In Defense of my Father-in-Law

The lion and the lamb lying down together symbolize that strength and innocence are not in conflict, but naturally live in peace. (A Course in Miracles)

I had a rude awakening many years when my father-in-law encouraged me to pick up golf. After a couple of lessons I realized that my back was hurting, not from the swings mind you, but from the fact that my normal posture was hunched over. For weeks I tried to straighten my back; I hit the gym, I lost weight, and it all helped a bit, but eventually I realized that there was a symbolic message to the problem. When you are hunched over it implies that you feel the weight of the world on your shoulders. You have to lift that weight, only then will you get your posture back in shape. But what weight exactly?

A nice colleague who always walked a little hunched over just retired. He was the nicest person but I have always wondered why he is a little hunched over. To my knowledge he was the only one in a firm of 2000 employees. Again, I never understood why; I am sure he had his reasons to feel the weight of the world on his shoulders. My father also died last year, and in his final years he was completely hunched over. Struggling with depressions and bi-polar disease for decades; that certainly does the job.


Isn't it ironic that my father-in-law started that discovery process? He and I fought over the years; I found his aggressive mindset towards money and career simply obnoxious. Whereas he probably wrote me off as a spiritual dreamer. Over the years we both met half-way. While I never gave up my spiritual ideals, I did discover inner conflicts over the years. I discovered that my docile nature was super-imposed by my parents and found a much more assertive and competitive nature side inside. In retrospect, I think these many inner conflicts caused this psychological baggage that I was carrying around. My work as a financial strategist helped me finding who I was truly inside. I discovered a working style that was both Zen and assertive.


How symbolic, the year when my struggling father passes and the hunched over colleague retires, is also the year when I straighten my back at work so to speak. I had to fight a little and become more assertive to jump-start my career, but that's exactly what my sub-conscience wanted me to experience. So how ironic that the person I struggled with so much over the years - my father-in-law - in fact helped me the most in this self-discovery process. Situation-specific assertiveness and forcefulness is not in conflict with spirituality at all. In fact, there are times when the WAY demands it.


Often we are on a subconscious journey that we have to waken to. Mind all the voices, no matter how you might feel about them. Often the people you hate the most have a biggest present in hand for you