Threats to fatherly rest

Lately, a few of my friends who are also fathers have been talking about the need for fathers to learn how to rest (or "relak" as singaporeans would say it). As the Chinese saying goes, rest is essential to walk the long distance - in this case, the long walk of parenting. Indeed, there is a need for rest, because fathers tend to fret about many things about our children - their studies, their behaviors, the friends they hang around with, the language they use etc - over and above the stresses of work we experience daily. Apart from setting aside time to rest - to reflect, pray, read, I think there is a need for us to have a restful disposition. By this, I mean the temperament to truly rest our body and soul. In my interaction with my contemporaries, I have found some threats to this restful disposition. One of it is body-mind disjunction. There was a time in my life when I was at work, I thought about the home; and when I was at home, i worried about work. In other words, the body and mind were at different 'places'. This is a very distressing situation, not to mention that this is highly unproductive both ways - in the end, you don't do any of the roles well. Moreover, it causes us to be restless and ultimately joyless - not able to enjoy the work nor the home. At some point in my life, I resolved to keep a strict administrative separation: when I am at home, I concentrate fully on the affairs of the home and resist the temptation (a very real one) to think about work - because, really, it doesn't help anyway; and when I am at work, to focus on doing my work well and not worry about the happenings at home, no matter how difficult things are there. I confess that it is not easy to make the strict separation, and it requires discipline -for example, not to bring work home to tempt the conflation. But over the years, I have learnt enjoyed the fruits of this disciplined separation - restfulness and enjoyment of each of these roles. Another related threat to restfulness is that of living in the past and the future - and thus missing out on enjoying the present. Some of us have a tendency to think about what might have been if we had taken such and such a course and spend a lot of time regretting about wrong decisions. While it is important that we learn from the past, it is quite different to dwell on the past to the point that we do not savor the present. others like to cast their minds on the future and think about what is coming - whether out of excitement or dread. This can also make us unable to enjoy the here and now. One common wisdom shared among parents who are older is this, "enjoy your children; they grow up very fast." many young parents ignore this advice - only to look back much in regret later to realize the wisdom of the advice. It is true that parents can be so engrossed with preparing our children for the future - like getting them to study hard, inculcating in them good habits etc - that we miss out on enjoying them NOW. When our minds are in a state of constantly shifting between past and future, we miss out on resting in the present - and treasuring the beauties that it brings. One of my favorite resting pose these days is to sit on my papa's chair (as my children will call it) and just observe the children. Often they are not aware that I am observing them. They don't do anything unusual - just going about doing the things they usually do. Doing so brings a smile on my face - a wonder that God has kept them all these years - as I enjoy the "present".