Life and all that stuff

Today, when I was sitting on my couch with my math textbook on my lap with my dad sitting right across me, he asks me a question. I look up, expecting a question about school or my friends but what I hear is something completely different. "What have you learnt from life up till now?" he asks me looking straight into my eyes. Life? Questions about life always make me think and I love where these conversations take me but I honestly didn't expect my dad to ask me this out of the blue. I closed my book and looked up, I do that when I think. A thousand thoughts popped and flowed through my mind but it was hard to hold on to even one of them. I took a few seconds to answer and when I did I told him that I had not experienced life completely yet but from what I did, I can tell him what I thought. He nodded his head in agreement and waited for me to speak. "Well, I've learnt that at this stage, the most important thing in life is to believe in yourself." While I was saying this, I was aware of how cheesy all of it sounded but I knew that it was true. 

I knew what I was talking about because that's what life taught me. I said,"Waiting for people to recognise your talent and appreciate you is not worth it." He could tell that that's something I had done and was deeply affected by. Well, I didn't exactly expect him to remember because we never talk about it anymore. He seemed pretty satisfied with my answer and both of us took a minute to think. Then I asked him the same question and it seemed like he was waiting to tell me. He said," I've learnt that nothing is permanent." How did I not think of that? That's the most amazing part about life. It's always changing and transforming individuals for better or for worse. I immediately agreed with him with a big yes. He seemed really wise when he was explaining himself to me. And as we went back to believing in ourselves, he opened up about his feelings of frustration when he had felt undermined in his workplace. It was a little strange at first because for some reason I always thought that my dad can never really have feelings of inadequacy. I mean he always put up a strong front and never showed his feelings of disappointment to me.  I can understand why he's thinking about this right now because ever since he quit his job, everything's new to him. But he also talked about 2012 when he was diagnosed with cancer; when he spoke about it, it made me upset. I was oblivious to his condition until he got treated which made me feel like I wasn't around to support him. But I'm glad it's all over now.  

I don't know why but I really liked this conversation with him. Earlier, we never really spoke about these things and it's nice to have meaningful conversations sometimes.