Star Trek and Fathers

"Now, your father was captain of a Starship for 12 minutes. He saved 800 lives, including your mother's and yours. I dare you to do better."--Captain Christopher Pike -STAR TREK(2009)

This got me to thinking.  Am I doing better than my father?  He set the bar pretty damn high.  I would be doing good if I could reach half that high.

That led me to thinking about:  Does every son strive to do better than his father?  Take sports "heroes" that reach levels that their sons are unable to attain.  How do they feel about that?  I would think they would hate being compared to their father.  I know that for my entire life, I have been compared to my twin brother.  And I know that sucks!  We are different people and let's leave it at that.  But back to doing better than dear old dad.  I have always thought that I want to leave the world a better place than when I entered it.  How that would be measured, I have no clue. Same  with fathers, what kind of measurements would you use: money? children? titles?  wives?

What about sons who never knew their fathers?  How would they judge if they were better or not?    Then there are sons whose fathers are abusive, alcoholics, drug addicts, criminals or all of the above.  I suppose they may see that topping their fathers isn't that tough.   But do they choose to top in being better people or worse people?  So many questions and not one good answer.

I guess in the end as fathers, we can only show sons how to be men; to set the example and hope they follow.  As we watch them grow, we can judge how good of job we did as we hopefully watch them do same for their sons.  As for my father, I not striving to do better, I'm just hoping to catch up.