Put the mask first on you, then assist the child next to you
“ In the event of a decompression, an oxygen mask will automatically drop in front of you. Pull the mask towards you. Place it firmly over your nose and mouth, secure the elastic band behind your head, and breathe normally, then assist the child next to you“
I found it very strange when I first heard this announcement during the safety instructions presentation on an airplane when I was 17 years old. When I listened to this same announcement last month, on my first plane trip with my daughter, I was terrified of imagining the scene. How so? The last to be helped? So helpless? I need to take care of her! This recommendation goes against the paternal instinct of protection.
But the truth is, basically, if the aircraft cabin loses pressurization, in a few seconds we would faint from lack of oxygen. Masks would give us oxygen to stay conscious for a little while longer. Many children can not reach the masks from their seats or are not yet able to put on their masks alone or they can panic. If the adults try to put the masks on the children first, they may pass out before. Even if children can put on their masks first, they could not reach the mask to save the adult.
If the adult saves himself first, there is still hope of saving the child.
This emergency procedure teaches us a lot about fatherhood. When we become fathers, the first thing that occurs to us is the obligation to give our best to the child. Giving the child our best can be considered the highest intention an father can have. It is the impulse of the family-providing father governing the paternal function. This can cause us anguish and frustration. A feeling we are doing little. All this because there is a Universal Law to which we are all submitted that is relentless:
We can only give what we have. That simple.
You may want to be better because you have become a father, but you do not stop being yourself because you now have a child. All your truths, desires, values, ideologies, expectations and also your frustrations, fears, insecurities, resentments will be inside of you dictating your behavior and this is what you have to offer your child, especially in the turbulent moments in which we are run over by our unconscious and we act in automatic mode.
If we want to become good fathers, we must turn our whole attention and energy to ourselves and not to the child. What may at first seem an act of self-love or selfishness is actually the condition to be able to take care of the other. The best you can do for your child is to take care of you.
We’ve been in turbulent times lately. Today’s society is marked by information speed and the advancement of new technologies that modify people’s way of thinking and living. The rules and values are no longer as rigid as in our parents’ time. The models and paradigms are broken at a frantic rate, as if the world had no reference, predictability, and control. Everything is very fast and we do not have time.
Being a father in this contemporary scenario requires sustaining the paternal structure in turbulence.
Turn all your attention to you. Spend time with you. Find out who you are and build who you want to be. The “good father” emotionally supports the family, gives directions and sets rules. For a father to perform this function it is necessary to remain well on his axis, with his full “oxygen stock”. This is a necessary condition to be able to put the mask on the child while it still does not reach its own, has no ability to put on its own or panics. If you accomplish this mission, the child will reach adulthood without being afraid of flying.
Did you like the idea of constructing fatherhood?
Receive the next texts first hand! Click here and leave your e-mail to receive the new text of the journey of The Symbolic Father — Constructing the fatherhood
And participate by leaving your comments where you prefer!
