I see all sorts of messages streaming through the digital universe about Father’s Day, most of them wishing fathers a happy day, some selling stuff, some claiming being a father is the best job they ever had, many being congratulated by children and friends and relatives for being Father’s on this day. It’s always been interesting to see that on Mother’s Day, the restaurants are jammed with kids and their moms, but on Father’s Day, nobody seems to know quite what to do with their Dads. You can always get a seat at a restauratan.

I hesitate a bit at some of these messages, the celebratory tone, the word from  Fatherland is not so black and white, clear or simple. It is hard to be a good dad, I never had one, was not always a great one myself, and know very few who don’t think they could have or should have done better.

Father’s Day is a day of humility for me, of reflection. I try every year to love my Dad and understand him, and as I veer towards my seventh decade, I am being to accept the reality of this, and to let it go. My father did the best he could, as I have, and I suspect almost every father on the earth does. But I bow my head on father’s day, I see the work I need to do to be the human being I wish to be.

At some points in human history, it was clear what being a good dad meant. Sometimes it was being a protector, sometimes a navigator, sometimes a pathfinder, sometimes just a provider. Our world is changing, we are in the last waning days of the Patriarchy, I hope it collapses completely before men finish their work ravaging and pillaging and destroying the earth. No one ever told me what being a father meant, like most  fathers, I groped and guessed my way through it. Much of the time, I guessed wrong. I struggled at times to accept the person my child was, rather than to push her into being the child I wanted her to be.

Now, I have learned something. I wouldn’t do that to a dog.

I, for one, am not sure what it means to be a good Dad, and never have been. It is important job, for sure, but I am loathe to congratulate myself for being a father. The role of men in the world, in the workplace, at home, is being challenged, is changing, and I think that is good and long over due thing.

This is where I have landed: What I want is for my daughter to be happy. If she is, I have done my work as a father. Beyond that, it is her business.

We fathers have screwed up the planet pretty good, we and our brothers and sons are responsible for almost all of the violence, war, environmental degradation, oblivious political leadership, greed and destruction that men have visited on the earth and it’s children. Have we left our sons and daughters a good and peaceful and loving world?

I always defined fatherhood as raising a child who could love, make friends, do good work and no harm,  and be content in the world. In that context, I have been a good father, my wonderful daughter Emma is all of those things.

But when I look at all of the self-congratulation back-patting I see online and in the media on Father’s Day, I must confess to wincing, to feeling abashed, humbled and a bit  regretful. It isn’t that being a father isn’t important, it is perhaps the most important thing I have ever done.

I just realize in retrospect that I knew little about it, or how to do it, and at some of the key points in my child’s life, I was either not there or too messed up to be of use. I don’t mean to be  downer, but that is the truth of it, and I have learned not to lie to myself or others. I can’t really celebrate that record.  On Father’s day, I remember the two children I lost in the early days of my marriage, I think of them and love them and regret that I never saw them live long enough to really be in the world.

And of course, I think of Emma. My daughter is very much in the world, happily married, engaged in work she loves, in the center of a powerful community of friends that have often been her real and most cherished family.

I am sober and reflective on Father’s  Day, and I can’t join in too much of the cheering. I talked to my daughter today, and I said none of the things I was really feeling, I didn’t wish to rain that down on her, she has moved along with her life, I am moving alone with mine. If anything, the animals I live with have benefited from my lessons of fatherhood. I am learning to be patient, to listen, to wait and to love. One way or another, fathers learn something about love.

I wish all of the other fathers a great and meaningful day. I wish we fathers did better. I look at the fathers in Washington, at the father’s on TV, on cable news, I look at the fathers arguing on Facebook and promoting guns and hatred and division, the ones with power and armies to command, the ones on Wall Street, I think of my friend Paul and his two daughters, I look at the father’s who fill the jails and raise tortured sons who kill people, and who commit most of the crimes and who, everywhere, violate the canons of real fatherhood and harm other people.

I give thanks to Pope Francis, he gives me hope for men, he is not afraid to love, to give up wealth and power, to trade in his velvet slippers, to love Mother Earth, to think of the helpless and the poor, to speak the truth to the many other fathers who want to hear it. He is a Father, in so many senses of the word. I want to feel about my self as a father the way I feel about him.

So when it comes to Father’s Day, I am humbled and subdued, perhaps a bit mournful. I don’t feel too celebratory or self-congratulatory. I hope to use my remaining time on the world to work for a  better world for my daughter and her new husband and their children and for the children of all the other fathers in the world. When we can tell our sons and daughters that we have made a better world than the one we grew up in, that will be a Father’s  Day worth celebrating.

And I hope to be a good father.