Fathers are Forces of nature. It just doesn’t get said
enough.
Probably because of a lot of smog surrounding the evil
effects of patriarchy or the simple fact that a lot of times, it just doesn’t need
to be spoken of. This silence, over time, has led people to think that fathers don’t
really do more than what they must.
This is not a comparison. What a mother does for her child
is beyond compare. She sacrifices her body, mind, sleep, peace, and in quite a
few cases, her ambitions, to make sure her children are well taken care of
through their formative years and then some.
But what fathers do, often goes unnoticed. A lot of times
what is in focus is what fathers DON’T do rather than what they do and this
directs the narrative into a negative sphere of influence.
In the last 2 days, there emerged two very emotional stories
of fatherhood that, quite frankly, are the stuff legends are made of.
Khabib Nurmagomedov won his 29th and last fight
in MMA and finished his career with unbelievable stats of 29 fought, 29 won. He
ended his last opponent’s title challenge in under 2 rounds. His last three
matches were all title defenses which had the sport’s most violent brawlers who
regularly knocked their opponents out. He not only out punched them, but he
took them down into his domain and beat them into submission. After his final
fight, he didn’t celebrate. He broke down and cried. A man who brought the UFC
to its knees dropped down on the floor and sobbed his heart out in the memory
of the man who made him what he was.
His Father.
AbdulManap Nurmagomedov passed away recently after his
disease was exacerbated by Covid19. And to state that Khabib’s relationship
with his father was special is an understatement. His father was his first
trainer, his main motivator, his guide, and his commanding officer. When he
broke decorum in his first title defense fight, he didn’t care about the
problems he’d face by the Nevada Sporting Commission. His first fear was, “My
Dad’s going to smash me”. The reason he broke decorum was the venom spewed by
the opposition camp and he was merely standing up for the principles he was
brought upon. But even in that, his father had instilled a sense of wisdom
which eluded Khabib in the adrenaline-fueled rage that this whole fight was
about.
Abdulmanap raised a warrior who is now an inspiration for millions of kids who are seeking to grow up with principles in a hypersexualized hedonistic world that discards these principles in the misguided guise of freedom. Everything that Abdulmanap was, he couldn’t convey to the world because he wasn’t a man of the world, so he did the next best thing, he laid the foundation for a son who would build his legacy.
The other story is that of Anthony Hamilton, whose son,
Lewis, yesterday re-wrote the history books as the first Formula 1 driver to
bag 92 wins. He beat the record of Michael Schumacher, a giant who dominated
headlines when I first started following the high octane sport. His records
were once thought untouchable. 91 wins. The second place to that was 51 wins
when he made the record. He won so many championships with Ferrari that I
stopped watching F1 because it was as predictable as the number a 2 following
1.
But just as Schumacher was starting to win his first of many accolades, a Computer Engineer in England quit his full time IT job to take up a job as a freelance IT contractor so that he could support his son who seemed to be showing signs of greatness at Karting. Anthony Hamilton held up to 4 jobs at a time to support his son’s Karting. He sacrificed all that he could to make sure his black son lived up to the greatness he knew he had and dreamt a dream where this boy would dominate a sport almost entirely owned by white people. When Hamilton won his 92nd race yesterday, he got off his car and went first to embrace his father in a long tearful hug that was a silent acknowledgment of 2 and a half decades worth of purpose fueled dedication of a man who knew his son was made for the stars.
Apart from tearing it up on the track, Lewis is also an
unstoppable force for change. Whether it is his activism in the field of
climate change, police brutality, racism, or fighting for the downtrodden, he
speaks and acts in support of the agents of positive change.
Both champions are almost mythical in their status
currently, and both are fighting for causes far greater than their personal
fame and honor. This doesn’t often happen by itself. It happens because they
were raised by men who viewed the world with a far greater responsibility than
others. They stepped up and laid bare the hard work and dedication needed to
raise good sons in a world where men are more often seen as monsters than not.
Abdulmanap & Anthony saw something which I have often
seen my father (my closest role model in all of this) talk about. A far-sighted
goal. They saw that the world would need to change. And they prepared their sons
to be that from the moment they could walk. Khabib was made to wrestle bears
and Lewis rode karts at an age where I wouldn’t trust my kid with a bicycle
without training wheels. They fell, they bruised, they hurt, they cried. And then
their fathers picked them up, dusted them, showed them what was their mistake , and said, “Try again”.
In a world where toxic masculinity is a cause for so much
grief, good fathers have to be the low-pressure systems that push winds to
raise hurricanes that bring chaos to an established unfairness and reset the
narrative to a world upon justice.
Like I said, Forces of Nature.
