someday, i'll meet you halfway

It's not often I get to write about my father. Maybe there is nothing as complicated in this world as the relationship between father and son.

My best moments with my dad have been spent around the kitchen table, locked into some intense debate about the Middle East or the market or technology or the meaning of life. The conversation almost always begins with an innocent (but loaded) statement on my part. I'll say how terrible it is to scroll through the latest Gaza body count on Twitter and, before you know it, everyone else around the table just melts away into the background. In these moments I almost always lose track of what I'm doing. I forget that I'm eating. I'll get up fifteen different times and absent-mindedly refill my glass with water I will not even drink. Sometimes I will get really flustered - particularly when I hear myself unsuspectingly trapped in a circular argument or even agreeing with his point. I wouldn't call either of us true debate team material. He's a very intelligent man with a calculating mind and an unwavering grasp on history; super practical and sometimes cold-hearted when analysing a situation. While I definitely inherited that cold logic, I have always been more of an idealist and a humanist. Even a space cadet at times - more like my mom. I worry for the human race and I don't always assume that things will magically work out for the better.

So there we were, three or four hours in to lunch yesterday afternoon, still huddled over this crude map of the Middle East my father had scribbled on the otherwise useless Montreal Gazette. The rest of the family had long since disbursed, my brother's eyes likely still rolling from wherever it was he goes to half listen. Israel would had no choice but to fight indefinitely because WE could not afford to have it not exist. Not with three thousand years of Western history at stake. Children, sadly, would continue to die. Maybe one day that will change - but probably not for a hundred years. My heart cannot accept that this problem cannot be solved. But my mind has to assume he may be right.

And it's not so much about being right any more. Maybe when I was a younger and our views were even more diametrically opposed, there was an element of that. I think every son (and maybe even every daughter) probably spends most of his life secretly trying to prove his father wrong. I know I still do.

But these debates have evolved into something altogether. To me it's become more about connecting with the man on things that obviously matter to the both of us. Because I realize that my father has spent his whole life amalgamating all this knowledge and formulating all these opinions and he needs to share them just as much as I do. He needs to argue with me as much as I need to challenge him. The worst thing you can do to people like us is not care what we think either way.

So for as long as he and I are around the debates will rage on.

And one day, we're both going to be able to look at each other and silently understand that somewhere in all those tense moments, we probably agreed with each other far more than we let on.