My Overcoat

    As I was thinking of things that provide a sense of protection, insight, and ability to grow I was conscientiously trying not to be cheesy, sappy, and forbid us all- state the obvious, but as I gave more thought and thought, idea after idea, my mind just kept returning to my Father being My Overcoat. Someone who does provide a sense of protection, insight and ability to grow. It is just my Father and I at home. He rarely leaves the house. To understand what I mean: He probably leaves the house (other than to take me to school) once a fortnight*. I might be being generous even, for fear of making him look like a recluse, but in all honestly he doesn't do much. Now. "he doesn't do much" is in reference to the things he does for himself. He is ALWAYS giving me everything he has: attention, care, concern, driving me around the globe... and money! When I try and look at it from an outsiders view it is unconceivable. Actually, from the outsiders view, it makes him appear insane with all the things that my Father does for a person who never meets him halfway. All for a person who does not keep his room clean. All for a person who never takes an interest into his own father's life. All for a person who is failing school, something that his father is paying for with his very limited amount of capital. Does that not make him insane? Doing the same thing over and over hoping for a change in outcome? Look up the definition and you'll see that my father is technically insane.
      However, He is my father. That's what fathers do, right? Infinitely provide for their kin, no matter what? To do the things mentioned above? As I write this I am asking my self these questions. I have tried looking at my relationship with my father from the outside looking in, which is the best I, or anyone can do with their relationships to understand them, right? Wrong. One can look from the outside-in on their own, but one can also look at different son's relationships with their fathers. I did so, and I realized that it is not the typical father-son relationship. Most fathers do not give and give and give. Most fathers do not try and get their son to anywhere that his son wants to. Most fathers do not have a principle: "I will make sure that my son can do what he wants to do." That principle is quite seriously a quote from my father. "It is your time to experience a childhood. Something that my father (my grandfather) never gave me." My dad, said this to me about two months ago as my grades turned to show the possibility of not graduating. I didn't know it at the time, for we had not read "The Overcoat", but my father is my overcoat. He is something that I cannot live without. I am scared that he has spoiled me with such freedom and like a cell phone - no roaming charges. In all honestly, I am a rich kid: given everything when I want it. We all know that's the reason why a rich kid wouldn't turn out so great.
     Enough about money and time (arguably the same thing), there are still more aspects to the overcoat. Insight. Perhaps the most important to me. My father provides so much knowledge, direct thought, a desire and ability to see the larger picture. Most will not understand this, but in essence he contains the perspective, common point-of-view, thought process, and definitive traits of many different stereotyped occupations: Judge, Politician, Convict, active anti-war college student, conservative economist, political scientist, carpenter/electrician/plumber, a burger flipper, photographer, door to door christmas tree ornament salesman. This list goes on and on. Only if you met him and had a real philosophical conversation with him would you understand his immense knowledge and understanding of so many things. Not knowledge that could make him champion on Jeopardy, but this strange and perhaps just convincing ability to teach you something at any point in time. The 'teachings' he has given me is something that I truly value. I am scared that when I must leave him that I will loose my freethinking. I understand the irony, being with someone to think for yourself, but it is quite true. He gives me insight; a means and ends of thinking about every angle and whence-forth it came. I have drawn hardcore and slanted conclusions and when I think I understand a situation and I talk to it about my father, he is always ready to throw something into the mix that often shatters  my once air-tight conclusion. Perhaps it is his way of being right all the time, hahaha! That would be the case if there was never any rationality to his thought or there was never any relevance. Nearly every other day I have thoughts about how am I going to watch the news and really understand what is going on? Will I know enough about history and politics to see the larger picture? Quite a funny and superficial fear, but I cannot deny it. My father is my overcoat.

Romanticism

Romanticism was a movement against the Age of Enlightenment. The Age of Enlightenment brought scientific thought and rationalization to be considered as a normal process of observation and thought. Artists, however, believed that this 'rationalization' would bring doubt and thoughts that prohibit the way the art piece was written, painted, or performed in the eye's of the beholder. Romanticists feared the new scientific breakthroughs specifically with how science show nature. The new view on nature that science displayed was not kind to what artists wanted to display and perhaps would illegitimize their works of art.