My reason

I have been painting for many years and drawing for many more. I never cared much for wealth and status. I would doodle in my notebooks as a kid thinking I was going to grow up to be a comic book artist and that I was destined to illustrate Wolverine’s final issue. Life happened, though, and those dreams died with the innocence of my youth. I lost my way for a very long time after that, shifting aimlessly from moment to moment.

Like a patient lover, art was still there for me, waiting. (There is another but she will have to wait for another blog.) When my son came into my world he changed everything about it. I was no longer interested in the fleeting pleasures of life and decided I needed more, not for me but for him. I needed to be someone, needed to be worth something. I needed to be someone he could grow up to be proud to call Father.

Most people think that word is JUST a word, a label to be assigned as you would a job title, but it means so much more than that. Father is a name, a whole @$$ identity. This boy is not just “my son” or an accessory to show others how far I’ve made it in life. He is not a “mini-me” or little buddy to keep me entertained. He is an entirely new and different person from me who will grow up to have his own dreams and face his own hardships. He will feel pain and sorrow and that keeps me up some nights, but he will also feel Love and Joy.

He has become my Reason. Not just to paint or make money but my reason to be, to get up everyday and try. Try to make myself better. Try to make healthier choices and to be kinder and more loving. I thought I knew what courage was until I had him. Now I know that I was never truly brave, I just had nothing to lose.

I have been to war and seen what darkness lies in the heart of man, in myself… I did not fear dying at the time and I thought that made me brave. Now I fear not being there for him. I look at the world today and am filled with fear. I fear he will see his own war. I fear that he may grow up to be hated for some immutable descriptor or just so someone can have a villain to their hero. I fear him being categorized and discarded by an uncaring society. I fear the possibility that he does these things to others. I fear the first time he feels the pain of a broken heart and the numbness that follows. Hell, I fear papercuts.

I also now know what it really means to hope. I see his potential for this world and I hope he finds the strength to meet it. A strength I never had without him. I hope I can become someone he is proud of and people don’t just know him as that one guy’s son. I hope to teach him to avoid the same mistakes I made, the ones that made life so meaningless for so long. I look at my boy’s face everyday and I feel overwhelming fear and hope. But that’s what real courage is, feeling both and still CHOOSING hope. Happiness doesn’t just happen. Happiness is a choice and Luka is my REASON for that choice.