I was thinking I wasn’t as good as my dad, but we were two different people with our own accomplishments
When I was young, I loved hearing the story about my father bringing old air conditioning units back to life. My dad was a legend in our neighborhood. He and his best friend would go to the dump and find old air conditioning units and bring them back to life. Even after he married my mom, he was bringing old broken air conditioners to the house and getting them running again. They gave the air conditioning units to families who would not have been able to purchase a new or used air conditioning units. Everyone haled him as being a philanthropist, but he said he just enjoyed playing with AC units, and mom wouldn’t let him keep them all. I am grown and I am also an HVAC technician. Whenever someone finds out who my dad is, they bring up the story about his restoration of an AC unit when he was only ten. I was tiring of hearing that story that I wanted to tell everyone to shut up. I was also an excellent HVAC technician, but no one praised me and what I did. I told my wife how I was feeling and she said I should be ashamed of myself. I was thinking I wasn’t as good as my dad, but we were two different people with our own accomplishments. People remembered his name, but that didn’t mean no one knew who I was. I had to thank her for getting me out of my own head. She told me I should be proud of who my father was and what he did instead of worrying that I wasn’t him.