advice - from my father

Everyone has advice to give. Some of it wise and helpful, some of it not. My father was one such person who imparted wise words on me from time to time. He should, he had an extremely varied life.

These are the facts as I can best recall them as my father passed away more than two decades ago.

He was born in what was Eastern Poland before the Second World War. After the joint Nazi and Soviet invasions of Poland in September 1939, he and his family found themselves now under Soviet governance. By virtue of of the fact that they were Polish, they, and many Poles, were deemed to be spies. That garnered them an all expenses paid trip to the Soviet Gulag system in Siberia. After a long journey by train and by foot they found themselves in Irkutsk. Eventually the Polish-Government-in-Exile secured the release of many Poles.

Following that, he, his sister, and brother (all who remained of the family sent to Siberia), were sent down through to Tehran, where they were processed and separated, their brother being sent to the Palestine Territory to join the Polish Army under British command. My father and his sister were sent to Karachi, Pakistan, then to an orphanage in East Africa in what was then called Tanganyika and remained there until well after the war as they were "without country". The part of Poland they were from became part of the Soviet Union within the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, which is now the Ukrainian Republic.

My father and his sister were eventually allowed to immigrate to the UK in the 1950s. My father lived the life of a bachelor, riding motorbikes, clubbing, and the like. Yet, he was no fool. He collected stamps and coins and worked for Walll's Ice Cream (and here) for nearly a decade.

Then one day he decided to immigrate to Canada. He packed up his collections and found himself in Edmonton, Alberta (he did not like Montreal). He lived off his stamp and coin collections for a year enjoying himself. Meanwhile his sister moved to Hamilton, Ontario from the UK with her husband and family. She wrote my dad and told him to move to Hamilton and she would find him a wife to settle down with. She did, he did. His life calmed down. He worked most his life after that in an iron foundry as an overhead crane operator. They had two sons, me and my older brother. He only returned to Poland proper twice,  but never to where he was born as he feared imprisonment (not an unreasonable fear).

So, his advice you ask? The single most important piece of wisdom he ever passed on to me when I was very young:

"Do not ever worry what people think about you. Worry what you may think about yourself."

What the hell does the mean you ask?  Well, as with all Sphinx-like wisdom, you need to figure it out. Well, I am pretty sure I did a long time ago. Do not do or say things just to impress others. Do not avoid doing or saying something because someone may dislike you for it. If it would bother you to do it or not do it. That is what is important. You have to be able to accept and live with your deeds and words. You have to respect yourself. Always do and say the right thing.

I do try to live by that. Being only mortal at this time, I cannot say that I have always lived up that standard. I try, and that is important too. If the boy only learns one thing from me, I hope it this advice from my father, that I have passed on to him.

So, what do you think about yourself? blbbl