So before continuing, I should clarify; I haven't yet murdered my father. Also, this is not a piece on Oedipal self-discovery. Sophocles' Oedipus unknowingly killed his father and married his mother, and Freud's wrongly-named theory is a load of crock predicated on his own sick fantasies.
Offspring,
As you grow up (and if you are a boy), my role as a father is chiefly that of an educator. The father explains - and helps to make sense of - the world for his son, at least. This has been my experience to date, and after a very lengthy chat a friend of mine, I had my belief intensified in this concept.
I have often immersed myself in conversations pertaining to the seemingly aimless and nomadic nature of the adolescent male's life. With the help of a wonderful film called Garden State, I've gradually come to understand that there is a stage at which the adolescent male ceases to view his birth-home (that is to say, where his family is and where the centre of his universe and existence seems to be) as those things, and begins a life of temporary gratification and settlement. In my view, this period is one of intense tumult, but is a rite of passage of sorts for that boy to become a man. It is not a healthy lifestyle forever, but a necessary stepping stone for the boy to some day become a provider and a father. But what catalyses this step?
In my view, and in the aforementioned conversation, it all pertains to the concept of a 'father-figure'. This prevailing patriarchical mode of thought society can not be said to be unfounded, and I am of the belief that it is that way because we view the educating and explaining role of the father as crucial in our development as children. However, there comes a time where the biological father has to be 'cut loose', or 'murdered', for the adolescent male to move forward with his life. This does not mean that he ceases communication with his dad, and doesn't even necessarily mean that the father has to cease being the 'father-figure'. Rather, it means that there is a certain necessity for a boy to have a 'mentor' who doesn't treat him like a child, but rather with great respect and peership. Ironically, these mentors will often be much older, but earning their respect and forming that bond with them appears to be a crucial challenge for any male to conquer.
So how do I fit in on this schematic? Firstly, I think I have been fortunate and blessed to have a dad I can have as a mentor. As mentioned above, he treats me with respect and grants me an autonomy over my actions that my father never could. And though this was naturally a gradual process, I feel that I am at the stage where I feel a certain conditional-love-based bond that transcends the traditional notion of 'family'. I have been quite lucky to have so conveniently found that mentor figure in my life so soon into adolescence and young adulthood.
But in that convenience lies another dilemma, and this is why I write to you, offspring. In much the same way as a man can not really love any woman that throws herself at him, or a spider will not eat dead insects, I feel that the lack of a challenge in acquiring a mentor will have a detrimental effect on me over the next few years. In the last year I have gone about trying to find other mentors in my life, and have had a few successes, with one particularly beneficial prospect.
But the manner in which my 'dad' almost handed me the instrument of his demise is detrimental to me in two key ways. Firstly, his complicity in the act was, in hindsight, somewhat immasculating, and caused me to question my own ability and capacity to progress through life of my own accord. How much does he really respect me if he doesn't think I could do it myself? But secondly, and perhaps more seriously, is the fact that his complicity and my coincidental hesitation to make the clean cut means that there is a vestigial bond of kinship, cheapening the essence of this new, more powerful relationship. As it is unreal and unbelievable that an actor might speak to a specific member of the audience in a conventional performance of Hamlet, this relationship is exposed to me as an illusion when my mentor fills the role of the father when he buys me things, or lends me money, or provides for me unconditionally. Inherently, my inability to divorce my father from my mentor in my own mind, as well as my lack of another mentor to turn to as yet cause damage to my development into a man that provides and cares for a family.
Now of course I have years to go, and I can not know what tangible effects this failed murder attempt have on Mashood-in-10-years, but I write this because it seems pertinent to much of my existential considerations these days, and I would be amiss to forget them when explaining to my children why they're wearing leather pyjamas to sleep-over parties.
What do you think? Do you think metaphorical patricide is a necessary step in every boy's life? Are you a girl that feels differently altogether about her father? I would love to know what the dynamic is for a girl and her parents, and how that contributes to her development as the matriarch of her family.
Homicidally,
Dad
