Dear Emma (at your graduation)
Emma - we had some fun putting together your sign - 'From new born to young
lady in 19 years'. We fondly remember when you were first born - and today we see you in
the beauty of your youth.
I have had the privelage of walking beside you for a good portion of this
stretch of the road. - Sometimes you have shared your feelings and your fears
with me - sometimes I have been able to understand them and sometimes I
haven't. It doesn't matter now - as you have reached 'here' from 'there' - done it
well - and I am as proud of you, as a father can be.
Sometimes books are divided up into chapters - life often divides itself into
chapters as well - sometimes they end with a period. Sometimes they end with a
question mark. This one ends with an exclamation mark of happiness and
accomplishment. In all these cases the suspence and the oppurtunity lies in
the story the next chapters may tell.
When you were 6 years old I remember holding your hand at the side of
your mothers grave, contemplating the 'period' that had been placed at the end of the first
wonderful chapter of your life. I remember thinking "Where will life take us
from here?". A few more chapters have been written since then - they have been
wonderful chapters, both for me, and for you. They have led you to where you are
today - and it is the 'you' that you are today that we dearly love you for. - and that
we admire you for, and respect you for.
I don't know if you remember it - but I remember talking to you on the phone
before you left Canada - you where contemplateing coming home to Sweden again,
and you asked me "What will people say it I return now when I have planed on
finishing my high school here"? I remember saying that We don't make important
descisions on the basis of what those arround us may say or think. But rather
on the basis of what we feel in our hearts is the right thing and the best in the situation,
as we understand it.
Emma I am proud to have been able to share your thoughts in some of the moral
dilemas that you have passed through these last years. There are things in
life that are clearly right and beautiful - as well as things that are clearly
wrong and lead only to pain. However, life is also full of 'grey zones' - we
are foolish to try and make them black and white - but equally foolish to
disregard the absolute need we have to navigate with certainty, in the
sometimes moral 'fog' of discerning
right and wrong in the issues of ordinary daily life.
Emma I am proud of how you have dealt with hills and valleys of the road that
has lead you here - As a father, I do have a concern for your future and wish
you happiness, and all the very best in the chapters that lay ahead in your
experience. I believe that your happiness will not be found so much in the career
you may persue, or the wage that you may earn - or even in the personal company
that you may
involve yourself with - but most of all in the moral values that are developed
within you - and in the oppurtunities that life may give you to prove the
inner strength within you, and to humbly and meekly remain true to them - even in
the face of misunderstanding - even in the face of condemnation of
those you may have trusted that loved you. These will be the highlights of
the story of your life, when each wonderful chapter of this life of
yours, becomes a memory -
Your dad
|