An Enquiry: Fatherly Love

On a silent night, alone in a dimly lit room. The thought of fatherly love hits me as I am trespassing upon the land of everything that life can become. What kind of a father will I be? I have never thought of becoming a father before. Whenever we are faced with a hypothetical question, we usually consult our imagination. I envision myself having a child of about 6 or 7 years old. We will walk the road to the park near our house, and sit by a lake to watch the sunset. We will have an ice cream together, laughing as we comment on the flavour we’ve just savoured. I feel a sense of warmth, and joy, and… disconnection? I squint my eyes, trying to dive deeper into the emotional landscape that the imagination provokes. And all I can feel, is a vast distance between me and the child. I cannot feel related to the child. What is the secret ingredient that allows a father to be telepathically connected to his child?

We may claim it is by biological design that a father loves his child. Yet, as a Biology student, I don’t think so. We can browse through the animal kingdom, and we may discover that there is not a handful of dads who take care of their offsprings, despite having strikingly similar genetic relatedness to their offspring as humans do.  A faithful biologist will argue that it is by nature a father doesn’t take care of his offsprings. How about societal norms? We live in a society; certainly, society can impose a set of rules that we should follow. Perhaps societal expectations mandate that a father should take care of his child? From empirical experience, I think society does quite the opposite. Is the concept of “masculinity” created to centre around family? What is masculine about a father spending time with his child? When I was learning French in high school, I came across the pair of words: “la maison” (the house – a feminine noun) and “le jardin” (the garden – a masculine noun). It was quite puzzling as to why the house is associated with femininity, even though any society mostly undergoes a patriarchal era. The answer is quite simple, to be honest. Society expects a man to spend time in the garden with his friends and colleagues, rather than spending time in the house with his wife and children. Now that biology and society do not work, what else can we rely on to back up fatherly love? Or are we barking up the wrong tree – that fatherly love doesn’t exist and we are just romanticising plain reality? When I talk to my Christian friend, they tell me it is something Christians call “grace”. Is “grace” some kind of God’s magic that creates an invisible string to connect a father and a child? And since I haven’t had a child yet, there is no need for God to use that magic on me yet? If that is the case, why does the magic work for certain individuals but not others (it is quite clear that not every dad will love his child)?

Probably, a critical reader may respond that I do not know what fatherly love is because I have never experienced fatherly love before. There may be certain truths in that, even though I quite disagree. Having said that, I want to pose the question in another way. Is there anyone who has experienced consistent fatherly love in this modern time? Recently, I encounter the term the “sandwich” generation, which refers to the generation of working adults that need to take care of both the elderly and the children (being sandwiched between the dual demands of caring for the children and the elderly). Despite all the political debates and all the right and wrong, there exists the sandwich generation. An interesting element of truth is that it does not go away just because we try to put glossy papers over it. When I watched the play “Animal Farm”, adapted from the book of the same name by George Orwell, I was deeply moved by the scene of the hen having her eggs taken away from her. An inhumane act, we shall say, or a very “humane” act? The scene makes an impression on me not because I think humans should not raise chickens for eggs; but because I notice there is a very fine line between what happens in our reality and what happens in the play. We give birth to a child and send them to childcare because we don’t have time to take care of our child. Similarly, we also send the elderly to the nursing home. If we can afford more, we may hire a domestic worker to take care of the children and the elderly. Are we not the hens having our eggs taken away by the humans? Rarely can anyone afford to stay at home and take care of their children and the elderly anymore. Should we go back to the time when women stayed at home to be housewives? Or perhaps, men should stay at home this time, to make things more interesting?

