Men

Be good fathers. Be good men, of character and integrity, who are unafraid of meeting their son's and daughter's and wife's eyes when bearing swaggering victory or bruising defeat. It is that trust and love that will redeem that swagger, and heal those bruises.

Be a man worthy of understanding and available for instruction. I do not have to tell you how much that means to a hungry young man, eager for guidance, vision, inspiration, and a spark to kindle ambition for a better life in a greater world. You know this yourself, either by the presence of that blessing or its gnawing absence.

Be a man who teach intensity and peace from the same book, who sees the continued necessity of the warrior as the product of our fathers' failure, and not their greatest triumph.

Be all these things, and more, as every holy book ever written has commanded, and every atom of good sense has suggested.

Long after you are gone, your guidance and strength will fortify those whom you love, through drought and famine and storm. It will also enrich them in times of peace and happiness, and will be the critical difference between prosperity and luxury.

You will know you have done what you must if, at your end, those by your side whisper those words of Dylan Thomas:

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

A man does not rage at his children, his wife, or his parents, or at his life. He rages against death, which seeks to deny his final attempts to give with final gasp and howl his last lesson: Devour the days, sons and daughters of woe. Devour the days with earnestness bordering on desperation.