1,400 words
Read time @ 250 words/minute: 6 minutes
Dear America,
I’m a good father. It’s a job, in some sense — the most rewarding, wonderful, challenging, ever-changing work of a man’s life — but a job nonetheless. It’s a job, but not one, like the fields, or construction sites, or office chairs, that the father can leave “at work” when he goes home. No — our job is one we can never walk away from. It is in our bones.
I’m not a great father — probably not, at least. Maybe I would be nominated for a “best father of NW Portland during the 2024 ice storm, day 2” or some other big-sounding award relative to a laughingly small population, but I’m not applying for any award — not while I’m alive, at least. I know my flaws — they are many, and they run deep. I, too, “contain multitudes,” as Walt Whitman wrote in his poem “Song of Myself.” I’m not a great father, but I’m a good father.
As I write this, I’m reminded that my grandmother died in this very room.
I was 23, and had signed the first packet of military enlistment papers. Still able to back out of the bulk of the signatures and final commitments without penalty, and not fully certain, I visited my family for a month or two to decide. Most thought I should not join the military, but with each piece of advice, most against joining, I let my mind and soul catch up to what my heart already knew: I’d joined the military.
To make these big life decisions, I often rely on a powerful exercise. Here’s how it’s usually described: imagine yourself in old age, on your deathbed, ideally surrounded by family and friends, telling your stories in the final hours and days. Did you have children? Where did you live? Did you stay or moved? When and why did you change careers?
Surrounded by friends and family on my deathbed, telling the stories of my life, the decision to join the military or not seemed easier. I knew I’d volunteered, serving at least a few years, but it wasn’t certain if I’d separated after 4-years or made a military career out of it. When I left the military after four years, I knew then, too, that it had been the right decision. I’ve since used this same mental exercise to make other important decisions, and these choices have also led me to travel, to marry*, and to find fatherhood waiting for me on the other side of life.
As part of that decision-making journey, I visited family on the West Coast, continuing my religious growth by spending five nights at a monastery. At that time, my grandmother — the last living of my four grandparents — was ill with Alzheimer’s and nearing the end of her life. We’d barely known each other in life, living with half an ocean between us, and now, in her final days, she smiled politely, but did not know me. Rather than burden my family by canceling my days in the monastery and staying with them, I continued with my plans nearby. A few days later, I felt a sensation I can only describe as spiritual, with surprise tears coming to me, as though she had passed. Indeed, a family member called the monastery to confirm that she had. Her death ended my chance — and that of my siblings — to directly know our last living grandparent.
As I face hard choices in the future, I will remember this room — the room where my grandmother passed into the eternal, beyond the beyond.
But if there’s one thing my grandparents excelled at, it was parenting. And so are most of our fathers — perhaps all, in my opinion, given better rest, nutrition, and community support. Whatever jobs are in our father’s histories, all were fathers in their bones, from birth to death. This job is a man’s most important work.
Adulthood is filled with difficult decisions, and parenting only adds to that burden.
Decision Making, capitalizing both words, is a lot like climbing a tree. Why am I climbing a tree? When? To see what? To run away from what? How high? What’s the risk of death? What are the rewards? Sometimes, we must ponder a multitude of questions in a brief flash — whether it’s with an animal chasing us, or amidst rising floodwaters. At other times, the tree may hold attractive fruit, or a lost frisbee, with ample time to decide. Sometimes, in the latter case, we may overthink it, succumbing to anxiety, fears, stress, or even overwhelm. And many make it worse — “Regret,” as author, blogger, and influencer Tim Ferris writes in this blog post, “is past tense decision making.”
And so while fatherhood may not teach you to become a successful day trader, it must always better your long-term decision making: to move or not, or to where, to change jobs, to have a(nother) child, how to approach the situation with your neighbors, to run for President (*3). All these important decisions must account for these risks, all strategies, calculated, emotional, raw long-term decisions.
Day-to-day, I am as lazy a man as any. My house is not terribly untidy with a child of our son’s age, but it could always be cleaner and tidier. I take the easy choices all the time: I blame others, I criticize without love or constructive suggestions, I fail, and I learn. But long-term in my life, I grow, I take the challenging path, and I have been blessed with a good life, surrounded by love. My roots were planted in a great family, in a good country, on a unique island paradise.
Just as we face tough decisions in our personal lives, as a nation, we’ve forgotten how to make the big choices that shape our future. We have many failures in this country, but one of the most critical is our failure in decision making. If we want our nation to grow and mature, we must become better decision makers.