I have recently watched the movie “The Boy”. I see the trailer of the movie on Youtube and want to give it a go. The trailer is also the reason that causes me to jot down my thoughts – I’d like to shut my thoughts away, it’s more pleasant that way. I originally plan to watch the movie and write an analysis of it. And after I finish the movie, I am left utterly speechless. The movie has already conveyed what I have to say. Anyway, since we are already on this topic, let me reflect on a few scenes that leave an impression on me from the movie (spoiler alert!). In the first few minutes into the movie, the father asks the son “How have you been?” and is met with an answer “I don’t know”. It is a pretty normal answer, considering how we often greet each other in daily conversation. Yet, I wonder. Does the son not know what is happening to him, or is he confused? Both ignorance and confusion can lead to a state of not knowing, even though the mechanisms are different. In our life, we grow up being told the good and the bad. And when we reach adolescence, we discover that some of those things that we are told turn out to be right, and some are wrong. How should we deal with this conundrum? Should we discard everything and build our system of belief from scratch? Should we accept whatever the next person tells us and overwrite our system of beliefs? If someone enters a room full of people and declares “Some of you are spies”, what strategy can we use to figure out the spies? We don’t know how many spies there are, and we also barely have any evidence against anyone. Is it helpful to keep doubting everyone from then on? My belief that the son is confused, rather than ignorant, is further supported by the scenes of the washing machine rotating. This motif is repeated over time throughout the movie, until the washing machine stops, which coincides with the son’s suicidal attempt. The constant rotation of the washing machine induced a state of nausea and vertigo, suggesting an emotional turbulence in the characters. Coincidentally enough, the laundry room is also the place where the son shoots himself. I have always been very fascinated by how a person thinks (which people may call a kink). In Philosophy, we discuss the justifications for our beliefs. But to me, the more important is, how does that person have that belief in the first place? I am more interested in what exactly causes the belief, rather than whether the mental state or the factual state justifies the belief of that person. And when I watch the movie, I am very enthusiastic to notice that the son has been thinking very clearly. Society often tells us that people are clouded with thoughts and cannot think clearly when they are contemplating suicidal thoughts. Yet, the son has very clear thoughts. He knows that he is not feeling right. He remarks that he thinks he is going crazy. He can catch himself when he is falling, and visit his mom for sources of comfort. Those are not the thoughts of a person under hallucination. Sure, we can argue that it is because of the scripts that the director gives to the actors. But then, what is the purpose of the arts if they maintain no connection to reality? Isn’t it, then, just a stochastic computational process that ChatGPT can perform? Recent psychology studies have proposed that addiction does not come from substance abuse, it comes from a lack of love (as rats in the entertainment park did not use the water infused with drug and did not develop addiction-like behaviours; whilst rats in an empty cage never failed to consume the water with drugs). But where does the lack of love come from?

I am frightened, and trembled, and succumbed to the darkness of the scene. It reminded me of an incident more than half a year ago, when a floormate sat on the handrail of the corridor with half his body over the handrail. That was the moment I was most reminded of how fragile a human can be, despite our constant attempt to appear physically and mentally strong. I called for help from the residential assistants and the residential professor overseeing the floor. Despite all the talks from my friends, “You already did what you could” “It’s better to ask for help from a professional”, I was devastated. Nothing tragic happened – there was no death. It was the realisation that I had failed the most basic task I was given that kept torturing me whenever I thought of that incident – I failed in being a person. When the floormate needed human connection the most, I failed to give him that human connection. I felt guilty. Not of being irresponsible. But of the kind of person I had grown into. When I was young, I was told to follow the requests of my parents. I was told to go to school and follow the requests of the teachers. I was told to do my homework and get good marks. The thing that troubled me the most during childhood was probably getting up early for class and having to eat the food I didn’t enjoy. It is very funny that there is no discussion, no class, no advice, no training, no whatsoever regarding how I can connect to another person. Of course, we can always place the blame. We can blame the father in the movie for his infidelity in his marriage. We can blame the mother of the son for not taking good care of him. We can blame the stepmother for being a homewrecker. We can blame the son for his childish thoughts that suicide can end his sufferings. We can blame myself for not stepping up to talk to that floormate (what if the residential assistant was not around and did not come in time?). But wouldn’t we have done the same, were we in their shoes?

Since this piece is named “An Enquiry”, I choose to end every paragraph with questions. So, dearest readers, what are your answers to the questions that have been asked?