A Young Man Asks
A young boy walked up to his father and asked,
“Dad, what is a man supposed to be?”
His father looked down at his son’s innocent face, smiled, patted him on the head, and said,
“Ask me again later.”
So the boy went to his grandfather.
“Grandpa, what is a man supposed to be?”
The old man studied his grandson, full of wonder, and replied,
“Ask your dad.”
The boy returned to his father.
“Dad, I don’t know what a man is supposed to be.”
Again, his father smiled gently, placed a hand on his son’s shoulder, and said,
“Ask me again later.”
And so the boy kept asking — day after day, week after week, year after year.
And every time, his father gave the same answer:
“Ask me again later.”
Eventually, the boy grew older. The question that once consumed him slipped into the background of life.
Decades passed — through doubt, through fear, through the quiet desperation of trying to become the man he thought he was meant to be.
He no longer asked the question; he simply lived with the gnawing need to prove himself.
Then one afternoon, in the middle of an ordinary day, the phone rang.
It was his mother. His father had passed away in his sleep.
At the funeral, standing before the casket, the son listened as his uncle — his father’s younger brother — spoke. He talked about the man they were laying to rest: his quiet wisdom, his patient understanding, the way he gave his whole attention to whatever he was doing. How he listened to anyone who came to him, and how — even though he spoke little — everyone knew what he believed.
“He never needed to be anywhere but where he was,” his uncle said.
As a boy, that truth had infuriated him. He had wanted his dad to be a hero.
What’s a man supposed to be?
Now, standing over his father’s body, he reflected on the life before him.
A simple life. A small town. No great riches, no titles, no power.
A man who never outpaced the system that carried him from youth to old age.
And yet — standing there, trembling, his eyes full of tears —
the son finally understood the answer he had sought all those years.
He leaned close, whispered into his father’s ear, and said:
“A man listens.”
