On finding fathers: Why we still search for answers in front of us
At least Po from “Kung Fu Panda” never interrogated his father for the “real story.” He didn’t demand a paternity test to decode the genetic origins of a secret noodle soup recipe. He simply accepted that the father who raised him, goose or not, was enough.
And that’s the part we struggle with the most.
Why do so many of us insist on searching for parents who are already standing in front of us? Why do we treat childhood like an unresolved crime scene, convinced that buried under every unanswered question is a dramatic reveal, a biological twist, a scandal waiting to be unearthed?
To question a man’s character by asking if he “got it from his father” feels like a full-time oxymoron disguised as family wisdom, a cultural reflex that assumes every flaw has an origin story and every origin story must be excavated.
But what if the answer isn’t missing?
What if the answer is simply unsatisfying, and we just don’t like it?
If the truth cannot be found, or if we’ve already found it but refuse to accept it, why spend adulthood digging through emotional debris that no longer belongs to us? Why waste years seeking the “real father” when the one who showed up: strict, imperfect, occasionally lazy, sometimes annoying, but consistently present, is the father who actually shaped you?
Fatherhood isn’t a single title; it’s a constellation.
Biological father, proxy father, spiritual guide, stepfather, mentor, coach, neighbor who taught you chess, uncle who taught you sarcasm. A man can be many things at once, and sometimes, the least dramatic version is the one that matters most.
And the absence of one kind of father does not doom a person to a life sentence of emotional instability. You do not automatically become broken just because a DNA test says the man who raised you wasn’t the man who made you. A family tree is not a psychological diagnosis.
We forget, too quickly, too conveniently, that the people who raised us were also human: tired, distracted, drowning in bills, navigating their own identities while being expected to carry ours. Before accusing them of unreliability, we might as well ask ourselves whether we are reliable.
Did we ever pay the metaphorical electric bills we complain so loudly about? Or were we quietly relieved that someone else was absorbing consequences we barely understood?
Fatherhood, much like motherhood, is symbolic—beautiful, irritating, and necessary. Parents worry about our grades, choices, relationships, and future trajectories not because they are perfect, but because they are painfully aware of their own mistakes. And in their unpredictable, often awkward ways, they still try to shield us from repeating theirs.
Our miseries are ours to own.
And forgiveness, unlike corruption, should not be something we apply for in advance, as if anticipating the very sin we seek pardon for.
Whatever opinions or emotional histories we hold today, one truth remains:
Who our parents were matters less than who we choose to become.
What we did before may not matter much in the long run, but what we do now, in the service of surviving, healing, becoming better, and refusing to abandon ourselves, matters more than any parent we searched for, questioned, blamed, or overlooked.
In the end, fatherhood is not the man you found, but the man who stayed.
MELBEN JOCHICO,
melbenjochico@gmail.com
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