We often talk about a loved one's last words once they are no more. My father is still around at the time of this writing, but as I already heard the last words he'll ever say to me, I might as well share them now. >“I share 50% DNA with monkeys, too, but that doesn’t make me their father”. As a friend pointed out, that’s a quote worthy of engraving on a banana. Under different circumstances, I might have tried to argue back, rationally, with little to no regard for the insult extended to me. I would have pointed out that DNA segments are not the same as DNA base pairs, and that a 50% DNA match wasn't really open for debate. Moreover, we had submitted our samples independently. If the results were that unreliable, it would be impossible to perform paternity tests, and the platform would flag thousands of random people as parent and child. Yet, on that day, I seized the opportunity to stay silent, calmly stood up, and left. There were a couple of interesting lessons I learned on that day, but allow me to share a little bit more context first. I did not grow up with my father. I was his secret son, the one that should not exist. My mother, despite being the most talented painter I've ever met, was a secretary at his company. I ended up meeting him a couple of times during my twenties, before he vanished, leaving behind a trail of promises he never kept. On that, he often quoted Jacques Chirac, France's former president: "Les promesses n'engagent que ceux qui les écoutent", which translates to "Promises are only binding on those who listen to them." I didn't listen back then. Somehow I swallowed my pride around 2020, and we got back in touch. I think he was bored, and we would talk on the phone most days. It gave me an intense feeling of actually belonging somewhere, which I never knew existed. Our relationship growing, I shared my desire to do a DNA test, so that we had biological proof. In France, this process has been made quite difficult by legislations, and it's actually forbidden to perform a DNA test without a judge ordering it. The obvious workaround at the time was going through one of those DNA platforms that tell you where you DNA comes from and matches you with potential family members. We both did the test independently, and surely enough, my father was estimated to share a good 50% of his DNA with me, suggesting he was my father. Upon this, my father decided to officially recognize me as his lawful son. I felt like I was getting anointed. The rate of my visits to his house increased, and, neighbors being what they are and doing what they do, my niece started asking around to understand who that person visiting so often was. She eventually confronted my father on a fateful Christmas day. The cat was out of the bag, but my half-sister, her mother, would hear nothing. Now, you have to understand something. My father, Jacques Partage, was the Chief Financial Officer of Safran, the aerospace corporation. His background was in aerospace engineering. With a resume like that, you don't exactly get to pretend you don't know basic logic. Meanwhile, my half-sister is head of some biological testing facility in Lille, so she doesn't get it either. After sticking to the ostrich strategy for a while, it appears she started having strange conversations with my father, which translated into all kinds of strange statements along the lines of the one you read earlier. From what I understand, she was the one behind them. Suddenly, I also learned my niece was traumatized and afraid of me, because I had sent her a Facebook message some 12 years before, trying to explain the situation as tactfully as I could because I wanted to meet her. Since she was the one that confronted my father, and asked to meet with me around dinner, before asking for my number so we could stay in touch, I was puzzled to say the least. Nothing made sense. Being the hopeful fool that I am, I persistently offered to do new tests and have a judge order them. I tried to reason logically about the whole thing. But the less arguments my father had, the meaner he'd get. He had none from the beginning, of course, but lying to yourself gets exponentially harder with external feedback, by which I mean I was rubbing his face into his nonsense. Eventually, he vanished, blocking my number. He still had a painting from my mother, though, so I'd try to call every now and then, you never know. One day he actually picked up the phone. He had lost his phone and all his contacts, so I wasn't blocked anymore on the new phone and he didn't know who was calling. I wasn't expecting to talk to him that morning, and had no idea what to say. Out of ideas, I suggested we grab a coffee together. I guess he was out of excuses, since he agreed. As I got there, it took a rough ten minutes for my father to get to the words you read at the beginning of this story. I like to think that regulating my internal state prior to arriving allowed me to take a step back in that moment. Instead of reacting, I acted. I chose myself. I finally saw there was no point arguing with an intelligent person that so desperately wants reality to bend to his will he's ready to deny what in front of him in black and white. I stopped wanting to know *why* so desperately. Who cares? If somebody mistreats you, what difference does it make that you or them are able to rationalize it? The only important thing is that they do. Asking *why* over and over is a form of what I call active procrastination, running away from the responsibility you have before yourself. No judgement here. Been there, done that. In fact, it stills takes me way too much time to assess the difference between what people say and what they do. It's probably [[Wishful Thinking|wishful thinking]] in action. I see what I want to see, and people are generally good at telling each other what they want to hear. At least I'm working on that. Most importantly, I think, I'm working on reducing the gap between what I say and what I do. Looking back, part of what freed me then was my preparation on the way there. I remember noticing being nervous on the way there. Not exactly surprising, of course. What's more interesting is that, despite being nervous, I was actively seeking things that would make me even more so, like listening intense music you typically listen to when you want to sprint, breathing rapidly, thinking of other things making me nervous... I was surprised to notice that. Even after that day, I started seeing the same pattern in all kinds of unexpected places, and in others, too. I think this is the [[Confirmation Bias|confirmation bias]] in action. You seek external validation for your internal feeling, creating a pernicious feedback loop and self-fulfilling prophecies. If you're sad, you tend to notice sad people on the street; if you don't value yourself, you seek connection with people who make you feel worthless... the list goes on. In any case, on that day, noticing this allowed me to correct my course of action. I turned down the music and started doing box breathing, sitting in the metro on my way to the café. I've been processing that for the last year of so now. Ironically, the number one reason I don't have closure yet is because, deep down, I'm still waiting for it. I mean, I don't know how to react to that. How to position myself mentally. I shouldn't react, and it should be sinking like a stone in the sea, I know. All in good time, I guess. While it sinks, one way to speed up the process is to transform what you went through, in order to give meaning to your experience. This is what I've been doing in the back of my head for the last year or so, before putting pen to paper today. Writing helps. Art, too. *Les Fleurs du Mal*, as Baudelaire would put it. I've left out many painful details of the so-called relationship I had with my father, of course. I don't think they would add much to the picture. The harshest lesson of all, here, is that I was the one inflicting myself pain because of what I craved from someone that had nothing to give. I was so desperate to belong that I stuck around no matter what. I had so much expectations I could not quit, much like a wannabe trader who cannot kill a market position and cut his exposure because they've already lost so much. They want reality to fit their expectations so bad, they're willing to take *any* amount of pain, making up narratives to give meaning to their agony on the way to zero. I'm not the first to say it, but it bares repeating: Happiness is reality stripped from your expectations. Everything else is a delusion. No more.