The same thoughtful decision-making that has guided my personal journey is sorely lacking in our national leadership. And we wonder why our nation is struggling? The truth is that the answers aren’t found by pointing fingers at the other political party; they’ve been staring back at us from the bathroom mirror all along.
If elected, I will fight for the fathers of this country — past, present, and future. This commitment will not come at the expense of mothers or women (*2), as no parent is inherently better; instead, it will be a partnership, working together for the good of all families. Fatherhood, much like leadership, demands a balance of strength and compassion, of guidance and listening. These are the qualities I will champion for all parents, again, not at the expense of women, but in concert with them. As President, I firmly believe, I would be a strong long-term decision maker, at least as good as the partisan Presidents of my lifetime — perhaps better, given my life history.
The role of U.S. President, much like fatherhood, isn’t about managing day-to-day minutiae. It’s about the long-term trajectory, learning from errors, getting input, and often making decisions that the people closest to you might not agree with, understand, or might even fight against. The job requires a non-partisan decision maker with a diverse history across the country’s cultural, geographic, religious, and other backgrounds. Therefore, I’ll state it most confidently yet: I would be a good President.
While a million good Americans might fit that description, most aren’t running. I am. I would be a good President. Not a great one, I think, but the partisan Presidents of my lifetime have set the bar so low — bounded by the trappings of their party leadership and secretive donors — that I can confidently write, given my life and position as a father, that I would be a good President. After we reforem our Presidential Election system (to a lottery with ranked-choice voting (RCV)), we could see our first truly ‘great’ Presidents — schoolteachers, plumbers, carpenters, drivers, doctors — diverse Americans rising to the demands of leadership and inspiring us all to lead.
As I reflect on the journey that has brought me here—through fatherhood, personal growth, and hard decisions—I am reminded of the responsibility we all share to shape our future, not just for ourselves but for the generations to come. Leadership, like parenting, is not about perfection, but about the willingness to make difficult choices, learn from mistakes, and work for something greater than ourselves. I believe in the power of thoughtful decision-making to guide our nation toward a better future, and I stand ready to take on that challenge, not as a perfect leader, but as a committed one—a father determined to leave a lasting legacy of love, wisdom, and growth for all of America’s children.
With gratitude,
John Fial
🫡 Fial Forward!
Notes:
Editor’s Note:
This essay was originally written by hand, in the room I describe, and edited mostly with human input. In contrast, see my adjacent essay, When the Law Fails Our Children: A Father’s Plea for Joint Custody Reform in Oregon, which was highly edited with OpenAI’s chatGPT. The two are complimentary in that they both touch on fatherhood and parenting, but world’s apart from the perspective of editing, tone, and style.
Footnotes:
- *1: My former wife divorced me (and our son), a decision outside my control, and in the adjacent essay, I write about the serious problems that step from Oregon’s unique (and damaging) child custody law.
- *2: Regarding our first female Presidents:
- I proposed making it easier to have one to ten quality female Presidents via Constitutional Amendment last year. See the campaign website pillar: Healing Our Politics. Indeed, if we implement the Presidential Election system I’ve proposed — combining a national lottery (selecting ~100 eligible Americans Presidential Candidates) with ranked choice voting — I would still support restricting the first one-, two- or three lotteries to eligible women. This would ensure excellent female Candidates and a first female President at least as good as the male Presidents of our lifetime, and likely far, far better. Critics argue this is unfair, that it’s “equality of outcome,” or fixing the outcome rather than providing everyone an “equality of opportunity,” which is the goal. However, given 250-years of consecutive male Presidents, I think most American men would at least consider this proposal.
- *3: “To run for President…” or not, letting the two party system threaten the nation, putting all our children at risk.
- Removed these sentences/paragraphs, as they didn’t fit:
- Moreover, I prefer to rest as needed than to overwork — focusing intensely when I do work, not ignoring the early signs of weariness. Some call focus, or “monotasking,” or “flow state,” while researchers like Cal Newport refer to it as “deep work.” To me, it’s just work! I think many Americans think they’re working productively for 6-10 hours a day when they’re really just multitasking what would otherwise take 3-5 focused hours. Most established artists, scientists, and leaders, current and historical, only focus on their craft for 2-6 hours a day, most days of the week. The rest of their time, of course, is spent on other work: administrative, bills, parenting, cooking, cleaning, shopping, on social time with family, friends, and neighbors, and on physical activity like exercise, etc. We have forgotten how to focus in our country, forgotten how to rest, forgotten how to be. And we wonder why our nation is failing?
- And so fatherhood is about love, growth, decision making, and all things.