, you will have made it ten times over.
There will be detours. You might take jobs that do not fit you. You might love people who cannot love you back the way you deserve. You might stay in places longer than you should because leaving is frightening. This is all part of the going.
When you find yourself lost, do not waste time hating yourself for it. Lost is just between maps. Look around. Ask what this rough ground is here to teach. Ask what old story about yourself you are being asked to drop.
Then do the next thing. Fill out the form. Apologize. Pack the box. Ask for help. Make the call. Study for the exam. Take the walk. Whatever it is. Small actions are the planks of the bridge.
Either you are going to make it, or you are going to make it, or you are going to make it.
I know there is a part of you that hears all this and still wonders, “But what if I am the exception?” That frightened part is young and stubborn. Sit with him. Tell him that every man feels that way at some point. Even the ones who look certain. Especially them.
I am not writing this as a man who figured everything out. I am writing as one who stumbled, got back up, and kept going. There are things I would change if I could reverse time. There are years I would live differently. But even my errors carried me here, to this table, to this letter, to you.
If I could place one thing in your chest, it would not be my regrets or even my wisdom. It would be a quiet, patient confidence in your own capacity to endure, adapt, and grow. I have seen you do it already, in small ways. The way you faced disappointments that would have flattened a softer boy. The way you came back after being knocked down. The way you learned to speak about what hurts instead of swallowing it whole.
These are not small signs. These are early chapters of the same story.
So here is what I ask of you.
When the world is too loud, turn down the volume for a while. Leave the room. Take a walk. Look at a tree that has been standing longer than you have been alive. Put your hand on its bark and remember that everything strong today was once fragile.
When you feel like a failure, speak to yourself as you would speak to a small child who has tried his best and fallen anyway. You would not call that child names. You would not tell him he is hopeless. You would say, “Rest. Then try again. I am proud of your effort.” Offer that same mercy to yourself.
When you do not know what to do with your life, choose one good thing and do it well. Help someone who cannot repay you. Learn a useful skill. Keep your word. Show up on time. These are not glamorous, but they are the soil where meaning grows.
And when you stand at some future crossroads and feel paralyzed by the weight of the decision, remember that very few choices are permanent. Choose a path with as much honesty as you can, and walk it. If it turns out to be the wrong road, you can turn. You are not a tree rooted to one spot. You are a man with feet.
Either you are going to make it, or you are going to make it, or you are going to make it.
One day, perhaps, you will sit at your own table with a son of your own. You will look at his face and feel the same mixed ache of love and fear that I feel for you. The world will not be kinder then. It may even be harsher. You will want to wrap him in armor. You will not be able to.
So you will do what I am doing. You will give him words and your example. You will show him, by the way you live, what it looks like to keep walking when the road is rough. You will fail at times. You will lose your temper. You will say the wrong thing. He will see you apologize. He will see you rise again after your own falls.
That is how he will learn that making it is not perfection. It is persistence.
If you ever doubt my belief in you, take out this letter. Picture me at this old table with the humming light overhead and the sink full of drying dishes. Picture a man who has made his share of mistakes and still looks at you with a steady heart.
You will make it, son.
Not because life is easy.
Not because you are spared from loss.
You will make it because you will keep going, and you will keep learning, and you will let your heart stay alive in a world that tries to numb it.
And that, in the end, is all that matters.
Dad
#resilience #fatherhood #perseverance #inner strength #becoming
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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