Fathering may be the hardest job because there is no defined role. Mothers carry you and bear you. Fathers were in the room—we know it. But what comes next? The game is changing. Fathers and mothers are rewriting the script every day, thank goodness, because both parents are more busy than ever, and now are taking on the role of online teacher in the middle of a Pandemic or trying to fill out a summer with fewer options available.

While stereotyping dads might be unfair, 21^st century fathers seem to fall into a couple categories:

A race car driver who speeds around the curves, very busy in professional and social life. Some make pit stops to visit their wife and children, maybe inviting them for a spin around the track, but are not heavily invested in family life.

Athletes keep themselves in tip-top shape, which is a good thing that can prevent heart attacks later and free their children from being forced to care for them in their old age. They can offer an example and engage their children in softball, basketball, swimming, running, and bike riding. Great stuff as long as they are not the parent yelling from the sidelines, criticizing their offspring’s performance.

Excitement about a game when you’re five or ten should be the key motivator to play, not diminish your spirit. The challenge for fathers comes in when their child is still learning to field the ball or “see” it as it zooms to the plate. Being MVP may be a long way off, but baby steps could get you there or help you find your child’s true bliss. Any sport, even video gaming, brings out the competitive spirit, yet very rarely do any of us learn anything the first time out—it takes time, patience, and practice. That can be boring but learning determination and persistence might be among the most important lessons a father can convey.

That brings us to Teachers—a vital role for fathers. Imparting the knowledge a son or daughter needs before they venture out into a world that may not have a warm, cushy place for them after they leave home. Often the go-to cache of vital information imparted from father to offspring includes what he learned from his father and there’s value there. But the world is changing second by second, when in prior generations it moved forward day by day. A father will not always be around when a child needs to make some of life’s most important decisions. That is where critical thinking comes in.

A father might not always agree with his child’s decisions, but if his offspring can apply a consistent pattern of thinking, examining the choices with a clear lens, then the father knows he’s completed an important part of his job.

As a child matures, the father can become the Tree that can be in one spot, not necessarily immobile, but there, where he can be found to reach out, to listen, lend a hand, a hug, a heart-to-heart. The father can steady the child in the rocky times, remind him of his own struggles, how he overcame them, or accepted them and found a new focus.

The hardest part of being a father is learning when to let a child figure it out, not attempting to save them, so they can build the mental timber of experience they’ll need to piece out the tougher problems life will throw at them.

Fathers pull from this grab bag of roles, but their most important task is to help their child build the resilience to lead them through today’s challenging times where there are no simple answers and to prepare them for the future. Building confidence in one’s ability to problem solve and devise work-arounds when the first solution begins to crash and burn. That will build the confidence needed to overcome failure, to learn it does not always work out, but to persist and try again. Becoming discouraged under overwhelming circumstances is natural, but learning that you have the tools to analyze a problem and to reach out and ask others to join you in finding a solution—that’s a strength you can stand on.

This may be the hardest blog I have written. Because it speaks to our failures. Failure to address problems. Failure to understand others. Failure to understand my own responses. I am not new to seeing anguish and anger accelerate on the streets.

I was 18 in 1968, alone at home in Lafayette, Indiana, when I turned on the TV after work and saw what seemed to be the world on fire. The problems behind those blazes were not solved. Even three years later when I visited DC, the scars on 14^th street were reflected by still ravished small businesses that never recovered.

We should not repeat this failure.  It has taken a very long time to reach this depth of chaos and we aren’t going to climb out overnight. Right now cooler heads need to work together and I know that’s a very tall order, but avoiding further loss of life and injuries is critical. Followed by ending the needless destruction of businesses that will only reduce opportunities in our communities and continue the cycle of economic failure.

This is one more thing the millennial and the younger generations will be addressing closeup and personally. But many in these younger generations show the flexibility and willingness to learn about people from different races, religions, and sexual orientations without the judgments that have come from earlier generations. Effort by state and local governments, as well as Congress, will be necessary to find workable solutions. But it will be through the large and small individual connections—making an effort to know each other as people with similar needs to make a living and provide affordable health care for our families, to educate our children and ourselves—that we will begin to understand each other.

Together we are neighbors, friends, family, and strangers from Seattle to San Antonio, Chicago to New Orleans, New England to Miami and everywhere in-between. We are part of the American experience, still struggling to live up to the phrase “We the People,” which does not distinguish between or among us. As we struggle to address excruciating threats to human rights, physical and economic health, we must all work together, joining to develop a myriad of solutions, to answer this greatest challenge to our democracy.

 We the People have overcome multiple struggles in the past, but maybe not using the heart, soul, and intelligence of each one of us. Now we must revisit our past, applying what we know now using a new lens, and gather ideas from every segment of our communities living together, despite the over-whelming challenges we face.

Because Americans are always better together than we are apart.