Between the three possible positions in the chain of inheritance, the father's is the most difficult. We are in the middle. Of course the easiest role is reserved for the child. He or she only has to receive, to process, to catalog and keep for present or future use. To make the choice of what to use and what to discard and replace.
The grandfather has it easy too: he transmits; almost always, without much selection done. Years of success or failure, all of it experience, are to be sent to this future embodied by his offspring. No doubts here, just the hope of having enough time to deliver.
But us fathers.. we have a difficult task. Responsible for this passage, we have to be faithful to this information, if we value it, or correct it when we feel it was wrong. But being it adhesion or reject, the values of the grandfather pass through the crystal of the father and end up in the mind of the child.
Distorted, respected, linear or wavy, the passage of these lines of information take our energy and make us responsible for the permanence of the line.
As we move between our father and child, trying to find a place comfortable to us, we seldom stand in the perfect spot. Sometimes we approach one or the other more, and the light beam through our head concentrates the direction of the closest relative and diffuses in the other.
And sometimes we try to take distance from both, and stay at an angle. Then the prism of our minds force the information in strange and unexpected directions. But in the end, even if we try to avoid it the data ends up where it should go: in Junior's head. Almost always not in the way intended from Dad, but the kid sees it all, even what we tried so hard to hide.
These transformations are what makes us different in every generation. Sometimes improving the original model, sometimes degrading it.
