Why knot treat your dad to a batch of these pretzel bites for Father’s Day next weekend? 

It’s never supposed to be easy. It’s not supposed to be easy because you can handle tough times and still choose to be a loving person. It is going how it’s going because you’re built for it, and it’s going to work out because you’re never going to stop putting the work in.

My dad has always been the epitome of tough love. Growing up and seeing my friends with their dads as their biggest cheerleaders, attending their cross-country & track meets, and going on family outings on the weekend… I wondered why I was “stuck” with the dad who was constantly lecturing me on topics that were just a little too complicated to grasp when all I really wanted was someone who’d play soccer with me on the field and build a snowman with me in the backyard.

But as much as he repeats himself over and over, as much as he raises his voice in public space, as many times he’s told me “you can’t do this” and “you can’t do that”, as many times as he’s told me explicitly that my cooking/baking is horrendous, and as many times I have wanted to just run out of the house to somewhere far away (probably the forest in my backyard hahahaha), he’s still my dad and I know that deep down, he just wants me to be the best person I can be. Firm believer of tough love, to say the least.

Always give, but don’t expect anything in return because if you do, then you’re only giving out of a possibility of a return… so can you even consider that as giving? What was the point of giving in the first place?

This is something that has been ingrained in me ever since I was little, and I still carry it with me every day in how I choose to live my life. I always believe that there’s a whole lot more joy out of giving joy to others than to be on the receiving end of it. Receiving a bag of cookies is great, but nothing beats seeing the face of someone receiving the bag of cookies. Having your needs met is great, but meeting somebody else’s needs is even greater.

But what if giving that bag of cookies resulted to a look of disgust and a gesture of throwing it into the trash? All that time and energy spent on making them, thrown out of the window? Not just that, but it’s a blow to the ego, leaving us feeling anything but happy. So what’s the underlying intention of the bag of cookies? To boost the ego, or to simply give out cookies just because?

I think the answer to that isn’t one or another. Just like another one of my dad’s repeat-a-million-times-until-my-daughters-get-it-classic-quotes:

Nothing is ever black and white.

But I feel like yeah, the reason we give is so others can get something out of it, and of course, we’d like that something to be positive, and not something they’d feel negatively toward. Because if it causes negative emotions, then it also can’t really be classified as giving either, can it? So of course when we give, it’s human nature to expect some sort of appreciation or positive reaction from the other party, not just because it makes us feel good, but because seeing somebody happy is just a natural reaction to be happy about.

It’s important to note that even if something we do or have given is unappreciated, if we were giving just to give, it really wouldn’t matter at the end of the day whether we receive appreciation or not. Because if the intention was truly the act of giving without anything in return, then even a simple word of “thank you” is just an added bonus. Of course, showing appreciation is so simple and so powerful into making us feel good about the things we do, but if we take it for granted, it can easily turn into expectation; if our expectations aren’t met, we become unsatisfied and disappointed.

Have you ever done something you thought would be thoughtful for somebody, to be met with disappointment because you weren’t greeted with appreciation? I know I have, and it’s actually kind of silly because why do our actions need to be validated? If it was a good thing to do, it was a good thing to do. If we know what we’ve done is good in our own heart, then we don’t need the approval of other people because only they can control their thoughts and there’s really nothing we can do to change their mind about what they think. All we can control is what we, ourselves, think, and that is one thing that nobody can take away from us.

I know I struggle with this sometimes because showing gratitude and being thankful is something that is so easy and so natural when somebody helps me out with a task or when somebody takes the time out of their day to spend time with me. Oftentimes, I am blinded by my own expectations in how I would act in these situations upon others, but the truth is that everyone is different and I shouldn’t allow what I expect from myself to be reflected upon how others react to the same situation. Does this make sense?

Another thing that my dad has ingrained in me is so simple, but so hard for somebody like me who just likes to do everything and anything, and go all in with everything set out to do.

Balance: you can’t do it all, but you also can’t do nothing at all. Extremes are easy; the hard part is being able to find balance for it all.

When I have my mind set on something, I will not take a “no” for an answer. I give it a heck yes, and strive toward it to make it happen. If I fail, well, at least I know I’ve tried, and from that, I can sleep in satisfaction knowing that I’ve at least learned something out of it. In my point of view, that’s how life should be! Doing as much as we can, giving it our best shot, and while we’re at it, we will fall and fail and we will make the worst mistakes, but life goes on, we laugh it off (laughing at yourself helps a lot in these situations), our mistakes heal, and through it all, we learn, we evolve and we grow.

But I also know that this stubborn mindset of “oh I can do everything I set my mind to” can lead to extreme thinking, and to my dad, he claims I’m just being naive, way too optimistic, and “that’s not how life works”. It’s important to be realistic, yes, but there’s a difference between being realistic but still having aspirations that are a little out of reach, and being realistic but having them so within reach that it doesn’t require much of a reach, you get what I’m saying?

My dad has definitely seen a lot more of the world than I have, but if we repeatedly just shut ourselves down by “oh I can’t do this, who am I kidding”, then we have already set ourselves up for failure. All our thoughts will go toward that “I can’t” thought, and our actions will reflect that. When we first say “I can’t”, we are actually just saying “I’m not strong enough to fight for it”.

Pride will always say it’s impossible.

Experience will always say it’s risky.

Reason will always say it’s pointless.

But the heart will whisper to us, saying, give it a try.

I’m sure there are a lot more quotes from my dad that have become deeply-rooted into me, just because I feel like he comes up with new examples every time he sees me and requests a “little chat” with me, which often ends with me sitting there in silence, hearing truth to what he’s saying, but also critically trying to merge my own thinking to his just because our personalities are so different and our approach to situations are so different. He adds another perspective of how I see things, which is another one of his quotes:

When you think, look at everything in all angles and all perspectives.

I love this one, because the world changes when we shift our perspective. Everything we choose to see is just our perspective, not necessarily the truth. Eek, super mind-boggling stuff! So let’s just laugh at the confusion, and smile through the tears, cause maybe someday it will all make perfect sense.

Mmhm, all seriousness aside, looks like every angle of these pretzel knots and BBQ queso dip make a pretty promising appetizer for Father’s Day! So just maaaaybe this dish is fit for all the special Dad’s out there. Make them not just because it’s Father’s Day, but because you want to show some appreciation for the best Dad in your life!